New Yorkers, you can keep your black coconut ash ice cream

Without Twitter, I’d have to find some less convenient way to avoid getting work done, such as exercising, cleaning my bathroom or pawing through two years of high school yearbooks on a quest to find the name of a guy I sat next to at lunch who mashed all his food together. (Was it Bobby? Robby? Knobby?)

“Make strawberry-flavored marshmallows!” my Twitter feed implores me. Another post assures me that house-made tofu is the new standard of restaurant excellence. I could achieve that pinnacle by moistening used printer paper and molding it into rectangles. Wondering what to drink? The one-dimensional blue bird says to try chocolate chip-cookie dough flavored beer.

Without Twitter, I wouldn’t have known how incomplete my life is because I haven’t sampled something that no less an authority than People magazine has declared “Officially A Thing We Should Eat”: jet black ice cream.

Who’s responsible for making a food item an official thing? Does it get served to the nation’s solons (a great word from newspaper headlines that went out in the ’80s) in the congressional cafeteria, where they vote to give it an “Official Eat This Or Else We’ll Filibuster” stamp?

And how in the world did black ice cream earn this designation?

According to People, a New York (where else?) ice cream shop serves it under the name Coconut Ash. Although that name sounds like a do-it-yourself hair color, it actually refers to a form of activated charcoal made from burned coconut shells.

Coconut ash, the charcoal, is a “thing” on its own as well. It has been showing up as an ingredient at juice bars, in organic soaps and even cocktails. Therefore charcoal made from burned-up coconut shells is a “thing” because coconut itself is touted as a health-boosting “thing,” and we all must eat it, drink it or rub it on ourselves, or we’ll die wrinkly. Or at least be unthingy.

The People article says that the ice cream has “a super-rich coconut flavor” which comes from coconut flakes, coconut cream and coconut milk along with the torched shells. As a bonus, the ice cream colors your mouth black — temporarily, they say.

The high coconut level qualifies this ice cream is a health food, which must be how it got the official stamp.

It won’t stain the clothing of black-clad Manhattanites when it drips out of the cone, which I hope is also black or the treat won’t get an “Officially A Thing We Should Wear” stamp. Judging from Congress’ sartorial standards as viewed on C-SPAN (another way to avoid working and get a nap in), the august body must not be responsible for making that designation. Maybe the cast of “Hamilton” handles it.

Ice cream as black as the zombie flamingos I received as a Christmas gift won’t become a “thing” with me.

As a Southern woman of a refined age, I spend the summer in shades of coral, turquoise and fuchsia. Coconut Ash ice cream simply won’t match my ensemble, and I can’t be expected to achieve professional-level ice cream-consuming neatness in mere weeks. That would be a lot of work; a lot of consulting Twitter.

But the main problem: I’m just not trendy enough to eat this ice cream.

Heck, I didn’t even hit the last major sweets-based “thing,” the Cronut, at the top of its thingdom. I’d have to find a way to stack Coconut Ash ice cream on top of one to have a hope of catching up.

This summer, while the urban ice cream-forward are sticking out their tongues to signal true hipness, I’ll wrap mine around a cone of something that matches my outfit, like creamy Southern peach.

That’s much more my thing.

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 10:43 AM with the headline "New Yorkers, you can keep your black coconut ash ice cream."