Field Report: Albino Asparagus Ice Cream!

This Halloween's spooky tale is from my friend Logan about his trip to Germany. Enjoy!

When it comes to ice cream, there really isn't much to be afraid of unless, of course, we all scream for ice cream to cool the burning acid a mysterious killer dumped on us while we were trying to run away. But even in that case the ice cream is a cool, comforting, life saving substance. I have probably only been frightened by ice cream once, but is because of that that experience that Brad and Marisa have asked me to to supplement their regular blogly offerings with this frightening tale of cold, creamy horror.

It all began in Erlangen, Germany, in the early part of the decade when I was visiting a friend of the family with my German grandmother. That person was Dieter, an Engineer for Siemens corporation. So while I was waxing my mustache and buttoning my leiderhosen, Dieter suggested something that made my monocle pop out, “Would you like to go to the most popular Ice Cream Parlor in Erlangen?” Of course I would like to go to an ice cream parlor. Germany is dotted with many little Italian Ice cream places that are either run by Italians or Turks, but either way they are probably going to have some awesome lemon ice cream.

We arrived at Eishaus Erlangen in time to stand in line while Deiter explained that Eishaus is famous for it's constant rotation of interesting flavors. I learned that Eishaus is run by Germans, but they serve Italian-style ice cream. When we got inside I was terrified by but magnetically drawn to one flavor: Spargle. Spargle means asparagus, but it's not the green asparagus that we are familiar with, it's white asparagus. White, anemic, albino asparagus that has been covered in dirt to prevent any exposure to the sun. I shuddered at the thought. Apparently Germany has so many mad scientists that they are going into the ice cream business. I wanted to take refuge in one of the other, more traditional flavors, like Stracciatella or tempting flavors like Chocolate Struessel, but I knew this was my only chance, so I went for the glory.

The asparagus ice cream turned out to be not nearly as bad as I expected. Imagine cream of asparagus soup but sweet, and not quite as vegetab-ly. The flavor was actually very delicate, I even detected some floral notes. I felt a little like a judge on Iron Chef. So the moral of the story is: If you face your fears, you can gain twenty pounds while vacationing in Germany. Next time I'm going to try their Camembert flavor.