Happy Sunday, everyone!

Every Wednesday, blogging buddy Aaron over at The Confusing Middle posts a “Sunday Scribblings” prompt for other bloggers to ponder and respond to on the following Sunday. If you’re a blogger looking for more inspiration, I highly recommend jumping in and joining in on the fun!

This week’s prompt is: Vanilla!

I am a chocolate gal, and as you may have read last week, I’ve always been one. When it comes to the age-old chocolate vs. vanilla debate, chocolate will edge out vanilla pretty much every time. I even prefer the cookie part of the Oreo to the cream filling.

Take a moment to gasp here if you need to.

When I saw that this week’s prompt was vanilla, I thought that I might not have anything to say since I don’t like vanilla in pretty much any sense of the word. That being said, I figured that I would write this week about the limited list of vanilla exceptions that I have. When is vanilla an acceptable flavor? Here are the very few times!

Vanilla chiffon cake

In last week’s post I wrote about the time I asserted that “Jesus likes chocolate” when we talked about making a birthday cake for Jesus. Back when my Gommy was alive, she would make us our birthday cake of choice every year (unless the cake of choice was tiramisu, in which case we ordered out from Olive Garden).

As I’m sure you’d expect, for many years, my cake of choice was chocolate, but sometime along the way, that changed.

Dun dun duuuuuun!

I actually switched to vanilla chiffon cake. My Gommy used to make this delicious, light, spongy vanilla chiffon cake that eventually convinced me to switch to (what I guess would be) the light side. Pretty sure I had a mini identity crisis when I made the switch, but I regret nothing.

Vanilla Coke

Vanilla Coke is the best kind of Coke.

Period.

End of story.

Case closed.

Give me a fountain Vanilla Coke and I’ll be your friend forever.

Vanilla ice cream

Vanilla ice cream is a largely pointless and tasteless food. I will make a couple small concessions for vanilla ice cream, though.

Vanilla ice cream is acceptable if on top of a warm slice of pie or a chocolate lava cake. Only then is eating it really an enjoyable experience. And, of course, every bite must have both pie/cake and ice cream in it, lest you eat the dreaded vanilla ice cream on its own.

Oh, and before you ask, no, vanilla with fudge mixed in is not the same as chocolate. Diehard chocolate fans can tell the difference. We can always tell…

Vanilla syrups

Okay, so this probably goes hand-in-hand with Vanilla Coke, but oh well.

In some of my drinks, I actually do like vanilla syrup. I enjoy vanilla syrup in my matcha lattes, especially! Also, Starbucks recently came out with a Toasted Vanilla Oatmilk Shaken Espresso drink and it is delish! Honestly, even the decaf version is good, so if you’re like me and can’t drink caffeine past early afternoon, it’s a suitable late afternoon beverage!

Vanilla bourbon dipping sauce

There’s a chain restaurant near where I used to work called Iron Hill Brewery (if you have one near you, I recommend it, their burgers are awesome!). Back when I worked for that employer, I’d go to Iron Hill maybe once a week. They had a great variety of food, so it wasn’t hard to find something I’d like no matter what I was in the mood for.

Besides their burgers, they have awesome sweet potato fries, and one of the sauces they have that goes well with them is their vanilla bourbon dipping sauce. It was very tasty! When my friend Becky met up with me for lunch and we went to Iron Hill, she always insisted that we get 2 cups of the dipping sauce. If I was the one ordering for us, she would stare me down until I ordered her vanilla bourbon dipping sauce.

That’s how good it was — it was enough to turn friends into enemies if they forgot to order it for you…

Vanilla scented things

I’m not sure if this should count for my “vanilla exceptions” list, but I’m adding it anyway.

Like preferring chocolatey, sweet, fruity, or salty snacks, there is also an inherent preference when it comes to scents. Scented things like candles are typically divided up into clean scents, fruity scents, flowery scents, sweet scents and musky scents. I’ll go for those sweet vanilla- or cookie-type scents every time.

But don’t worry, I don’t eat (or even buy) the candles, just sniff them all at the local TJ Maxx…

Photo by Jocelyn Morales on Unsplash