Last week during some eleventh-hour Christmas shopping, I stopped at Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck), where I spent my newborn son’s first year of college tuition on a light lunch at the hot bar and four organic bananas. As I made my way to the cash register, I spotted a free sample table being mobbed by shopping vultures. Instinctively, I joined the flock. When I shoved my way to the table, a young crunchy brah was scooping small cups of ice cream; not the most appealing choice in late December, but who am I to refuse a handout?
It turns out this wasn’t actually ice cream at all, it was cashew cream made by the crafty hippies at Blue Mountain Organics out of Floyd, Virginia. I usually find dairy-free ice cream imitations to be pretty repulsive—like a frozen version of the paste I used to eat as a kid (that explains a lot). But this stuff was not only edible, it was extremely tasty. The dairy-, soy-, and gluten-free cashew creams are a raw food with enzymes that make it easy to digest (viva la lactose intolerance!), and they are sweetened with agave nectar, so you don’t get the annoying head rush highs and lows of a processed sugar spike. If none of these health quibbles matter to you, trust me when I say this stuff will satisfy you like the contents of an old school waffle cone on a summer boardwalk. It tastes like the real deal, and it’s better for you. Check out where you can find Blue Mountain Cashew Creamery in your neck of the woods here.
