10:44 AM Fri, Jul 24, 2009 | Permalink
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Things you can do to say cool: grab a mister and park yourself in front of a fan, spread out in your toddler's wading pool, run through your lawn sprinkler (but only before 8 a.m. or after 10 p.m.) or better yet, treat yourself to a fruity paleta. A paleta is an ice cream bar that is made from mashed fruit...I should say, packed with fresh fruit. You can't find paletas in your neighborhood grocery story so I stopped in at El Paraisa to get the scoop on these icy confectionaries.
El Paraisa is a Flores-family owned business located on Fredericksburg Rd. At this store they not only sell 27 flavors of paletas, but they also make them there. Isidro Flores has been making paletas for 25 years. He said El Paraisa makes 7,000 bars a day over a 10-hour period. I watched them making a batch of café cappuccino-flavored paletas. They poured the sweet, rich cream into the coffee, and then filled ice cream forms with the delicious thick liquid. The forms fit into a tank of calcium chloride which freezes the bars in one hour.
Maria Flores said their paletas are 97 percent fruit. She said their top seller is strawberry and then lime, but they also sell cookies and cream, lemon, cantaloupe, chocolate, coconut and banana flavored ice cream bars. 
For those who prefer something more exotic, El Paraisa offers pina-colada, mango-chile, tamarind-chile, pecan, pineapple-chile, orchata, and even pickle-flavored paletas. PICKLE?!?
According to Maria, kids love the pickle-flavored paleta. She said a San Angelo school regularly purchases 400 pickle patetas to sell to their students. We did a taste-test here and a producer told me it tasted just like a frozen pickle. Another producer said the strawberry paleta tasted home-made, but was skeptical about the fruit. She said it was just too huge to be a real strawberry...But, it was!
At El Paraisa (paradise!) you can buy a single paleta for .50, or you can buy large quantities for sharing or selling. If you buy 50 paletas the price goes down to .36 each. You don't have to buy boxes of a particular flavor, either. Just load up your plastic bin with any mixture, in any amounts. While I was there a local grocery store chain was purchasing 150 pieces for a department meeting. With that quantity, El Paraisa threw in a nifty ice cream cart and dry ice. In fact, that is another really cool thing about El Paraisa. 
Anyone can purchase up to 450 paletas and the shop will loan you a dandy bicycle-cart and dry ice. Independent vendors then pedal around neighborhoods, parks, or outdoor events selling the paletas for $1 each, keeping the price difference. That can earn you a bit of coin during these sweltering months.
As for me, I can't think of a sweeter, more refreshing way to while away the summer than kicking back on my porch swing savoring each yummy bite of a cream cheese paleta!
El Paraisa is located at 1934 Fredericksburg Rd., 210-737-8101. They are open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Thanks for the tip on paletas! I'm taking the kids TONIGHT to indulge in the paleta of their choice. We'll compare the local pops with a 3-store chain we discovered on summer vacation in North Carolina - in the east they're called Loco Pops, but I don't recall a cream cheese flavor. Hmmm, that's my order!