Pecan -- Not Peanut -- Mudslide

In Indiana, we used to have this ice cream parlor chain called Ritter's Frozen Custard. They started off as one solitary store in the (I dunno) mid-90's or something and then blossomed into a metro Indianapolis area success in the late 1990s/early 2000s. By 2005, the summer I worked at a Ritter's, they had spread all across the state of Indiana and there was talk of going national. Now? Now, I hardly see a Ritter's anywhere. The few I do see are all closed down. But Ritter's' legacy lives on. (Note: Ritter's does still exist but if you go to their corporate webpage you will find 1) that their non-Indiana listings are paltry and 2) that even their Indiana listings are a mere shadow of what they once were. Importantly, the Ritter's that Matt, Sean, and I [and didn't you also work there, Jay?] is no longer on the list.)

One of Ritter's' lasting legacies were its specialty sundaes. For $4.50 to $5.50, you could pick from one of these six sundaes:
1) Hoosier Delight (a.k.a. Strawberry Delight) - 3 scoops of vanilla, two ladles of strawberries w/ strawberry syrup
2) The Boilermaker Special (a.k.a. Turtle Sundae) - 3 scoops of vanilla, two pumps of hot chocolate fudge, one pump of hot caramel, and one spoon of pecans
3) Peanut Butter ____ - 3 scoops of vanilla, two pumps of liquid peanut butter, (optional iirc) one pump of chocolate sauce
4) Mud Sundae - 2 scoops of chocolate, two spoons of crumbled Oreo®-brand cookies, one (or two) pumps of chocolate sauce
5) i forget ...
6) i forget ...

(Turns out #5 was the Grizzly Cub, basically a turtle except peanuts instead of pecans and hold the caramel, and #6 was a hot fudge brownie sundae, basically a turtle except hold the pecans and caramel and swap in a brownie)

Anyway, to get to the point, part of why Ritter's folded (I think) is that their competition caught on and copycatted them out of the game. In other words, Dairy Queen stole Ritter's specialty sundaes, gave them new names, offered them at competitive prices, and the rest is history.

I went to Dairy Queen tonight and ordered a Pecan Mudslide. That is the name that Dairy Queen gives to the Boilermaker Special. It is two scoops of vanilla (smaller portion size), one pump of hot fudge, one pump of hot caramel, and pecans. I have ordered it 3-4 times now from this same Dairy Queen since discovering in the summer that they offered it. Anyway, I ordered it tonight for the first time in a while, and what happened?

First, the guy asked me if I wanted 6 cubby paws. I said, "Nooooooooooo, I asked for a Pecan Mudslide! >(" He goes, "Oh, I'm sorry, okay, 1 Pecan Mudslide, will there be anything else for you?" "No thank you," I said. "$3.74, pull around." I was surprised -- $3.74 was cheaper than I had remembered. "Maybe they lowered the price? :3" I greedily thought to myself. No such luck, it would turn out. Because ...

Second, after I've driven away with my Pecan Mudslide in hand, I realize that it's going to spill (from melting) so I take a sip of liquid vanilla ice cream. And what do I taste but ... peanut butter! Ugh! >( It tastes like I've got Reese's peanut butter cups in my ice cream! Having long associated the taste of peanut butter -- and Reese's cups in particular -- with fat, oily peanut butter at Ritter's from when I worked there, the very whiff makes me lose my appetite. Actually eating the stuff makes me want to gag. I figure they must have put peanut butter cup shavings on the vanilla by mistake and take a bigger bite. UGH! I bite in, drive in the darkness under an orange sodium streetlamp, and what do I see reflected up at me but pale orange ice cream (the vanilla) a darker, richer orange swirl -- the liquid peanut butter!

When I got home, I brought the ice cream into the apartment building and looked at it under the light. And what did I have but a partially-eaten Peanut Butter something-or-other. $3.74 stolen from me despite SPECIFICALLY ordering what I ordered, and even having had said order correctly spoken back at me for customer confirmation. I felt the irony in the situation was worth sharing: that just as Dairy Queen stole the recipe and the potential profits from Ritter's, so too did they steal my own profits (i.e. my $3.74) from me.

God damn Dairy Queen. Never did like them much, not even as a child. >( They give such small serving sizes with such a disproportionately large amount of vanilla ice cream and disproportionately small amount of toppings. >(