Month: March 2025

Some people like Ice Cream all of the time.

Some people like Ice Cream some of the time.

All Ice Cream is liked some of the time.

Some Ice Cream is liked all of the time.

Some people don’t like Ice Cream, they have “issues.”

Most people that don’t like Ice Cream are suspicious in character.

All people that don’t like Ice Cream some of the time are doubtfully of sound mind.

All of the people that don’t like Ice Cream all of the time are Aliens (or maybe lactose intolerant, and as such are understandable(?) and therefore probably not Aliens.)

All Ice Cream is not created equal.

Some Ice Cream is generic in Quality.

Some Ice Cream is of a Premium Nature.

Some Ice Cream is Blue Bell brand.

All of Blue Bell Ice Cream is Premium.

None of Blue Bell Ice Cream is bad.

Therefore, Blue Bell Ice Cream is liked all the time by all the people all the time, without Question or Cause, Forever and Ever, Amen.

Can I get a Halleluiah!

There are a few things that are required attributes of True Texans:

                        They must know and recite the Texas Pledge of Allegiance, they must like BBQ (the real stuff), Football is a Religion, and the temples thereof are located locally at all High Schools and on a statewide basis, in College Station for the Aggies of Texas A&M, and in Austin for the Longhorns of the University of Texas. You must not now anywhere that the Blue Bonnets grow in the Spring until that season is finished. You must be able to pull off jeans, boots, shirt, and cowboy hat without looking like a model from a catalog. And at least once in your lifetime you feel the Pull of the Power from Brenham and go on a Pilgrimage to the Center of All Things Rich, Smooth, and Delicious, the Creamery at Blue Bell Ice Cream located here.

                        We have been there several times in order to, in some small way, try and make up for our shortcomings in the previous categories (but mostly to eat Ice Cream!)

                        The latest was yesterday.

                        Going yesterday was a mistake (except that the Reward was Great!). Yesterday was a gorgeous day, a summertime feel was in the air, and schools were on Spring Break (oops!). There was only one parking space left when we arrived, even the lawns lining the road (aptly named Blue Bell Road) were full of obviously hastily jettisoned vehicles that once had transported the Faithful who had since flocked to the interior, standing impatiently in long lines waiting for their turn “up front” in order to procure their $1.00 ‘scoop’ of their desired flavor. (A ‘scoop’ here is a singularly used a term of measurement and has no actual relationship to the instrument used to get the Ice Cream into your sampling container. A snow shovel would be a better descriptor.)

                        So why is Blue Bell so good?

                        To be honest, it is probably not any better (Shhh!) than any other Premium Ice Creams, and yes, there is a difference among all of the ice cream makers around. But it’s here, in Texas, with a true Texas Lineage, and it is still owned and run by the same family since the beginning, way back in ’09 (that’s 19, not 20!) They started as a true dairy co-op just like some other well-respected ventures like Tillamook in Oregon and Cabot’s in Vermont. They do a few things differently than others in the Premium Category, and those alone could make the difference. For instance, the milk used is all local and less than 24-hours old when it starts its Journey to Deliciousness. And when it has reached that level of distinction, it is loaded onto its own trucks and delivered to each and every final location by a uniformed, company-faithful, driver who then proceeds to stock and administer to the needs of their product on the shelves.

To anyone in Retail, you know that while this method is expensive, having a Company Representative in each and every store week in and week out, protecting their product and shelf space from the Incursions of the Unfaithful, can make all of the difference.

                        What else can make the difference?

                        Remember good ol’ Tom Carvel of Carvel Ice Cream fame? He was the first high-ranking/owner of a major company to do commercials for his products (1939) and who can forget his raggedy-voiced tagline….. “We use no air pumps!”

                        I’m afraid that this informative, but alas mostly unknown situation, fell on mostly deaf ears, because no one knew what he was referring to. It was not until my own company, Ritter Food, started carrying ice cream (and we attended the requisite seminars on such) that we learned that it was common practice to introduce “air” into the ice cream as it was being frozen in order to bulk it up! Horrors! Why would someone do such a thing? No where on the label does it say, “Up to 100% air added for Deceptive Selling Tactics” (but it’s true!) Go ahead, next time that you’re in the Holy Aisle, pick up a (at one time it was once a true half-gallon, but that’s another story!) of say the store-branded ice cream and then find a brand like Ben & Jerry’s or other true Premium Ice Cream and put one in each hand (or just read the label, the net weight is what you’re looking for not volume) and compare.

