Stuff to See!

Flavored Ice

For some reason, last year, I fell in love with snowballs.
I don't mean the frosty projectiles children delight in hurling at each other in the middle of a winter storm. I'm talking about crushed ice imbued with (usually) artificially flavored syrup. Some people refer to such things as sno-cones. I've heard of a variation in New York made with shaved ice, rather than crushed ice. Or frozen lemonade, or freezi-pops, or other cold icy sweet treats.
A good snowball depends on many things: the consistency of the ice (frozen, but not chunky), the quality of the syrup (the closer to nature's original, the better), among other things. The quantity of the syrup is important as well. Too much syrup will overpower the snowball, while not enough will leave you sucking on unflavored ice. A simple operation, but the devil is in the details.
Sometimes additional ingredients are added, like marshmallow creme, or ice cream. I'm not too fond of marshmallow (too sweet, too sticky), and ice cream has its own place in my life. Aside from a gelati from Rita's (kind of a snowball with frozen custard), I prefer my snowballs unadulterated. I guess that makes me a purist in this insignificant regard.
I'm not really sure exactly why I started craving snowballs last year in particular. Weather had little to do with it as I've braved many a hot summer without such things, but for whatever reason I had an unusual craving and, being a creature whom cravings drive deeply, I indulged.
On the whole, I prefer the more sour varieties in what passes for my adulthood, although chocolate, as in all other things, is yummy as well. I think it started with chocolate, but I don't remember. At any rate, it started.
Part of it was a desire to just get out of the house, mingled somewhat with a nice memory from the summer of 1997. There was a particular snowball stand (called 'The Snowball Stand', at the intersection of MD rt 99 and Woodstock Rd) that I believed I enjoyed those seven years gone by. I found it without much incident with a friend in tow and, lo and behold, I was not disappointed. In fact, I heartily enjoyed the experience. I'd travel to The Snowball Stand, as well as numerous others during last summer, trying new flavors as I went, from Blackberry to Sour Apple to Tiger Blood. Tiger Blood, as the name implies, was not too good, tasting like an unwholesome combination of cotton candy, watermelon, and chalk, with no flavor in particular dominating. Sour Apple I liked most of all, and still do, I'd wager.
I exposed at least two other people to aforementioned Snowball Stand, drawing rave reviews from both of them. For one thing, the selection of flavors is first rate, combining traditional varieties such as Egg Custard (which I've never had) and Cherry with more unusual and sometimes pop-culture inspired flavors (such as Spongebob, which...well, I know not what the hell that could be, and Toffee, which wasn't as good as I thought it would be). That's not in and of itself unusual, although there seemed to be more to choose from in terms of multiplicity of flavors.
Where The Snowball Stand separates itself from the pack is in its more unusual offerings. They start with a selection of flavor combinations such as Chocolate Cherry, which somewhat relieves the imagination of requesting a mixture of that kind, but is also not unheard of. The truly different offerings are the 'candy bar' variations. The snowball starts as a bunch of crushed ice, and it ends with not only a combination of flavors, but also an admixture of other toppings, such as crushed Butterfinger bars, or caramel sauce, or peanuts. Perhaps a bit much for a snowball, but sheer brain freezing bliss for the human with a sweet tooth or three.
Prices are reasonable and service is about what you might expect from a bunch of teenagers, only better. The stand commands a picturesque view of the rolling hills which dominate Maryland's landscape (gotta love that coastal piedmont pattern), and on the visible face of the hills, cordoned off cleanly by economical strips of asphalt, upon one side is farmland, and the other some scattered houses. A nice view in the daytime, but it takes on something a little different at night. The effect is muted somewhat by the presence of harsh floodlights surrounding the stand, and the neverending flow of customers, but it is still something to see, especially around 9 or 10 at night during a full moon in a cloudless sky. Then, it becomes slightly supernatural, almost romantic, an effect heightened somewhat by the wholesale consumption of flavored, crushed ice.