Today a story from the past about two crazy American guys called Ben and Jerry and their weird ice cream, a trip to Leroy Merlin a French owned Spanish run DIY chain.

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Uncorrected transcript here:

Day 82 Dough Boys

 

Friday and another week ahead in phase 2, but no, suddenly we are moving to phase three, some changes, restaurants can fill to 50 per cent capacity, shops too, but more importantly this should include inter province travel, living on the edge of two provinces this has caused quite a few people to miss out on friends and going to main towns where they can shop, have their hair done.

 

Everything gets written in details in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the B.O.E. if you visit the website you will see just how many rules and regulations there are here in Spain.

 

The weather remains ‘iffy’ wind, sunshine and cloud with rain coming on Sunday, once we hit 25 degrees I declare ‘ice cream’ temperatures, which means we go and buy ‘Maxi Bon’ ice cream, a kind of vanilla ice cream with chocolate covering one end and a biscuit covering the other.

 

That means you can hold the biscuit end without the ice cream melting.  Actually they seem to put something in ice cream now that stops it melting so fast.

 

That got me thinking back to our food show we produced for LBC, both Chris and I worked on the same show.  I can’t tell you how much fun it was, the world was literally our oyster. We had restaurants, food manufacturers and even oyster growers in as guests on the proviso they fed us.

 

I know, that does sound a bit wrong, but at the weekend in Hammersmith where we were based there was hardly anywhere open to get food.

 

I set up a couple of guests from America who were producing a new range of ice cream.  Their Press Officer told me that they had a new ice cream that contained raw cookie dough.  How disgusting, we both thought.

 

Saturday afternoon came along and two very harassed guys called Ben and Jerry came to the studio with their Press Officer.  She told us, they are in a bit of a state, ‘you see their ice cream which they have shipped over to the UK from the states is the wrong size.’ Seems an American pint is not the same as an English one so the metric conversion label is wrong, and they will have to change every one.

They were two very nice guys and crazy enthusiastic for their ice cream, and of course brought along samples for us to try.  I had never seen an ice cream in a tub before so that was unusual.  We left the raw one too last. 

 

Chris opened it and said he thought he might give it a go as he always liked to lick the bowl clean when his mother made cakes.  He took a scoop.  “My God, it’s bloody delicious.”  He plonked a serving out onto a paper plate for me.

 

What a revelation, who would have thought raw cookie dough would taste so well with vanilla ice cream.  Looking back, I guess we were the first two Brits in London to try Ben and Jerry’s Raw Cookie Dough Ice Cream.

 

The Name of Ben and Jerry is now owned by Unilever but the ice cream is still good even though the two funny guys from America don’t run it anymore.

 

Friday and the afternoon brings a trip to our local D.I.Y. store Leroy Merlin, a French chain that is here in Spain and Portugal.  Think Homebase before the crazy Australians too it over and tried to sell barbecues all year round.

 

The local store is quite high tec with lots of flat screens that you could use to look at products, a bright place with soft furnishings, bathrooms, lighting and the like.

 

Under Covid19 rules it is a much less pleasant place to be.  No touching the touch screens anymore and masks, alcohol wash and gloves are obligatory at the door.

 

The prices are expensive there is a lot less of pile it high, sell it cheap here in Spain.  The DIY culture is relatively new, before Juan the handyman, not the builder or the gardener or the estate agent would pop round and fix or make whatever you needed.

 

That is changing and everyday Spanish are trying their hands at projects. Particularly laminated floor.  We saw many properties that had original white marble flooring covered over with laminated fake wood effect floor.

 

Much like the destruction of anything Victorian during the 1960s in Britain, I remember my dad ripping out a cast iron Victorian fireplace with caustic handmade tiles, throwing it in the skip and then covering the gaping hole in a piece of hardboard. 

 

The Spanish are doing much the same with laminated floors at the moment, I guess they will realise their error too late twenty or so years down the line.

 

The weekend is coming along with the rain and probably more wind, I have topped up on DIY essentials so I have a number of jobs that will need doing around the place, none of which involve any hardboard, you will be pleased to know.