national ice cream sandwich day

thanks to Vegan Treats in PA, I learned about this momentous occasion the day before it happened

 the VEGAN TREATS sando is in the top right corner of my mashup.

sweet action of Denver - middle right

sweet ritual of Austin, TX bottom right

sweet pea bakery of PortlandOR, bottom left! 

these are some of my favs from around the country.

There is no vegan bakery or ice cream shop in Ft. Collins that makes their own. So Saturday morning, I set out to locate my raw materials to build a monster of a vegan ice cream sandwich. 

the critical criteria - zero waste & cost & single serving.

saw this on the way to the ft collins food coop where I started my inquiries.

 All local single cookies were packaged and not vegan. I could have bought a package of uncle eddie's, but too much waste and I really didn't want so many cookies.  Two to make the sandwich was all I was after. They did have pints of vegan ice creams, but I wanted to find a place that served vegan ice cream where I could just get one scoop to fill my sando. So I set out to see what vegan cookies the Bean Cycle offers.

stumbled upon a kissing booth in the town square!

 Bean Cycle stocks Watercourse cookies but all are plastic wrapped & $2.50 each. As I'm in there, the light bulb went on !!!   TASTY HARMONY bakes and sells unpackaged cookies! and they might serve ice cream for deserts! On  my walk over, I popped in the local ice cream by the scoop store called WALRUS to see if they perhaps started carrying a dairy free option. Sorbets, but no dairy free ice cream.

Tasty Harmony oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

no packaging & large, yet pricy @ $2.75ea.

saw this in the bowels of WF

 I was super stoked on the cookies from Tasty Harmony, but they serve no ice cream, so I stuck out on that end. My next idea was to take my cookies to WF and see if they would sample me some ice cream. I had dreams of So Delicious cherry chip running around my head. But when I strolled into the frozen department the best I could find was pomegranate chocolate chunk. I grabbed a guy named WES who was eager to let me sample the variety of my choosing. We popped it open and realized it was too frozen to really dig my spoon into, much less spread around on my cookies. SOOOOO, what was his suggestion? Wes offered to sample the entire pint out to me for FREE! The cozy side of a giant corporation! So the price was right, the quantity was too much, and there was packaging, but I thanked him and accepted his generous offer. Walked right outside with it where I sat the pint in the sun for 15 minutes and waited impatiently for it to get to a creamy state.

almost ready for construction

despite getting bounced around on the bike ride over, the cookies held up beautifully

the So Delicious lived up to its name

pure bliss that I considered to be my lunch for the day

I used about 1/3 of the pint to make the sandwich and I was debating as to what to do with the rest of the pint. I saw a houseless cat roll up on his bike and asked him if he'd like some ice cream and he wholeheartedly accepted with a smile on his face. It was a hot afternoon and I think I made his day!

a few days later while in Denver, I succumbed to some Sweet Action