                                    Yikes! That ‘splains a whole lot!

                                    Like “cost”. There’s more ice cream in the same size container because the “less expensive” or dare I say CHEAPER one has more air in it and the last time I checked the Commodities Market, air was still free! All Premium Ice Creams use far less “Overrun”. Yes, they have even come up with that Fancy Marketing Term for jamming free air into a product that is sold by weight and volume! The same goes with some “fresh” meats and poultry where the term is “Pump” in the Industry and Marinated to the rest of us. Check out raw corned beef …. It has a “35% water and spices added for flavor” Hah! Water is a cheap as air!

                 Sorry for the tirade, I’ll get back to Ice Cream now…..

                        The next item used for comparison purposes is probably the most obvious and that is the percentage of butterfat in the ice cream. Here the range is as great as the “air” but goes further to the taste and feel of the Ice Cream. Blue Bell ice cream has a butterfat content of around 13% (Good, but not the highest) making it richer in flavor than some other brands. This higher milk/butter fat content also means more weight in the product itself. For instance, a half-gallon of Blue Bell ice cream weighs around 52 ounces, compared to Breyers, which weighs around 40 ounces. Although Blue Bell’s butterfat content is higher than some of its competitors, it’s not quite as high as others, like Haagen-Dazs. The difference in butterfat helps determine the precise texture and richness of a brand of ice cream.

The ranges are roughly this:

                        Regular, Store Brand, 10% is the legal minimum percentage to be considered as Ice Cream. Believe it or not, some well-known brands actually fall into this one… Breyers is one although their range is closer to 11-12%.

                        Better stuff (Premium), 12-14% here we find the obvious, Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs for examples.

                        Super Premium Ice Cream 15-16% and above, some Tillamook flavors, plus Jenni’s, and Van Leeuwen are some others. I’m going to go out on a limb here and acknowledge that there are many, many, “local” creameries that we all love to visit that make their own Ice Cream and I’m sure that that ‘limb’ will support the notion that the vast majority of these Bastions of Creaminess fall into the Super Premium category, and I’ll leave it at that …. you know who they are!                              

                        There is sometimes a fine line between these categories and having the balance between “overrun” (air!) and butterfat being totally subjective and driven by taste and product costs are as endless as the flavors that are available! So, don’t be so concerned as to where your particular brand falls, just own it!

Ultra-Super Premium – these numbers are unavailable as this level of Ice Cream is only available in Heaven. But…. there is just one place on Earth….. it’s in Omaha, Nebraska and it is Ted & Wally’s coming in at a whopping 20%!

This subject is obviously a very touchy one as we all have our ‘favs’ and will defend them to the end because being passionate about Ice Cream is a good thing and all that really matters is that we enjoy the ones that we devour!

There are several things down here in Texas that border on Religious Experiences just because they are, well, here, in Texas….

– Watching the Bluebonnets emerge alongside the roads each Spring,

– Shopping at H.E.B. the totally Texas-sized and home-grown awesome grocery store chain (coming in at #10 in the National Ranking and it’s only located in Texas!)

– Stopping at a Buc-ee’s any chance you get,

– And, of course, swearing allegiance to and eating Blue Bell Ice Cream (and check this out! It’s still sold in full half-gallon containers!)

Can I get another Hallelujah! (and another ‘scoop’!)

Back in the late seventies when I was in Sales at Ritter Food Corporation, I had an account up on Route 17 in Mahwah, N.J. It was a truck stop, a very popular one as Rt.17 and the N.Y. Thruway met around there and to say it was a busy place would be an understatement. I would make my weekly stop there to get my order and I would sit at the counter listening to the truckers kibitz back and forth, their conversations were always about driving the road. I marveled at the way they all seemed to know every mile of our vast Interstate System that links every state in the Union.

To be honest, I was just a tad jealous of whatever it was that they had that I did not.

                                                Freedom?

                                                Driving those big rigs?

                                                Wanderlust?

                                                Or……. was it just the way that they talked and the clothes that they wore? ……. Big Western Belt Buckles and a drawl that seemed to come straight from the plains of West Texas. Me….sitting at that counter….. just listening….

“Ya know that part of I-10? The one that starts at the exit for the 20?”

                                    “Yea….. in the 80-mph stretch?

“Yup”

“Goin east or west?”

                                    “I was eastbound and this jerk musta not been payin’ ‘tention cuz he shot in front of me ‘cross four lanes, jus’ ta make his exit! I nearly spilt my load all over as I jammed on the brakes and swerved!”

