Since so much of the milk that we use to make our ice cream comes from farms located right here in Lancaster County, we wanted to take some time to talk more about those farms and the struggles they face.

Did you know that 99 percent of Lancaster County farms are family owned? Starting as a family-owned business ourselves (Turkey Hill is still run by some of the family members who founded the Dairy 75 years ago), we can relate to these farms and the network that they’ve created. They’re our friends and neighbors. We support them and they support us.

Unfortunately, Lancaster County loses 1,000 acres of farmland every year due to development. Don’t get us wrong, progress and development can be good, but the dissapearance of farmland is scary because these farms and the hard-working core values they represent are the cornerstones of this part of the Pennsylvania. It’d be a shame to lose much more of that heritage.

As many of you know, Turkey Hill sometimes uses the phrase “Where we make it is why it’s good” to describe our ice cream. We truly believe that and it’s also why we’re an active supporter of the Lancaster Farmland Trust, an organization that preserves Lancaster County farms before they can be overtaken by development. We do this by donating portions of all the sales of our All Natural Ice Cream line to help them in their fight to save Lancaster’s farms.

Don’t get us wrong. If done right, development can be a wonderful thing, but we also have to also be respectful of the families and industries that built this county, and that’s what the Trust is fighting for.

To date, they’ve saved over 13,000 acres of farmland, which represents more than 200 area farms. That’s pretty impressive and they’re working every day to save more land and more family-run farms. To learn about the Trust and how you might be able to support them, visit www.lancasterfarmlandtrust.org.

We’ll leave you with a great photo of Lancaster County. To those of you who aren’t lucky enough to live in the area, yes, this is pretty much a standard scene around here!

A while ago, the folks from the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) took a tour of Turkey Hill Dairy for their show “PCN Tours.” The tour has aired a few times, but it’s airing again tomorrow (Friday) at 6pm according to the PCN website. Here’s a list of PCN cable providers and channels.

In other news, we found a website that will review your blog or web page and give it a rating similar to the ratings used for movies. A blog filled violence and bad language will likely wind up with an “R” rating. We ran the Ice Cream Journal through the test and below is the rating we were given. Can’t argue with the results. It’s proof that ice cream is good for the whole family!

Ever wonder what your favorite ice cream flavor reveals about your personality or which flavor you’d be if you were a bowl of ice cream? Here’s your chance to find out.

(Following originally posted January 16, 2007) 

They say our preferences for just about anything –- from cars to houses to dog breeds -– can reveal a little (or a lot) about who we are as people. Apparently even your favorite flavor of ice cream can indicate whether you’re shy or outgoing, a leader or a follower.

We’ve managed to track down a few of these online tests and present them here for you to try for yourself. Most of the tests ask you to choose your favorite flavor and then tell you what that preference reveals about your personality. Seems simple enough. This test is one of our favorites.

This one works backwards by asking a series of questions and then revealing what flavor you are based on your responses. And this quiz takes the process one step further by telling you which flavors you are most romantically compatible with. From the looks of it, strawberry lovers have very few enemies!

Just a quick fact for today’s entry. We may actually make this “Did you know?” thing a regular feature on the Ice Cream Journal. There are so many random and fun facts about ice cream out there that deserve to be noticed.

Did you know that the world record for the most ice cream eaten is held by Patrick Bertoletti of Chicago, Illinois? On May 26, 2006, he ate 1.75 gallons of vanilla ice cream in 8 minutes during an ice cream eating contest in Brooklyn, New York. It should be noted that Bertolleti is a professional competitive eater whose other eating records include 19 slices of pizza in 10 minutes, 11.1 pounds of shoofly pie in 8 minutes and 177 pickled jalepeno peppers in 15 minutes. For now, we’d be happy with the ice cream title.

Julie S. from Philadelphia, Pa. asks:

Hey Dr. Ernie,
How does the soft serve in the Duetto ice cream not freeze up like the regular Turkey Hill ice cream? Just curious. Thanks!

Hi Julie. I should preface my reply by clarifying that I’m not a doctor (my white lab coat might lead you to think that though). I guess you could say I’ve got an unofficial PhD in ice cream making.

Regular soft serve ice cream is made and served at about 18 degrees F. The packaged ice cream sold in grocery stores is made at about the same temperature but “hardened” by going through a minus 40 degree Fahrenheit tunnel. It then remains stored at a much colder temperature so it can travel and maintain its quality. Without this trip through the “deep freeze,” traditional soft serve just wouldn’t stand up in the freezer.

So how do we make our Duetto soft serve scoopable? The truth is, the formula took us a long time to perfect, which is why it’s a closely guarded secret. It’s also why Duetto is one of the only soft serve products available in stores. We’re pretty proud of that distinction and we hope you enjoy eating it as much as we enjoyed creating it. I know that’s probably not the answer you were hoping for, but you have to admit, eating foods made from a “secret recipe” is kind of fun, isn’t it?

Thanks for your question!
Ernie

A few days ago we talked about preventing ice cream cone drip by dropping a mini-marshmallow in the bottom. These cones are flat bottomed, so you probably don’t have that problem. Usually it’s the ice cream that provides all the color in the ice cream cone equation, but this photo proves that theory wrong. By the way, HAPPY NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY!

