Chips Ahoy!

There are two men that have been a part of my life for many years. When I was a kid, my mom would treat us once in a great while to a luxurious pint of goodness. Usually we would get the Heath Bar Crunch, one of the few that we could agree on. Plus, it was my mom's favorite. She would have none of that Cherry Garcia business. To her, it probably ranked up there with watermelon bubblegum on her list of things that I loved but she would rather run her nails down a blackboard before letting me eat it in her presence. Therefore, in my world, it would be a sin to travel to Vermont and not go visit my good friends Ben and Jerry and their factory for Vermont's Finest.

On the way there, Elisabeth and I were both very excited!





As we pulled into the parking lot and saw all the people with their ice cream cones and milk shakes, I could barely contain myself. We immediately signed up for a tour. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and the factory was not generating pints at the time of our tour. Not to worry though, they have videos that show you what it looks like in production as you overlook the empty factory. But no photography was allowed. We learned amazing things about how they distribute flavors and chunks and chips and cherries and how this particular factory generates two flavors per day. But the most interesting was what they said about the quality control room. Each production lot has a certain number of pints cut open to determine if the quality is passable. They study the distribution of extras in the ice cream AND they taste test. On average, a single quality control scientist eats a total of TWO PINTS of ice cream per day. PER DAY. Can you imagine? Also, every employee in the plant is permitted to take home 2 pints off the factory line each day. My freezer would be stocked for life! The tour guide mentioned that they give free cholesterol screenings twice a year to all employees. Good to know.

The next stop on the tour was the flavor room where they passed out samples of one of the ice creams. Oatmeal Cookie Chunk was on the menu that day. And it was delicious. Because of renovations, the tour was a bit shorter than usual. We walked down the hall of memorabilia and back into the scoop/gift shop.









From the scoop shop, I indulged in a milk shake made from a flavor called Minter Wonderland (pretty much the same as Mint Chocolate Chunk). I'm a sucker for anything involving mint and chocolate. And ice cream, for that matter.