                                    “Yea….. I know the kind but that’s nothin’! Jus’ last week I was comin’ down that hill outa Scranton, ya know the one… It’s in the Harry Chapin song “30,000 pounds of Bananas”……

And their conversations would go on and on and on, just like the highways that they drove, and I was always late for my next stop as I got caught up in my reverie of their travels. Never did I ever dream that I too, would someday be able to recall specific stretches of highway like they were that back of my hand!

                        Yesterday we came through that section of the I-10, in fact we’ve been through there countless times over the past few years as the I-10 is our “gateway” to all parts west of here.

                                                Unfortunately.

                                                Unfortunately, because I-10 is “white knuckler” in a motorhome, as the winds, which routinely gust into the 40-mph range always seem to be a crosswind and that wreaks havoc on our travels. No reveries here, it takes Herculean Forces just to keep us between the lines. There are even numerous signs warning of High Crosswinds. The I-10 runs an almost perfect East/West tangent, and those pesky puffs of pugnaciousness always come from either the North or the South….. a.k.a. crosswinds…. or maybe headwinds.         

We never get the proverbial Tailwind.

Until yesterday.

We departed Desert Hot Springs on Friday morning and decided to try out a new route eastbound. Down again we went past the Salton Sea, right through the heart of the Imperial Valley and all its lush growing fields, and hooked up with the I-8, a rather “shorter-than-average” Interstate as it only runs between San Diego and Casa Grande in Arizona (just north of Tucson). This example of our Interstate System was perfectly smooth, both on the asphalt sections and the nifty-grooved-concrete ones. We liked it so much that we are trying to figure out ways to utilize this highway in all of our trips! It sure would be nice but obviously a tad impractical to incorporate a road between California and Arizona when we’re say, going to Massachusetts…. but it was that good!

Back to our Tailwind!

There were several “systems” that meteorologically effected our travels this past week. Those Mighty Atmospheric Rivers that plague California brought their own brand of ferocity to that area. Our former foray into the San Bernadino Mountains for the destinations of Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead would have been canceled if we had tried just a few days later when they received about 20 inches of Skiing Necessities and the rest of us down below just got rain….. and wind, lots and lots of wind. These systems seemed to flow eastward along with us and fortunately they were Friendly Systems which gave us our Tailwinds. Not just for a few hours…. these guys accompanied us the entire time!

`We usually average about 8.3 (ish) mpg when driving normally. When we get those crosswinds and headwinds it can drop as low as 7.5 mpg. But….. when it’s a tailwind (!!!) it gets as high as 9.5! and our Fuel Guage seems to stop its downward plunge and seemingly hover as our big Cummins diesel motor gets to just sip its beverage of choice as we breeze along not being thrown helter-skelter across the travel lanes!

            It was a joy to travel these past few days!

Except for the snow.

And for the Haboob.

            Well, not really a Haboob because technically you need a thunderstorm and its fierce downdrafts preceding it, kicking up monstrous amounts of sand and dirt, bringing visibility to almost zero.

            We had a dust storm.

            But Haboob is much more fun to say and imagine, so we’re gonna go with that!

            We only encountered a Category 2 (on a scale of 1 to 5) Haboob. I made that up, but it serves a purpose! We did get through (and are now Haboob Certified) a Category 4 in Tucson about four years ago. That one was notable because we had just gone through one of those big, drive-through truck washes and came out the other side all clean and shiny and…… damp. Back onto the I-10 (sigh) we went only to observe the developing Haboob in front of us. There was nothing that we could do. We did survive, the warnings on our phones helped instruct us as to the correct actions to take while driving, but alas, our once (for brief time) bright and shiny motorhome was now brown and dirty as the dust clung to us like we were a dust magnet. (double sigh) See photos from this trip.

Our trip from SoCal to Big Tex is 1356 miles in length and takes 19 hours and 51 minutes to execute (according to Miss Google maps) and though our “mileage may vary” we will use those numbers for illustrative purposes.

I will “illustrate” just how big Texas is and show that it seems like it takes forever to exit or cross this place.

We traveled California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

Half of that distance is in Texas!

From California to El Paso Texas is half of that total distance. You think, Ahh, we’re back in the home state but wait! You’ve still got 662 miles to get back to base and that’s not even to the next state border!