This is a fun one that comes to us from the Food Network website. It’s basically ice cream rolled in cocoa powder to look like a potato and then topped with “sour cream” (whipped cream), “butter” (frozen squares of yellow frosting) and “chives” (chopped pistachios).

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 pint vanilla ice cream

• Cocoa Powder

• Whipped topping

• Yellow frosting

• 1/4 cup chopped pistachios

DIRECTIONS:

1. For the “butter” frosting:

Line the inside of a cover of a butter dish with plastic wrap. Fill the cover completely with yellow frosting and freeze until hard. Lift the “butter” out of the cover using the plastic wrap. Cut into squares.

2. For the potato ice cream:

Have a sheet pan covered with plastic wrap. On 1/2 of the pan, place the pint of ice cream down on its side. Fold the plastic over the ice cream and make a seal. Using your hands, quickly form the ice cream into a potato shape. Then, create a wedge across the length of the potato. Tightly twist the ends of the plastic wrap and make knots at each end, like a mozzarella ball.

3. Place the ice cream in the freezer until it hardens, about 20 to 30 minutes.

4. Remove the ice cream from the freezer, unwrap and dust all over with cocoa powder. Fill the wedge with whipped topping and place a pat of “butter” frosting on top. Sprinkle with pistachios and serve immediately.

Just a quick reminder to everyone that in the midst of National Ice Cream Month is yet another reason to celebrate ice cream. That reason, of course, is National Ice Cream Day and that glorious day is this Sunday, July 15th.

We’re not sure if this will create a frenzy in the ice cream aisle at your local grocery store, causing all the ice cream to be sold out by Saturday afternoon. Still, you might not want to take any chances. If you’re not already stocked up on Moose Tracks and Cherry Duetto, now might be the time to do it. We’re just kidding of course, but if people rush to the store for milk and bread when a storm approaches, why wouldn’t they do the same for National Ice Cream Day?

With that, we thought we’d offer a few tips for how to celebrate National Ice Cream Day in style:

• Have ice cream for breakfast (if there’s one day of the year when you can do that, it’s this Sunday) 
• Go to a baseball game and eat ice cream out of one of those minature helmets
• Have ice cream for lunch
• Prepare a dessert or meal using ice cream as an ingredient (recipes here)
• Pay a visit to your local ice cream stand and order a sundae with extra whipped cream and chocolate fudge or a triple scoop cone with three different flavors
• Make ice cream at home with a tin can
• Have ice cream for dinner (or a milkshake with your dinner)
• Watch your favorite movie with friends and family while eating ice cream (or while eating the ice cream dessert you made earlier)

The possibilties are endless. If we’re missing anything, or if you have any suggestions of your own for how to celebrate National Ice Cream Day, just let us know!

You can get soda and coffee from a vending machine, chips and candy from a vending machine, even egg salad sandwiches and soup from a vending machine. So it was only a matter of time until someone invented a vending machine that dispenses custom made ice cream.

That’s exactly what the folks at MooBella have done. We first heard about their creation when they won a Food Network Award in the category of “Icy Innovations” (a category Turkey Hill hopes to win next year for its work with Duetto).

As far as we can tell, the machine exists only in a few markets in the Boston area, but it’s designed for use just about anywhere—malls, cafeterias, museums, universities, living rooms. It uses a touch-screen (below) and a flash freezing method to create 12 flavors of premium or low-carb ice cream with your choice of several mix-ins.   

In movies about the future, this would be one of the crazy inventions the main character uses before strapping on his jet pack and zooming off to work. Except this thing is actually real!

Back in February we wrote about odd varieties of ice cream from around the globe and some right here in the U.S. Sure, “octopus ice cream” sounds horrible, but it might be delicious to ice cream lovers in Japan. Besides, they might think “chocolate chip cookie dough” is downright nauseating (but we doubt it). Enjoy a second scoop of some flavors you probably didn’t want a scoop of in the first place!

(Following originally posted February 19, 2007) 

Some people make ice cream at home using sophisticated ice cream machines and others do it with much simpler methods. Either way, the great thing about do-it-yourself ice cream is that you can experiment by making all sorts of unusual flavors.

Speaking of unusual flavors, here’s a few varieties of ice cream from around the world that definitely fit that category:

- Sweet Potato Ice Cream (Japan)
- Rose Petal Ice Cream (From the Rose Café in Venice, California)
- Octopus Ice Cream (Japan)
- Chunky Bacon Ice Cream (From the Udder Delight Ice Cream House in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware)
- Mango Seaweed Ice Cream (Taiwan)
- Habanero Pepper Ice Cream (USA)
- Beer & Nuts Ice Cream (Max & Mina’s in Queens, NY)

There’s even a website with an “ice cream flavor generator” you can use to invent random and endless combinations of wacky varieties. Try it yourself and let us know what comes up. Turn on the “Gross & Weird” feature if you dare. (Who’s up for a little Triple Salmon Soybean Swirl?)