Foodstuff Friday (the Return of): Tricking the Tongue, Eating the Magic.

The game plan is to trick the tongue. The tongue wants smooth and sweet. The tongue anticipates a frisson of cold and the gradual transformation of that sensation into melting pleasure.

The game is fooling yourself to believing, "I'm eating ice cream."  The discovery eureka!-ed itself late one night when I was curious and desperate.

The contention, by way of a sidebar, is that I invented frozen yogurt. It is a false boast, but allow me my vanity, which is not the vanity of vanities, merely a vanity among vanities.  There are so many!

Required for this game are ingredients often on hand or at least almost always are in my fridge. The night I alchemized them into Sarah's Ice Cream, the time was late, I was resisting spending money, and my higher angel, like The State in Aristotle, was nudging me to The Good.

I opened the refrigerator doors, grabbed ingredient "a" from the freezer and "b" from the shelves, threw "a" into a giant mug, a.k.a. a bowl with a handle, plumped it with a glorious scoop of "b" and watched the magic happen.

Ingredient "a" is a bag of frozen fruit. Blueberries or raspberries are my favorites.

Ingredients "b" is Greek yogurt. I like Fage, all three versions (from no fat to some fat).  I buy whichever has the greatest promise of shelf life.

The magic is Newtonian, as in Rosicrucian, as in alchemical. It reminds me, this magic, of Magic Rocks, which fizzle and spark. The frozen fruit and the Greek yogurt freeze up as if accosted by a police detective with a gun.

And as they realize there is no danger, fruit and Fage relax to caress each other into bliss, a frozen pleasure-mystery. I suggest spooning it onto your waiting tongue at all levels of freeziness and mushiness, experimenting with stages of texture. I favor the slight meld, when raspberry juices make rivulets into the snowy peaks of yogurt.

Ingredient "c" is optional. Sometimes I sprinkle a packet of turbinado sugar over for crunch as well as for sweetness. They are available as some coffee houses. I don't like sugar in my coffee and so (I confess) sometimes pocket the packet (just one) for later use.

My shoddy ethics aside, this delight really is as good as ice cream. Trader Joe's sells inexpensive frozen fruits (use as much as as little of the bag as feels right) and Greek yogurt.

Eat the magic.