This time of the year, I find myself buying lots of ice.
I’m in charge of drinks at our Georgia tailgates, so early every Saturday morning, I pack a couple of cooler full of drinks and ice and another cooler full of nothing but ice for those people who want to mix an adult beverage.
If we are having a long tailgate and we expect a lot of people to attend, I may buy as many as 10 bags of ice.
I never really put a lot of thought into the ice that I was buying. It’s just frozen water. Even with my limited culinary skills, I can make ice. I buy it for convenience.
The one thing I have noticed is that ice can be expensive, sometime more than two bucks a bag. When you are buying in multiples to 10, buying ice can get pricey. Of course, the same stores that are charging $2 for ice are also charge a buck and a half for a bottle of water, so I guess we’re all suckers.
On a recent Saturday, we noticed something else. A friend was helping me put the ice in the coolers. After emptying the first bag into the cooler, my friend looked and the empty bag and started to laugh.
“Look at this slogan,” he said, pointing to some blue writing on the clear plastic bag.
“Healthier than homemade,” it said.
Healthier than homemade? How could that be?
Like I said, I know how to make ice. Put water in an ice tray. Put the ice tray in the freezer.
Making ice is so easy, it’s even spawned a football joke. (Feel free to swap this to make fun of the team you love to hate.)
Do you know why they don’t have ice in Auburn anymore?
The player with the recipe graduated.
And now this ice company, whose product I bought at a BP station, tells me their ice is healthier than something I can make at home.
Do they have special water? The bag, other than stating the slogan, offered no answers.
My friend had also stopped at a grocery store to buy ice to keep some food he brought cool. We looked at the bag.
“Gourmet ice,” it said.
We hated to use gourmet ice to keep food cold, but we didn’t have another option at this point. But I made a mental note to see if other bags of ice have slogans.
The next week, I stopped at a gas station near my house to buy ice
“Delicious ice nuggets,” the slogan on this bag said.
I’ve never considered ice to be delicious. And what is an ice nugget? Am I supposed to eat it as an entrée, like a chicken nugget?
I do have friends who say bagged ice tastes better to them that ice they make or their icemaker makes. In fact, they have a beautiful new refrigerator in their home. But it’s not connected to the water supply, and the icemaker has never been turned on.
They regularly stop and buy bagged ice, then dump it into the ice holder in the freezer. I do not know, however, if they buy ice nuggets.
I’ve laughed a lot this week about ice slogans. I know ice is important. But I can’t tell the difference between one brand of ice and another. But I keep buying it.
My adult beverage wouldn’t be the same without it.
