Icecream Journal

Wow, where did the month go? July is over, and so is another National Ice Cream month. Hopefully everyone found time over the last 31 days to celebrate appropriately…and we all know what that celebration involves. Of course, like so many of you said in your comments over the last four weeks, every month is like National Ice Cream Month, so feel free to continue celebrating all year round!

This July, we saw so many new readers here on the Ice Cream Journal. We’ve also seen record-setting levels of input from all of you, with tons of e-mails to Ernie and comments every day (we love that!). Whether you’re a new reader or an old friend, thank you for spending some time with us and we hope to see more of you in the future!

Like we said in the beginning of the month, tomorrow we’ll randomly select one July comment to receive this year’s National Ice Cream Month grand prize: a one year supply of Turkey Hill ice cream, a one-night stay in Lancaster County, AND a tour of Turkey Hill Dairy by Ernie himself. It’s definitely the biggest prize we’ve ever given away here on the Ice Cream Journal, but we love National Ice Cream Month, so it makes perfect sense.

If you want a shot at the prize, now’s your last chance to leave a comment (it’s okay if you leave your comment tomorrow, we’ll still include it in the drawing). In your comment, feel free to let us know how YOU celebrated National Ice Cream Month and how you plan to keep on celebrating ice cream throughout the year!

Here’s a great photo submitted by Matt E. of Douglas, MA for our 2009 calendar photo contest. That’s Matt’s daughter, Jenna, sitting atop a chalk rendering of their favorite Turkey Hill ice cream flavor.

The 2009 calendar photo contest is officially over and our team is sifting through the many, many photos that were submitted for consideration in our 2009 calendar. Thank you to everyone who submitted photos! Narrowing the field down to just 12 pictures is going to be difficult because there are so many great entries to choose from.

The following is an excerpt from our official history book, Turkey Hill: A Family Vision. To purchase your own copy, visit our online store.

In 1954, when Turkey Hill began making ice cream commercially, home delivered ice cream was added to the business as well. Although ice cream deliverymen did many of the same tasks as milk deliverymen, their routes were more flexible. Because ice cream stayed fresh longer than milk, it was delivered once a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ice cream routes were laid out so the deliverymen could go into the country at the beginning of the week, and then into Lancaster City and the surrounding towns on the weekend when more people were at home. These routes could also be modified if, for instance, a holiday occurred on a weekday.

Although there were over 15 ice cream routes by 1957, Turkey Hill Diary hired a salesman to go door-to-door and solicit new sales. With the addition of new customers, ice cream routes continued to be added at a steady pace. By 1962, there were 33 ice cream routes serving Lancaster, York and other surrounding counties.

The booming economy in the 1960s led to more consumers owning automobiles as the percentage of working women grew. Supermarkets opened throughout the region, and families now conveniently shopped for their grocery needs in one place. This increased mobility, coupled with few stay-at-home moms, made families less dependent on home deliveries. Soon thereafter, Turkey Hill began shifting it focus from home delivery to wholesale deliveries to grocery stores and convenience stores.

One of the earliest printed recipes for ice cream came from the book, Mrs. Mary Eales’s Receipts. The book was a collection of sweet recipes (or “receipts” as they were known back then), including the one below for ice cream (reprinted as close to its original language as possible). Feel free to give Mary’s fruit-flavored recipe a try at home…or you can just go to the store and pick up some Mango Duetto and call it a day!

To ice cream. Take Tin Ice-Pots, fill them with any Sort of Cream you like, either plain or sweeten’d, or Fruit in it; shut your Pots very close; to six Pots you must allow eighteen or twenty Pound of Ice, breaking the Ice very small; there will be some great Pieces, which lay at the Bottom and Top: You must have a Pail, and lay some Straw at the Bottom; then lay in your Ice, and put in amongst it a Pound of Bay-Salt; set in your Pots of Cream, and lay Ice and Salt between every Pot, that they may not touch; but the Ice must lie round them on every Side; lay a good deal of Ice on the Top, cover the Pail with Straw, set it in a Cellar where no Sun or Light comes, it will be froze in four Hours, but it may stand longer; than take it out just as you use it; hold it in your Hand and it will slip out. When you would freeze any Sort of Fruit, either Cherries, Raspberries, Currants, or Strawberries, fill your Tin-Pots with the Fruit, but as hollow as you can; put to them Lemmonade, made with Spring-Water and Lemmon-Juice sweeten’d; put enough in the Pots to make the Fruit hang together, and put them in Ice as you do Cream.

Making ice cream sure seemed like a lot of work back then, even though the process hasn’t changed much (we don’t use a lot of straw in our recipes today). Still, nothing beats home made ice cream. The only question is, does anyone still make ice cream at home?