            Hence our stop in Fort Stockton, Texas, a veritable stronghold on that infamous I-10. Fort Stockton has been a haven of sorts for us as we’ve utilized various locations here to snuggle in for the night. First it was the Walmart, then we found an RV campground that is only $35.00 a night, full hook-ups. This works really nicely when the temps go up and the AC needs to run and the only way that happens is if we either run the generator (boo!) or hook up to a 50-amp circuit (yay!)

            But there are in-between times and sometimes the Walmart’s can be too noisy. We happened to stumble on a Chevron station just off the I-10 ramp (convenient!) that allowed us to squeeze over on one side as long as we didn’t block any entrances or exits! We are here for our second time this trip…. we do get our fuel here, kind of as a payback, but no one checks anything so it’s just for our peace of mind. In fact, it seems like you could park just about anywhere around here as there are more abandoned buildings and crumbling parking lots than you can shake a stick at! These types of towns, which seem to proliferate along these southwestern travel corridors, are just a vestige of their past.

            They mostly all suffer from the Boom-and-Bust Syndrome, Fort Stockton is no different. Yes, it did start out as an outpost with a small garrison of soldiers. The infamous “Buffalo Soldiers” (regiments of all-Black Soldiers) were stationed here. The Native Americans gave that nickname to those guys as they admired their intensity and stamina, much like the buffalo they revered. Obviously, the name stuck.

 At that time, the place was called Commanche Springs and was the site of one of the southwests best natural springs.

                        Ranching (boom)

                        Farming (boom)

                        Spring ran out (bust)

                        Oil fields (boom)

                        Oil ran out (bust)

                        Railroad came (boom)

                        Railroad left (bust)

I’m not sure what stage it’s in now, but it serves our needs nicely and it is definitely trying its best to garner its share of the Traveling Public as the local Chamber of Commerce is quite active in promoting the likes of the Historic Fort Stockton and the fact that this city is the gateway to Big Bend National Park, even though its about a hundred miles south of here!

            So here we are still eight hours and 381 miles away from Brenham. We may just split that up and stop halfway in Fredericksburg, the center of the Hill Country and home to Texas’s Wine Region, plus a fine number of German-themed restaurants as this town was founded by German immigrants and has held nicely onto its heritage.

            I can hear the Strudel and Sauerbraten calling us from here.

            “Well, that’s jes a fine ‘how-do-ya-do’ Albie! Wait ‘til the boss finds ‘bout this! Yore shur gonna git a good kickin’!”

            “Jeez Frankie! I’ze didn’t do nuttin’! I was jes lookin’ over thar when I guess I shoulda bin lookin’ right heah. But I swears….. I didn’t do a dern thang!

                        That was the start of a long ‘conversation’ back in 1905 when the mighty Colorado River pushed its way past a head gate in the new aqueduct that was being constructed to enable water to flow from the All-American Canal over to the Imperial Valley. The Imperial Valley is one of California’s largest and most prolific growing areas. But it sits smack-dab in the Sonoran Desert which means by definition….. it hardly rains there at all. What great place to put a growing area!

                        Little did Frankie and Albie know that at the time, this calamity would create one of the largest lakes in the country.

                        Oops! The ‘mishap’ took more than two years to fix and when it was all said and done, a very large lake emerged from a depression in the Southern California desert.

                        There was already a low spot there which had been filled, drained, and refilled over the millennia but these projects were overseen by the Big Boss, Mother Nature herself! Not humans and their quirky ways of doing things! Now there was a lake where a large salt deposit once sat and it measured 15 miles across, 35 miles long, and about 80 feet deep! This is large enough to qualify for the #19 spot on the Top Hot100 Hits of Lakes in America, coming in at a groovy 347 square miles!

                        Believe it or not, the lake stayed fairly constant for about sixty or seventy years because the farmers in the area took more water from the Colorado than they used and let the rest just flow down into the Salton Sea. But…. sooner or later, someone got a bit smarter and realized that less water would be needed if new watering methods that conserved water were being used. That’s all well and good unless that realization comes with unwanted/unrealized (?) consequences with somewhat dire results. As the water level of the ‘lake’ started to recede, those old salt flats now also containing the residue of a mixture of pesticides and fertilizers that had run off with all of that ‘extra’ water, dried up and became toxic clouds of dust whipped up by the winds that howl through there on a regular basis. Ouch! Plus, the salinity level increased as the water level dropped making it toxic to most of the fishes in there and confounding the birds that now used this area a stopover in the Pacific Flyway.

                        Couple that with the rest of the story.

