When I got out of that mare's nest, a treat was in 
order, and Lilli drove me to Valencia's Crem de la 
Crem, which is supposed to have the best frozen treats
in town. It's newly reopened, and the community hasn't 
mostly tumbled to this fact yet. A little storefront in a 
little strip mall, just like much of the town is, and 
were it not an ice cream shop it'd probably have been a
Mexican takeout or a dollar store, of which there are 
many here.

In addition to the normal flavors, there are Mexican
specialties, of which I tried chongos and avocado.

Lesson 1. Ask before you receive. Chongos are 
basically milk scum, and I got mildly sweet and
very mildly cinnamoned ice cream with lots of
curds of milk scum stirred in. How to describe -
sort of a south of the border equivalent of grape
nut pudding, something I also ingest infrequently
and cannot understand: a sort of bland substrate
with an objectionable textural accent and lots of it.

Lesson 2. When ordering a flavor that doesn't fly
out of the freezer, don't do so shortly after a
place reopens for business after months of hiatus.
I couldn't taste anything from the avocado but
rancidity and freezer burn. Too bad, because the
counter girl was most agreeable, and I'm all for
patronizing local business.

Ah, well, Taco Bell is next door, so we went over
to find that it was open for drive-thru only. The
main reason was for me to get the Diablo sauce, so
the plan was to get some insignificant item and 
ask for Diablo sauce on the side. We pulled in and
found that the menu was too small for either of us
to read, and so Lilli asked if we could just buy a
few packets of the Diablo. Sure, said the kid, pull
up to the window ... where he shoved a bag of
packets at us and refused to take any money. Okay,
to me that creates a slight obligation, but Lilli
chortled and said, you'll never have to go to Taco Bell 
again! The list of Taco Bell Diablo sauce ingredients:
water, tomato paste, distilled vinegar, modified tapioca 
starch, salt, spices, sugar; contains less than 1% of 
sodium acid sulfate, maltodextrin, dehydrated garlic, 
onion powder, natural flavors, potassium sorbate and 
sodium benzoate (preservatives), xanthan gum, disodium 
inosinate, disodium guanylate, extractives of paprika.
If you Google Diablo sauce Scoville, the first reference
still says 350K units, but that's still those pesky idiot
teenagers. On first taste, there was significant heat,
with a hotter impression than most table sauces, but that
might have been partially the acridness - I detected some
cumin (seemingly artificial), lime (seemingly artificial),
garlic (seemingly artificial), and capsaicin (possibly 
artificial); the unholy mix of (seemingly artificial) cumin, 
lime, and garlic combined to produce a flavor that was 
distinct from all three but not preferable to a combination
of them. It was like a caricature of Valentina concocted 
out of a written description. A second packet seemed to have 
more smoky chilpotle. For heat, I'd say between 2K and 4K - 
that is, noticeable and perhaps even annoying in the absence
of good nonchemical flavors but two orders of magnitude less
than what the Internet says. Ah, well, I now have a dozen 
packets sitting waiting for something to do; there'd better 
be an echo picnic next year is all I can say.

Sara Lee soft & smooth made with whole grain white bread
- Lilli had this in the freezer, but there was a scarcity
of freezer space, so after 3 months she relegated it to
the back of the fridge, and after 3 more months it found
its way to the kitchen counter, where it fails to mold or 
otherwise decay. So I made a roast beef sandwich out of
it, using it as a vehicle for that Diablo sauce. First:
the bread itself tastes not very good but in no way staler
or different from cheap supermarket bread in any condition 
(this had May as its use by date). Second: it seems to 
serve as a universal flavor diluent - I had to squirt 
quite a bit of Diablo sauce on it to get any character at 
all. Third: it has a bittersweetness not dissimilar to all 
bad supermarket bread, hot dog buns, Wonder, and so on. I 
could see the appeal of such a thing to persons whose teeth 
constantly hurt I guess, but at one time in my distant past, 
I thought Sara Lee had a fairly honorable name.
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