Ice Cream Diaries – 13 November 6, 2004
Hello again from Whoville. I sat down a few weeks ago to dig into a
fresh episode and a tasty meat pie when wouldn’t you
know it, the Sox made the playoffs. Like
most of you, my life has not been my own since.
And I thought making ice cream in August was exhausting! Ah, but what a sweet ride it was. For everyone except my
friend Sue from
First of all, can you believe it’s November already? Time flies when you’re breaking curses. September offered up some fine late summer
weather, which helped to soften the anticipated post-Labor Day drop-off. Sales, although definitely slower than
August, were still pretty strong, particularly the ice cream cake side of the
business. Mom’s handmade inventory of
colored icing flowers is running low, and now that she’s sitting by the pool in
Some of the best times in this fairly new gig are spent shooting the breeze with the regular customers. One of my favorite daytime regulars is Jen, along with her two young kids, Jackson and Emma. They came into the shop recently for their weekly dose of chocolate-covered gummy bears and Fun Dip. As three year old Jack painted his face blue with Fun Dip, Jen told me the story of how he came home from pre-school the other day all excited because he had just learned his class was going to have Jim. Why shouldn’t he be excited about that, to him Jim means Fun Dips, vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles, and an endless supply of blue juice bottles. Poor Mom had to crush his mood by sitting him down and explaining that Jim wasn’t really Jim but Gym.
Heard a similar line a few days later. This guy comes in and as he’s ordering a
double Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream cone, he says to me, “I keep telling my wife I’ve been going to
the Jim, but I just can’t seem to lose any weight!”
Small town story alert. City people proceed at your own risk… Dad and I were sitting in Village Pizza one night after a day of scooping and making ice cream. As we waited for our large pizza with sausage and extra garlic, a guy comes in, grabs a beer while he places his order, and sits down with us to watch the Sox on the small TV sitting on top of the big Coke refrigerator in the corner of the room. Of course, I know who he is. We chat with him for a while about the Sox, pizza, and boat rentals on the pond until his order is ready and his beer is finished. After he leaves, Dad asks, ‘who was that? One of your customers?’. Oh him, he’s just my electrician’s friend, the mayor.
One of my favorite ‘success stories’ to
date happened since my last visit here to the Diaries. A local school teacher came into the shop
and told me about an assignment she gave her students shortly after they
returned from their summer break. She
had instructed them to write a brief essay about ‘What I loved to do on my
summer vacation’. She went on to tell
me that a theme repeated a number of times in the grade-school kids’ papers was
‘going to
Moving along from little kids to big kids, I’ve accepted the challenge from one of my customers to create a Festivus ice cream flavor. She hosts an annual Festivus party at her house on December 23rd. If you’re not a Seinfeld buff, Festivus is an imaginary holiday created in an episode of that show. It seems there’s a special flavor of ice cream that goes along with this feau-liday. It was actually made for a short time by Ben and Jerry’s, but I guess it didn’t sell so they quickly shelved it. With B & J out of the picture, the challenge falls to me to come up with a great batch of ice cream that tastes like gingerbread, brown sugar, ginger, and caramel. I scored an invite to the party, which should be a lot of fun, unless of course, I make the ice cream too gingery.
Just got back from a trip to
Speaking of suppliers, I just got back from the annual
NEICRA (New England Ice Cream Retailers of America for all you Diaries newbees) ice cream conference. This year it was held in
Wow, one year, can you believe it? Like Dad always said, time does fly when you’re fly fishing or making ice cream. I’ve survived that crucial first year for a small business owner. I’m working on a highlight film/episode to commemorate the occasion, so stay tuned for that. As the cold weather rolls in and I have a little time to reflect on this cool life experience, I’ll be able to savor ‘baby’s first year’, assess what worked and what didn’t, and begin to make plans for an even better 2005 season. In the meantime, I put together a little top 10 list for you. I hope you enjoy it…
http://www.jdi-images.com/ICDTOP10.html
Speaking of more small town
stories, the past month brought a few local events I’d like to share with
you. First, there was the fire truck
parade, celebrating 100 years of
The other fun small town event was the annual Rag Shag
parade, held a few days before Halloween.
Decked in their Halloween best, all the town’s
kids march down the main streets while business owners try to hit them with
candy. As a candy store owner on one of
those main streets, it was pretty safe to say that 296 costumed kids would be
looking in my direction as they marched down
A few new buddies of mine, Mary and Greg (don’t worry guys,
I’ll change your names for the local release of the diaries), invited me along
for their annual Halloween pub crawl in
So here we are at the end of another episode of the Diaries and still no sign of our buddy Rudy. Not a lot to report on RBR this month, except to let you know he’s officially ungrounded and trying to get his life back on track. He had a mild setback shortly after his release when he was caught igniting plumes of fire with a can of hairspray. This got him back in the penn for a short stint, but he’s a free teen again. I’ve seen him walk by his favorite Root Beer garden a few times, Goth posse in tow. Guess he still ‘Ain’t got no money man’. He must be spending his allowance on black hair dye and fingernail polish.
Well, that ought to do it for me. Now that the Sox are on the golf course, the
election is behind us, and hockey season is underway, no wait they’re on the
golf course too, we can all get some sleep again, and I can get to work on some
new winter season ideas for the shop.
The pumpkin pie and apple pie ice cream flavors are selling well, and I
think my new hot spiced apple topping (thanks for the tip Jane) is just about
to take off. The local cider is a hit,
and I just discovered that the Dutch chocolate syrup I use for chocolate milkshakes
(or frappes for those East of Easthampton) makes a
mean cup of hot chocolate when added to warm milk. Gotta have that rich cup of HC for our loved and loathed
Your bud,
Jim