Handling the Cloverdale heat with frozen treats

Its been HOT lately in Cloverdale, in the low 30's every day. Nights are still warm and sleeping at night is not easy because the house maintains the heat from the sun beating down for a long time. Staying cool is not easy.

I hear several ice cream trucks in the neighborhood. Most of the time I hear the truck playing Turkey in the Straw, but lately we've been inundated by the competitors who play The Entertainer and La Cucaracha.

I've been buying more ice cream and frozen yogurt from the store than I usually do. Yesterday we finished off the last of the ice cream so a trip to the grocery store was in order today. I bought a container of ice cream, one of frozen yogurt, a box of something called frozen cream pops (face it they were creamsicles when I was a kid) and a box of popsicles, also with some fancy name.

It's almost like I have to ask myself how old am I. Reverting back to childhood treats.

Well whatever works to stay cool in this heat.

The ice cream van is back!

Ah, the familiar sounds from childhood. Tonight I heard the ice cream van for the first time this year coming down our street. I've seen ice cream trucks around over the past couple of months but tonight is the first time I've heard one in our neighborhood this year blasting the unmistakable melody of Little Brown Jug. We don't have many children living around here so whenever I've seen/heard the ice cream van its traveling past at a good clip with the music doing double or triple time which can be rather amusing. Though not so funny for the people who may have heard the music, craved a treat, and by the time they got outside with their cash saw the van gumbooting it down the street.

When I was growing up in Cloverdale the ice cream truck travelled a little more slowly down our street and there was plenty of business from kids and adults. Nearly every house had someone standing at the end of the driveway awaiting the van. We always came running back in the house screaming: "It's the ice cream man!" hoping our parents would dole out a couple of dimes. And sure enough it was always a man driving the van and serving up the frozen treats. I don't remember seeing a woman driving the van. And the treats were a lot cheaper back then. Popsicles, Fudgsicles, Creamsicles, and Revellos all were about ten cents each. Over the years the prices increased up to about twenty-five cents, maybe even fifty cents by the time I was an adult and resisting the temptation to run out to the curb when I heard the blasting music.

Have you seen the prices on the ice cream trucks today? I don't even know if $2 is the lowest price, but the prices all run from $2 something up to $5 or so. Yikes! But its the cost of doing business. Gas prices, wages, taxes, etc. Its too bad the ice cream van doesn't attract customers the way they did when I was a kid.

Marble Slab Creamery

A couple of days ago while driving home from Langley I spotted a van on 64th Avenue with Marble Slab Creamery on it advertising their ice cream. We wondered where they were. Wonder no more because in today's mail we got a coupon for their location which is in the new shopping plaza behind Wal-Mart on 24th Avenue and 160th Street. Almost across the parking lot from the Future Shop.

The coupons promoted were buy an ice cream cone and get the second one free. $3 off an ice cream cake. And buy a quart of ice cream at regular price and get the second one for half price.

We were in the area and went in to give it a try seeing as how its a nice sunny day. First thing is 4 people in line in front of us and only one clerk serving customers, so we waited several minutes to be served. I did see another women peeking out from the back room a couple of times. She finally came out to assist just as we were paying and getting ready to leave. By this time several customers were behind us, everyone taking advantage of the BOGO coupon on a nice day.

First off its kind of hard to figure this place out. They have a menu and they have prices but its difficult to figure out exactly how much an ice cream cone is. Basically you choose one of their concoctions which is ice cream mixed with other stuff like walnuts, strawberries, chocolate chips, marshmallows. Must be over 50 ingredients to be mixed in with the ice cream. The clerk scoops up ice cream, puts it on a scale to weigh it, and then returns to the marble slab to mix in the fixings, and puts it in a waffle cone. By now the ice cream is getting kind of soft and melting. I chose a Snickerdoodle - vanilla ice cream with Snickers and caramel. Kerry chose strawberries and cream. When all was said and done at the cash register the total was $6.77. And that's with a BOGO! Wowsers! $6.77 for 2 ice creams, I can see it, but to come in without a coupon and spend that much each on one ice cream cone - no way. The ice cream really isn't that great anyway.

About an hour later Kerry had a stomach ache.

The ice cream cakes were nearly $30 each. The quart of ice cream was $8.95. To buy 2 with the coupon would be nearly $14, comparable to buying Haagen Daz ice cream.

Bad idea to come here if you have nut allergies. The ingredients are mixed on a marble slab that is scraped down inbetween cones, but to my eye it would be plausible that some leftover ingredients from a previous ice cream order may still linger on the marble slab.

So, I'd say if you have a coupon for a BOGO head on in and try it. Otherwise skip this creamery. There are better ice cream places around.