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Seventeen
Flavors |
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In vet school I became an ice cream connoisseur
thanks to an ambulatory clinician’s fondness for ice
cream shops and small cafes. Because large animal
students were actually in the food production
business, our instructor felt tasting the end
product was just as critical as the physical exam of
an ailing Holstein cow. His logic was flawless. We
would be on a farm call in the Colorado hinterlands
when the teacher would direct the student driving
the ambulatory pickup to duck down a county road.
Within minutes, an out of the way café featuring
pies, cinnamon rolls or milk shakes would into pop
into view. “Organoleptic testing” was the term we
euphemistically recorded on the vehicle log and
outcalls quickly became the highlight of my senior
year. When my son, Tyler, was three he began
accompanying me on ranch calls, so I revived
organoleptic testing. He soon learned the many
“milk-shake places” scattered throughout my practice
area and still refers to them as such today.
Eventually, my extensive testing interfered with my
marathon training, so I placed my ice cream cravings
in the cooler alongside cinnamon rolls and cookies.
Reality is harsh. Last
week while discussing the limited dessert options on
sugar and grain free diets, one of my technicians
mentioned her wee ones love blended frozen bananas.
“It tastes just like ice cream,” she said. I was
skeptical, but it was worth a try, so I sliced up
some bananas and tossed them in the freezer. The
next evening, I crushed the bananas in a blender and
conducted an organoleptic test; it was just like ice
cream! I salivated thinking of the nearly endless
banana and berry combos which could add variety to
my Paleo ration guidelines and enable me to compete
with Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors. Actually, many of
their advertised flavors differ so little they taste
the same. This same fuzzy phenomenon also exists
with politicians and because I am an expert in both
politics and ice cream, here is an organoleptic look
at elected officials. They rarely taste as
advertised. After serving four sessions in
Montana’s House, I know all Democrats taste the
same. They may advertise themselves as being
vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, or even Neapolitan,
but their overwhelming allegiance to collectivism
means they all taste vanilla. The left side of the
aisle always advances state power at the expense of
individual liberty. The GOP taste scale is less
predictable which is why we had 17 different
Republican presidential flavors debating in
Cleveland last Thursday evening. Just as in Big Sky
Country, 40 to 60 percent of Republicans claim to be
flavored with chocolate, nuts, caramel and
marshmallows, yet they too taste vanilla. When
conservative voters buy a gallon of Moose Tracks,
they are disappointed to find it tasting
collectivist vanilla once they get it home.
Therefore, the challenge facing voters is
discovering which candidate will taste true to their
advertised flavor once the election cycle has
passed. Here is my take on the GOP presidential
taste test: Fiorina, Carson, Paul, Jindal and Cruz
are tasting true. I am undecided on Trump, Rubio
and Walker as every lick varies from sugar-cookie to
dark chocolate. The balance of the 17 flavors taste
no different than Democrat vanilla. What taste
you?
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