A recent issue of US News and World Report featured a little sidebar about new flavors of ice cream coming out this summer. LaLoo's Goat Milk Ice Cream has flavors like chevre chiffon, molasses tipsycake, and black mission fig (which sounds incredible), all made from goat's milk. Ecreamery can make you a customized flavor; ones the magazine staff sampled included peach green tea (mmm), cucumber dill weed (which they said would be good with Indian food), yam/avocado (which they loved), and corn with nuts (which sounds vaguely scatological to me). I would love to try some of these, but they cost $80 a gallon!!! Cold Stone Creamery, which is much more accessible (both price and location wise--they're all over the place around here), is featuring some interesting flavors in July, including oatmeal cookie batter, wasabi ginger, and black licorice.

I was very surprised to see the black licorice. When I was a kid, an ice cream maker in Chicago (I forget which one) was holding a contest to create a new flavor. The ice cream I dreamed up was The John Hancock, and it was going to be black licorice ice cream, with pieces of black licorice inside, like the black metal bracing on the building. I loved the John Hancock Building, and I thought this ice cream would capture the dark gleam of it. Every time I mentioned the flavor to people, they would cringe and say "No one would eat that!" Needless to say, I didn't win the contest. But now Coldstone has come up with black licorice ice cream, and I can't wait to try it (although I wish they would rename it the Hancock!) When my sister and I were little, we thought hot dogs sliced into vanilla ice cream would be delicious, but I doubt Coldstone is going to offer that flavor any time soon. Maybe we could ask Ecreamery to whip up a batch.