The Reality of Frozen Yogurt

Frozen yogurt places are quickly becoming Utah's greatest culinary prostitute. Is there a single block between Provo and Salt Lake that doesn't have a Yogurtland, Spoon Me, Spoon It Up, Yozone, etc.? If it weren't for cupcakes, fro-yo would be Utah's only culinary prostitute, and we know that the only thing taking up more real estate than fro-yo places is LDS chapels. (Now don't get me wrong--I love the fact that I can travel down 9th East in Provo and see, I dunno, 28 chapels and 13 more under construction (rough estimate).)

But I'm digressing from my point. 

I've never really been a frozen treats kind of girl. I can enjoy a good vanilla cone, or small dish of ice cream every now and then, but I will never be the kind of girl that craves it. Blame it on my sugar-free-cereals upbringing, subsequent sugar gluttony, and then recovery. Or blame it on the fact that I have sensitive teeth and a tongue that just don't like cold things. Whatever reason you choose, take it, run with it. Fact is, I'm not an ice cream girl. Or a frozen yogurt girl. If anything, I'm a frozen custard girl, but that's another topic for another day. For me, the point of frozen yogurt is to get enough to allow you to get as many mini gummy bears as possible half-frozen on top of it. The fro-yo's just an adhesive cooling device. 

Now, I suppose the fact that I'm already not such a fan of frozen yogurt really discredits my reliability as a giver of the following opinion, but so be it:
Frozen Yogurt is a LIE, STEVEN!!! 

Just kidding. Your name isn't Steven. I was just channeling Jack Black there for a moment. (Please view the following video if you no comprendo.)

Anyways. Back to the reasons why frozen yogurt is a lie. 

You may notice as you have gone to these frozen yogurt places that fro-yo typically has the consistency of soft-serve, maybe a little firmer, and is somewhat less creamy and more tart than regular ice cream. This is in the style of regular yogurt vs. cream. In theory, frozen yogurt and ice cream are just the significantly chilled versions of their refrigerated counterparts. 

This is not true. How do I know? Because I am eating a frozen yogurt right now and it is not the same as fro-yo!

I know. That doesn't make sense. Because frozen yogurt and the general concept of fro-yo are two very different things. I'm talking about a yogurt, Raspberry Yumberry to be exact (yeah, idk what a yumberry is either. Stop worrying about it. It tastes good, and that's all that matters.) which I bought probably a week ago. This yogurt, as it so happens, fell victim to the everyone-in-our-apartment-has-too-much-food incident, which tends to result in fridge-tetris, hard-to-shut-doors, and an inability for the cool air to get around to everything. You may be thinking that this is a problem because the food closest to the door can't get cool. Oddly enough, that is not the problem. The problem is with food getting stuck in the back where all the cool air is also stuck. Hence, the reason I think of that area as the second freezer. 

Other foods of mine have been a victim of this, mainly produce, like the lettuce and my celery (R.I.P. celery). You wouldn't think that freezing would really be much of an issue. Just defrost it, right? WRONG. My poor celery got freakishly floppy and looked bruised, and the lettuce last year was just as much of a disaster. Needless to say, I get a little angry with the fridge, but it's nbd, right?

I suppose I should have realized that my Raspberry Yumberry yogurt, having been knocked back into the second freezer area of the fridge, might have fallen victim to this chilly death. It wasn't until I pulled back the foil that I actually recognized that it was, in fact, frozen. And instead of moving it to the front of the fridge and allowing it to slowly defrost, which may have worked, I kept pulling back the foil. 

This was the wrong decision. 

Somewhere in my head I thought, "This will be fine. It'll be just like fro-yo in a cup. Or like one of those awesome Minute Maid frozen lemonades. Just with a more yogurt-y taste."

WRONG, my friends. SO MUCH WRONGNESS. 

I may have experienced some anger at this realization. 

And what a realization it was.

Turns out, when yogurt freezes, it also separates. Yeah. Into the watery-ish part, and the actual yogurt goop part. To make matters worse, I tried to microwave it slowly, so as not to have warm yogurt. I tried a couple sessions of 30-seconds at 50% power, which were interspersed with spoon jabbings into the little cup. Welcome to shards of ice in yogurt dregs. 

At this point, fearing the imminent yogurt soup, I gave up on the microwave, and decided to stir it into submission. Nothing like a little friction to get things moving slowly, right?

Still so wrong. 

Ultimately, I ended up with some watery room-temperature Raspberry Barfberry melange with little cottage-cheese like curds of stubborn still-frozen yogurt dregs swimming in it.

What I'm really trying to get at is this:
frozen yogurt 
is not the same as 
frozen yogurt.

And you know what the worst part of it all is?

... I still ate it. 

A Rather Overdue Ramble

So I figure it's time to get back to this blogging thing. I haven't posted since mid-June, and I've got seven drafts sitting between now and the last post, each of them starting out with something along the lines of "Well, I'm back!" or "I'm such a loser because I haven't posted in forever" .... The irony of it is all so very beautiful. And maybe this will be just one more dumb draft to jump onto the pile, but I sure hope not. What's even funnier is that I wrote this paragraph last night, before going to Rachel's to watch Pushing Daisies, and it almost got discarded, but I'm committed to getting this darn post published.

Life has been so good to me lately, and once again I find myself counting blessings that so far exceed anything I could have possibly done to "deserve" them. I will spare you the list, because I feel like it would come across a little like bragging, which I don't want to do at all. I know I have done nothing to merit the life I've been given, the bizarre monsoon-season of blessings that seems to be perpetually drenching me with happiness. Sure, I have my angsty moments, and there are times when things in my life aren't obviously either blessings or something-less-bless-ful ... but it seems to me that there's a blessing in everything, and it's always better to choose to see something as a blessing than to see it as something else. It's weird that I'm even saying this right now, because I haven't been in a particularly good mood today ... not terrible, but not really good either. Mostly bored. Kind of like Lady Dedlock...



That's from Bleak House, if you didn't already know. (And if I know you who will read this, you most likely don't. She's great though, isn't she?)

I've been so bored lately, waiting for something exciting, trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life (especially since I tried to figure out my schedule today ... it's weird having to pick through the last few classes I  have to take). You get the gist. At any rate, it's not very exciting, and I'm super distracted right now by the following video:



So this is the kid that won the last American Idol season. He's seventeen, and you sure as heck wouldn't guess that after hearing that voice. Homeboy's a bass and a half. Or, as Nicki Minaj would put it, a Super Bass. He seriously sounds like he's almost 40. It's incredible.


... and suddenly I have nothing more to say. I'm too distracted, too bored, to keep writing. Whatever.