FMM - Red Hots, Ice Cream

I thought I was pretty familiar with the different aspects between North Carolina and Texas (and California, for that matter, because my brain still goes to California-mode quite often), but with Sam's move to the town of Clayton, which is a little more south and east than where he was living, I found a few new items of interest.

First, I saw these at the local grocery store in Clayton - which is called Lowe's Foods...not to be confused with the Lowe's home improvement store.  And we were often confused because we made trips to both, so it was a bit of "I'm going to Lowe's" "OK can you pick up some cereal?" "Not that Lowe's" happening.  But I digress, obviously.  They have these bright red hot dogs called red hots:

Kool Aid red, seriously.

I did a double take when I first walked by these, and had to do a search on them, because RED hot dogs??  I found an article about them that made me realize why I'd never seen these in the last four years of visiting North Carolina and going to several different grocery stores:  ground zero for these red hots is Johnston County, or JoCo to the locals - and that's where Sam now lives.  In fact, the article references a little restaurant that we drove by when we were checking out downtown Clayton; in case you're wondering, no, I was not interested in trying them out. 

For what it's worth, Sam did stop by the local Char-Grill and order one a few days after I'd gone home.  He said it wasn't anything different from a regular hot dog, but I don't think I could get past the visual to try one.

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Somehow I didn't manage to take a picture of the front of this store, but if you are ever in Clayton, it's worth a visit.

We were working really hard the entire time I was there, and in the evening, we'd sit in Sam's screened patio and indulge in some ice cream.  We started out with Blue Bell, which is a staple here in Texas, but expanded to Lowe's brand ice cream, which tasted even better.  But then we hit the mother lode - the best ice cream we'd ever tasted - Hershey's ice cream.  Neither of us had ever heard of Hershey's ice cream, but when we walked in to the Clayton General Store, which is about as charming as you might imagine, we noticed hand scooped ice cream was for sale, so naturally we had to check it out.  Never mind that it was only 10:15 am - a little pre-lunch ice cream was just the ticket to keep us going.

Let's just focus on the ice cream and not the two crazy people in this shot...

A few days later - in fact, this was the looooong day that we raked up all of that pine straw and put down the black mulch - an ice cream truck drove down the street, so I grabbed my dime - er, dollars (it's not as cheap as it was when I was a kid) and went out to meet the truck, where I discovered that they carried Hershey's ice cream!  Of course we had some.  A small crowd gathered around the ice cream truck, and I had to laugh because it was 99% adults - hey, we need our treats, too:

Is there anything better than an ice cream truck on a hot summer day?

Toward the end of my visit, I made Sam take me to Downtown Clayton, which was super charming.  We were walking down Main Street when, you guessed it, we saw a beacon up ahead:

Ice cream for dinner?  Sure, why not!

I told Sam that if we hadn't been eating ice cream pretty much every day, we probably would have lost weight because we were really active, what with the move and the yard and everything.  But sometimes you have to live a little, especially when you are doing something hard for days on end.

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Have a great weekend, and if you're in an area that sells Hershey's ice cream, by all means - get you some!