Lisa Johnson

Hey Boston! Celebrate National Ice Cream Day with Free Vice Cream!

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Vanilla ice cream with orange ripple, dark, white and milk chocolate chunks.

Happy National Ice Cream Day! One of my favorite days! Although, I celebrate by eating ice cream far more than once a year.

If you’re in Boston today, you might be able to get some free ice cream. Today, between noon and 4pm, the Vice Cream Truck will be patrolling Boston streets and walking around the areas where people are outside enjoying this beautiful summer day.

Plus, they will meet anyone who tweets “Today is National Ice Cream Day and I want @eatvicecream” along with their location.

Vice Cream truck shown at city hall plaza in Boston, ready to give out ice cream.

The Vice Cream Truck will be giving out samples of their most popular flavors: Choc of Shame, Bourbon Mash, Toffee Wife, Breakfast in Bed, Higher Grounds, Afternoon Delight and Minted while supplies last. The company also has an interesting back story.

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Vice Cream is all about unapologetic indulgence with eight super premium flavors and tagline “Live Life, Dig In.”

When Vice Cream Founder Dan Schorr was in college, he paid for school by driving a Good Humor ice cream truck during the summer. It was during those hot summer months that he saw first-hand the joy ice cream could bring people. Years later in 2015, life threw Dan a curveball when doctors told him he had cancer – an aggressive form of lymphoma.

After undergoing treatment that included chemotherapy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Dan beat the disease and made a decision to not just live life, but indulge in it, which led him to create Vice Cream in Boston.

To Dan, ice cream is, and always should be, about unapologetic indulgence. Through the “Nice Vice” program, Vice Cream aims to bring smiles to cancer patients and their families by supporting various cancer charities nationwide, and at events like the Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl and sampling Vice Cream at hospitals.

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I haven’t tried Vice Cream — yet. I’ve been trying to be good with Halo, but I’m intrigued and may indulge at some point.

Well, as I write this, it’s close to 1pm. They only have one truck, but they will do their best to get to everyone who tweets in the 4-hour timeframe. So time to get tweeting!

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Images: L’Orange A Trois and Vice Cream Truck courtesy of Vice Cream.

Taking Note: Mindfulness During Summer

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Taking note of a tree branch in the foreground, puffy white clouds, blue sky, a dock, boats and canoes in the Charles River in Boston, with buildings in the background. On the right, two small pictures, the top is a square piece of cherry and pistachio tart on a napkin and minted lemondade in a plastic cup with the word "Tatte" printed vertically, the bottom picture shows the moon rising in a bluish grey sky over the tops of trees.

Summer is precious when the weather isn’t always beautiful. And by beautiful I mean, lots of sunshine and temperatures in the 80s. Having daylight past 8pm is an added bonus. For those of us in New England, we only get this perfect combination in July in August. So I’m taking note. Paying attention to how I spend my time.

Time is our most valuable currency. We can’t get it back. No exchanges or refunds. Plus, we don’t know how much we have. So we need to budget accordingly.

Enjoy what we have now and be able to look back at how we spent it and revel in the memories. For this first weekend in July, I met up with a friend on Saturday. We walked and talked. Strolling along the Charles and then went to Tatte Bakery for a snack. I had a pistachio and cherry tart and minted lemonade. So good!

Every Sunday I have dinner with my family. When I brought my mother home, we noticed the moon rising. At 8:30pm, the sky was still light. The beauty of July!

My mom’s lavender plants are blooming. Tomorrow, I’m going to get some to bring home and dry. She also has a lot of very tall mint plants that are ready to take over the place.

I’ll do her a favor and take some of that too! The minted lemonade that I had at Tatte was really delicious, so I plan to make my own. Of course I’ll be taking note and hope to blog these too!

There are so many things that I’d like to do this summer, but besides time, money is always a factor, so I will have to improvise. Good thing that there are so many free events around the city!

At the very least, like I say every year, I’d like to go to the beach (on the Cape, maybe the North Shore, or somewhere far away) at least a couple of times. Also, I hope to enjoy some outdoor music. Of course, I like eating outdoors whenever possible.

Hopefully I’ll also be able to attend a few of the free outdoor yoga classes as well. Maybe even just take my home practice outdoors. There’s a nice park nearby. I should use it!

By the way, I’m working on the new 2017 summer list of free yoga classes. Hopefully it will be up within a couple of weeks!

What about you? What are your summer plans?

Friday, June 30th – The Chubby Chickpea Giving Away Free Falafel Sandwiches!

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Various small plates of food from The Chubby Chickpea that is available for catering.

Tomorrow is the Friday before the 4th of July and there’s a delicious free treat in store for you! If you’re in the Canton area around lunchtime or sometime after, head over to The Chubby Chickpea food truck. It’s all about the love of the chickpea!

According to a press release, they are celebrating their seventh anniversary and will be giving away 350 orders of their signature falafel sandwiches. Find them outside Trillium Brewing Company in Canton, where they are located every Friday, from 12pm to 9pm.

We gave away 50 free falafels the day we launched in Canton Center seven years ago,” said Chubby Chickpea founder Avi Shemtov. “After seven years of delicious food and great memories, we’re giving away seven times as many falafel sandwiches here in 2017 to say thank you to our loyal customers.

I’ve never had one of their falafel sandwiches, but they sound delicious!

The falafel is fried to order, paired with house-made hummus and tahini sauce, an Israeli salad of tomato, cucumber, scallion, parsley, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, then served on imported Israeli pita pockets.

Shemtov also recently launched the TAPPED beer truck, Greater Boston’s first and only independent mobile craft beer bar. Last Saturday TAPPED hosted its first public event, a pop-up beer garden in Squantum as part of PorchFest Quincy. There must have been a lot of beer drinkers, because they sold out of all their six draft offerings in just three hours!

If you won’t be in Canton for the free sandwiches, but you’re in the Boston area, you can find the food truck each weekday at different locations, including Liberty Square, Dewey Square, Rose Kennedy Greenway and Stuart Street at Trinity Place.

If you want to know exactly when and where, follow them on Twitter!

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Image: The Chubby Chickpea

An Angel On Your Shoulder

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A white flower in a vase with a hazy white aura surrounding it, giving an angelic halo effect.

Here’s looking at you Monday! I’m hoping that my guardian angel is working lots of overtime. Hopefully your angel is too.

I’m trying to start the week full of energy and positive vibes. Yoga and meditation were a big help this morning. It’s going to be a doozy on the political front here in the United States.

The Supreme Court ends their session today and may hand down a decision on Trump’s travel ban. Also, the Senate is trying to take away our health care.

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.

Things happen so fast, that it’s been nearly impossible for me to keep up. Never mind make a coherent list. Even with Bill Cosby! Back in the 80s, could we have ever imagined how things would turn out with him?

Anyway, Amy Siskind is up to Week 32 of  her listing, so you can follow along there. Let’s stay strong America and hope that somehow kindness and morality can win.

And to end this post, I have two quotes, which are kind of ironic, yet rather fitting for the strange times that we are living in.

As much as their names are now synonymous with disgrace, maybe we can still take something from their words.

Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that’s it’s not going to be accomplished without a great deal of pain, and that the rewards in the end may not outweigh the pain –if you recognize historically that always happens, then when it comes, you survive it.   ~ Richard M. Nixon

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.   ~ Bill Cosby