A fun fact about me.... I'm kind of a gelato aficionado. Maybe aficionado is a bit extreme...perhaps more like enthusiast. Either way, I've tasted the best gelatos out there! I was in attendance (completely by accident/miracle) at the 2013 Firenze (Florence for you non native Italian tongues) Gelato Festival. Things could not have been sweeter. The winning gelato was actually a ricotta cheese gelato which sounds a bit off, but was so delicious. I've also had Rose flavor, which is surprisingly fabulous. Florence was by far the best food of anywhere I've eaten in Italy. There was one place where I had a pasta with rabbit and truffle sauce. Oh. My. God. delicious. I have to say, when I was in France and Italy I felt famished the whole time. I missed American food so much! Plus it's so much more convenient in America and getting food quick when you're on the go. It's more of a sit down, relax, and ENJOY feel in Europe, which was awesome to do a few times, but more often than not I wanted to go see things and walk around and lose myself in the streets of Paris or Venice or Rome. Which quite literally happened more than I'd like to admit because reading maps are difficult.
So back to gelato! I was at Safeway recently and took a gander down the ice cream lane, because I have very little self control, and found this eye catching gelato. I'm a sucker for cool jars/containers, plus the flavor was Sea Salt Caramel, which I feel is such a hip flavor nowadays. Naturally, I was enticed and couldn't help myself. The Sea Salt Caramel did not disappoint! I tried the Cookie Crunch flavor too, which was not nearly as tasty.
I've collected a few of these jars, and since I didn't want to throw them away from their tasty charm, I decided to hop on the "succulents" band wagon, and plant some of those guys in these containers. I by no means have a green thumb...I recall a horrible incident from my youth related to gardening, in which i was helping my mom plant some flowers in the front yard, and after using the spade to dig a hole, I touched a worm!! I think it happened at the worst age, you're old enough to care that worms are gross, and still young enough to be impressionable. Hence, my fear of worms begins and gardening career ends.
I feel like the whole succulents/cactus plants are really hip right now. You can find them everywhere. So I bought these three little guys at my favorite local ACE. They were $3.99 each. I really have no basis as to whether that's a good price or not, but seemed okay to me.
Per my worm-ending gardening career, I can't really tell you the best methods for planting these little guys. All I did was put potting soil in the talenti gelato jar, smush in my succulent, and watered him. In retrospect, I probably should have poked a hole in the bottom for drainage. I made the potential fatal flaw of confusing succulents for cacti, as I was thinking "oh I won't even have to water it!" I suppose I could go back and easily drill or cut some drainage holes in the bottom. But I'm lazy, and they've been alive and looking great for a few days so I'm going to assume they're going to be okay! Either way, I think they're adorable! Another victory for ice cream!!