Ice Cream for Grown-Up Bears

I spontaneously stopped at The Nugget — Elk Grove’s answer to the high-end grocery scene yesterday. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like a farmer’s market collided with a luxury spa but with more cheese samples. It’s a chain, sure, but around Sacramento, it’s about as upscale as it gets unless you’re talking about Corti Brothers. And Corti Brothers? That’s Mecca—one location. Funk intact. It is the kind of store where the staff have an attitude not because they’re rude but because they’re right — as the saying goes, Darryl Corti will always know more than we do.

But I digress. At The Nugget, I spotted something in the freezer that stopped me cold: a bright yellow pint (okay, 14 ounces) labeled Ice Cream for Bears. The flavor? Butterbear — a butterscotch caramel French ice cream sweetened with raw honey. I didn’t even wait to get it home. I opened it in the parking lot like some animal who’d just stumbled out of hibernation and into a Whole Foods.

And here’s the thing — this wasn’t just novelty. It was delicious. And not cloyingly sweet like most of you find in the freezer aisle. No candy bar chunks, no three-scoop swirl of marketing buzzwords. Just grown-up butterscotch with a hint of French creaminess and a slight — and yes, slightly dry — crumbly texture. I think Halo Top meets actual flavor.

This ice cream hit a nerve. My mom and I used to be on a lifelong quest for butterscotch — back when you could still find butterscotch pudding at actual restaurants. One of the last times I had it offered on a menu was in Houston, about eight years ago — the same trip where we spent the day with Gene Kranz, who gave us a personal tour of the Johnson Space Center. I kid you not. A day like that deserves to end with butterscotch.

My mom passed away a little over two years ago, just shy of 97. Her 99th birthday would’ve been next week. I thought of her constantly while walking the aisles of The Nugget. She would have loved this ice cream. Not just because it was butterscotch — but because it wasn’t too sweet. Her complaint was always: “Ben & Jerry’s has too much stuff in it.” We agreed. (Apparently, Garcia did, too — he once said he liked his smooth ice cream.)

They once had a White Russian flavor — smooth as satin — and I’ve always suspected that was quietly developed for Garcia himself. Naturally, it didn’t sell.

So here we are. $8 for 14 ounces of ice cream. (Okay, $7 on sale — not that it makes it any less absurd.) But I still bought it. And I ate it right there in the lot because, sometimes, the moment calls for it. And sometimes, eating ice cream in a parking lot can connect you to your childhood, your mom, the Apollo program, and the fleeting magic of butterscotch.

This isn’t just ice cream. This is memory food.

And yeah — maybe it is ice cream for bears. But yesterday, I was one of them.