17440_wpm_lowresIf I could choose only one food to eat, I would pick ice cream. I love its com­bi­na­tion of cold and creamy and nev­er tire of try­ing new fla­vors. Here’s my lit­tle secret — ice cream is the first thing that I eat when I wake up in the morn­ing. A cou­ple of spoons of one of my favorite brands, either Brey­ers or Blue Bun­ny, gets my day off to the right start with just enough to sat­is­fy. And that does­n’t stop me from enjoy­ing oth­er frozen desserts when the mood strikes!

This morn­ing, Jane Brody penned an excel­lent New York Times blog post on the many rea­sons that we are over­weight, includ­ing over­sized por­tions of foods such as frozen yogurt. Our town of Mount Kisco has a ter­rif­ic frozen yogurt store called Fran­nie’s Good­ie Shop that offers maybe a dozen dif­fer­ent fla­vors plus all sorts of mix-ins, includ­ing fresh fruit, nuts, and choco­late shav­ings. Cups are avail­able in two sizes, big and ginor­mous. So it takes a lot of prac­tice to put a rea­son­able por­tion, say 4 or 6 ounces, into a cup that is at least four sizes too big.

When I trav­el, I look for­ward to stop­ping at an air­port McDon­ald’s for an ice cream cone. Did you know that it has only 170 calo­ries and half the cal­ci­um of a cup of milk?

Despite my work­ing out at the gym at least four times a week, my leg mus­cles are not as strong as they once were. Research spon­sored by the Nation­al Cat­tle­men’s Beef Asso­ci­a­tion sug­gests that eat­ing more pro­tein might help adults hold onto mus­cle. In my efforts to ramp up the pro­tein in my diet, I came across a high pro­tein frozen treat, ProYO, at Expo West. Each ProYo pop has about as much pro­tein as a small serv­ing of meat, chick­en or fish and could add pro­tein and fun to the diet of an old­er adult.

My hus­band and I dis­cov­ered pale­tas (Mex­i­can ice pops) on a long-ago anniver­sary trip to Cabo San Lucas. We vis­it­ed the pale­ta shop some­times twice a day. I was so excit­ed to find pale­tas clos­er to home at not one but two shops, Pale­te­ria Fer­nan­dez in my favorite food town of Port Chester, NY, and Pale­te­ria La Flor de Michoa­can in New Rochelle, NY. I can’t decide if I like the all-fruit or the fruit and cream bars bet­ter. Because they’re sold in a sin­gle por­tion, their calo­rie counts are rea­son­able.

Then there’s indul­gence. A local ice cream mak­er, Adiron­dack Cream­ery, makes the most deli­cious kul­fi-pis­ta­chio car­damom ice cream. I was sur­prised to see that it’s “only” 220 calo­ries per half-cup scoop. While that’s high­er than Brey­ers, it’s low­er than a lot of pre­mi­um brands.