Scoop Friday: South Mountain Creamery (Nationals Park) – Mint Chocolate Chip
No other city intertwines tawdry legislators and tasty frozen treats better than Washington, D.C. Knowing that, I decided to travel south of the Mason-Dixon to thoroughly examine the CongressScoops representing us in our nation’s capital for myself. In the first ever Scoop Friday outside of Pennsylvania, I completed the first two legs of Capital Wasteland Ice Cream Triathlon with trips to the radioactive Reflecting Pool and the lactose-laden Lincoln Memorial. To cap off my trinity of District desserts, I headed across party lines to Nationals Park to watch a riveting game of our national pastime and acquire a scoop of ice cream in a souvenir helmet.
Joined by friends, Romans, and country fans attending primarily for the post-game concert, I reveled in the pre-and-mid-game festivities. Following a rain delay where I unintentionally purchased and imbibed two 24-ounce NÜTRL pineapple vodka seltzers with $37 in slosh funds, I enjoyed a Boy Throb-centric national anthem with Darshan forever in our hearts, a president race won by Teddy (Bully Mr. 26th President!), and a horde of dudes continuously expanding behind us throughout the night as fellas of all ages yearned to join in on the thrilling act of taking off and waving around one’s shirt with the boys. As Thin Lizzy famously sang, “If the boys want to rip off their shirt and swing it around, you better let ‘em!”
Buzzed and slightly bored with the stagnant nature of the game, I decided it was time to obtain the signature food items of any baseball stadium: a scoop of ice cream in a souvenir helmet and an overpriced burnt dog referred to as charred for justification of its defect. While most likely view souvenir helmet dishes as a whimsical novelty, I’d argue they’re the superior servingware for ice cream over a traditional eco-unfriendly Styrofoam dish. Throughout the night, the souvenir helmet exhibited its five-tool player versatility as it also functioned as a bowl for my friends’ fried rice and Dippin’ Dots, the ice cream of the future for the past forty years. My history with souvenir baseball helmets dates back to my sixth birthday at Grand Slam, a long-time defunct business packed with inflatables and obstacle courses for children on a sugar high to overcome. There, my invitees and I devoured a vanilla and chocolate combo served in an assortment of teams’ helmets from the league in the early 2000s. Fittingly, I was given the now-extinct Montreal Expos helmet. For those not in the know, today, that former French Canadian franchise relocated and rebranded themselves as the Washington Nationals in 2005.
After acquiring a federal frankfurter drenched in ketchup and mustard, I traversed the west wing of the upper concourse with my fellow ice cream lobbyist and former kickball comrade, Kathrine, and discovered South Mountain Creamery’s farm-to-bullpen stand. With Vanilla and Sea Salt Caramel sounding either too anticlimactic or too pro-nautical, I selected Mint Chocolate Chip, one of my at-home favorites, as the more apt option for this monumental occasion.
I had little time to fret over the scoop’s lack of my preferred Mint Chocolate Chip green hue as the heat emanating from the swamp rapidly produced a drooping contour and melting mess. In seconds, Scoop Friday turned into Soup Friday. An amalgamation of ice cream, sweat, and condensation formed into droplets that bombarded my new, cute-ass silly goose ice cream shirt that was in the process of completing its MLB debut. Despite this setback, I’ll always be an ardent advocate of the mint and chocolate partnership. The refreshingly pragmatic mint brings the quixotically rich chocolate back to earth. Plus, I like that the minty flavor reminiscent of toothpaste for some tricks my mind into ignoring all the sugar corroding my teeth. However, like most relationships, this duo’s power balance remained uneven as the mint proclaimed itself as the alpha amongst the two. The cream itself tasted fresher and airier to my deceivable pallet likely due to South Mountain Creamery’s framing effect with the word “Farm” being so prevalent at its stand. By the seventh-inning stretch, I realized my beloved Turkey Hill Mint Chocolate Chip would remain at the top of my MCC MVP rankings. However, this slugger of a scoop still hit it to out of the park and secured my vote for the Scoop All Star Team as I would happily have a beer, pineapple seltzer, or burnt hot dog with him.
To Liz, Kat, Meredith, Courtney and all of the other new friends I made that night, THANK YOU for keeping my spirits high as my ice cream melted!
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