Eating Yellow Snow

Where I come from, snow cones are made by putting ground ice into a paper cone and pouring syrup over the top. They come in cherry or grape and usually, the only place you can find them is at the 4-H carnival.

Moving to the south has been largely unpleasant. Bugs the size of your fist, heat that will melt your face off and tornadoes...not very good selling points IMHO. But there are a few things that are awesome.

For instance: The Snow Cone.

When we first moved here, I ignored the little snow cone stands all over town, other than to wonder how in the world people could make a living selling crushed ice with purple syrup on it. One day, when it was 4,000 degrees out and my face was lying in a puddle in my lap, I figured some ice chips would be nice. So I became aquainted with the southern snow cone.

Here in the south, the snow cone is created by shaving a block of ice into a truly snow like consistency. Being from Wyoming, believe you me, I know snow. The snow is then packed into a heaping mound on top of a styrofoam cup and the snow mound on top of the cup is usually twice as big as the cup itself. Then you can have your choice of 1,000 flavors or flavor mixtures and you can even top it all off with chocolate, cream or whipped cream. It's more akin to a snow sundae, and soooo much tastier than the pathetic ice chips they tried to pass off as snow cones at the 4-H fair.

The trouble with snow cones, is that they are seasonal. While we would happily crunch ice chips in the middle of February in sub-freezing temperatures, Texans pull out their winter coats as soon as the temperature drops around 60 degrees. So sometime in October, the snow cone shacks all get loaded onto their trailers and go on vacation. There's probably a snow cone resort I just haven't heard about. But when May approaches, the kids and I anxiously await the appearance of our favorite white and yellow shack in the parking lot near the college. We drive past two other shacks to get there, but they carry genuine SnowBiz flavors...and snow cone connesours know that SnowBiz flavors are the best.

A couple weeks ago, we spotted the shack and we've been waiting ever since to see the signs go up on the outside. When they first open, they are only open when school is not in session. They claim it's because they can't make the kids work during school hours, but we all know it's really due to the fact that the entire high school would break the closed campus rules and go get snow cones during 8th hour. So today we anxiously waited for the clock to let us know that school was out for the day so we could load up and go enjoy the only thing that makes summer in Texas bearable: Banana Creme SnowBiz snow cones. Mmmmmmmm.

Fear not the yellow snow.