Ben & Jerry's Phish Food

After a long and overwhelming day at work, I went digging through the Ben & Jerry's pints stacked in my freezer, trying to decide which flavor would best soothe my nerves and help repair my mood. It had to be something decadent, a flavor with some serious chocolate. Because as all women know (at least instinctively), cocoa has a significantly uplifting effect on a person's brain chemistry and mood. This has been scientifically proven, so don't bother to argue with me about the medical and psychological value of chocolate ice cream. Ben & Jerry's can be a very effective treatment for many ailments, both physical and emotional - it's a fact.

I decided to try Phish Food. To be honest, the name of this flavor has always kind of turned me off because it always makes me think of the brightly colored Beta fish named Buffy, Angel and Spike that my husband and I owned for several years and who met an untimely death without attracting my attention for several weeks because I was in grad school at the time. But that's a tangent that I don't need to follow any further, because this is a blog about ice cream, not funny stories about pet mishaps.

The description on the carton of Phish Food, which reads, "chocolate ice cream with gooey, marshmallow swirls, caramel swirls and fudge fish," sounded like it would be more than decadent enough.  I was fairly certain that it would be more rich than my current favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream, which is Chocolate Fudge Brownie.  And I was not wrong.  While I couldn't distinctly taste the marshmallow swirls (which was a bit of a disappointment), the typically rich nature of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream, in this case laced with gooey caramel, is enough to send me happily into a benign sugar coma.

Then there are those fudge fish. The flavor's phish/fish theme seems to me to be a true oddity that comes out of left field. (Why associate your ice cream with seafood?!?!! What were Ben and Jerry thinking?!) Yet when it comes right down to it, those fudge fish are big chunks of chocolate - bigger by far than the fudge flakes in Cherry Garcia and bigger than even the hefty little bricks of chocolate in Chunky Monkey. Well done, Ben and Jerry. Well done.

In summary, Phish Food is a truly decadent flavor that I may not crave constantly, but that I will definitely buy when my hormones go all wonky at a certain time of the month. This flavor gets 4 stars for its gooey and delicious combo of chocolate and caramel.