                        In the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s someone realized that there was a big body of inland water in close proximity to major Southern California population centers. Little towns sprang up where once there were just cacti and rattlesnakes. Places like Salton City, Desert Shores, Salton Sea Beach, and Bombay Beach. These places were mostly unincorporated sections of land that some developers bought and gridded over with nautical sounding streets (mostly on paper) just waiting for the boom/boon to come.

                        Well, it did come, to some extent, and it lasted long enough to whet some real estate appetites. Folks did come there; resorts were constructed, and even Frank Sinatra once performed in Bombay Beach! Yup, ole Blue Eyes made the 45-minute trip down from his pad in Palm Springs and gave a memorable performance. You can also add in the Beach Boys and Bing Crosby, both were known to frequent the area, if only to have some fun.

                        Then that eventual lowering of the water level and some ugly fish die-offs signaled the end of the short-lived era that was once a glorious time.

                        Let’s fast-forward to today and get to where this is all going.

                        No one really knows!

                        The land in, under, and around the lake is owned in major parts by the Feds, the State, the local Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Tribe, and the Imperial Irrigation District. As you can imagine there are lots of reasons why a consensus can be difficult to reach. Now we’re going to throw the Big-Ticket Item into the mix…. there is about $450,000,000,000 (that’s BILLION if you’re counting zeros!) of lithium under all of this, especially the lake.

                                    This alone could make California’s Gold Rush of 1849 seem like Amateur Hour. It is obvious that there is much more to come, and I’d usually end with something like “Film at Eleven” but I’m not sure that there will be more information by then, so we’ll just say,

“Stay tuned for further developments that may develop in this developing story.”

                        Amen.

California is the land of many opportunities.

It seems that on any given day you have the opportunity to be chased by a wildfire, moved quickly by a mudslide, or be shaken vigorously by an earthquake.

                        Those are the negatives.

                        But……

            There are positives that balance all of those other things out!

 “Like what Mr. Optimistic, a chance to get some exercise while running helter-skelter?”

            Nope! Would you believe that you can be surfing at one of those iconic Southern California beaches like Manhattan, Redondo, or Malibu, and two hours and sixteen minutes later you can be schussing down the slopes of a 10,000-foot mountain?

                        Yes! You too can join the SoCal community of outdoorsy-sports-like folks and zoom(?) from one destination to the next all in one day! Desert Hiking! Mountain Skiing! Ocean Surfing! And everything in between! With only the Traffic Jams to hold you back you can participate in your own variation of a unique kind of Triathlon!

                        By now you have surmised that we are back in California, and we are staying at our stalwart fav, the Joshua Tree/Desert Hot Springs KOA. This is our third stay at this fine location which is just a little north of Palm Springs, and our World Cruise friends, Sandi and Steve (we were here last year and later in September, we visited them up in the Oregon/Washington area where they reside for real, in Vancouver, Washington.

                        We are here for about a week and while we will be doing some things that we have not done before, we will not be jam-packing the days with all things left to be done as this as also a “West and Wewaxation” time.

                        We visited with Sandi and Steve the evening that we arrived to catch up and plan out some of the activities. It was suggested that we take a day and visit Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead, both in the San Bernadino Mountains. These are the tallest of several mountain ranges that circle the outer boundaries of the greater Los Angeles area. We heartily agreed, especially me, as it was 60+ years ago that I visited these places when we lived out here. There was no fantasizing this one, I knew that I would recognize very little of what were once a few sleepy little local resort towns.

                        The next morning, we hit the I-10 West and ‘headed for the hills’ as it were, the landscape changing all along the way. These mountains seem to leap out of the ground as the cities that lie at their feet only have elevations that range from 500 to 800 feet. Then as you hit the access roads and start the climb, you can hear Goose yell from the rear, “We’re goin ballistic, Mav!” and as quick as one can maneuver all of the hairpin turns you find yourself up at the lakes which are around 7000’ feet above those cities, with the peaks an additional 4000’ higher! It is quite impressive when down below and looking up!

                        And it is just as impressive when you are up top looking down! We neglected to start early enough to get to the beach for surfing and I guess you could call our walk to the car our “Desert Hike”, but we did not actually get on the slopes either, so you could say that our attempt at that Triathlon fell miserably short of that goal, but we did have an Awesome Lunch, some Great Shopping, and a very nice Circumferential Drive around the Lakes, so in a way, we did have a different kind of Triathlon…. thank you very much!