The Creamery Family

My four bosses are wonderful women. Three of the four live for gossiping and spend the majority of our shifts talking to my coworkers and I about the hot gossip that's going around. Usually their gossip is pretty harmless, but sometimes (like one time last semester) it escalates into craziness!

I have this buddy named Matt and he is in high school. And even though he went to State High (and I went there too) I didn't meet him until I started working. He's a pretty funny kid, but he's super awkward. Like don't get me started. Well. I was pretty antisocial at the creamery until I befriended Matt and so I would just talk to him for the entirety of my shifts. Well, one thing led to another and my buddy Matt was loving this Natalie. What can I say? I'm quite the catch :P. Anyway, he knew I had a boyfriend and so the crush was harmless enough.

That was until his older sister (who also worked at the creamery) told our boss about this so called "romance" brewing between his brother and I. Well. That started more gossip than I can handle. Pretty soon all of my bosses knew about it, not to mention ALL of my coworkers!

But, after a while Matt and I were able to convince our creamery family that we did not have a relationship and were just buddies. Thank goodness!

But a funny ending to this drama epic is that just Monday night my boss came up and asked me if I would go to prom with Matt because he couldn't find a date. I of course said I would go with him, he is my buddy of course. It just makes me laugh that my bosses care so much about us that one would be worried about one of her employees not having a prom date.

Oh the creamery...

Bittersweet Mint...Part 2

At work on Saturday I had someone ask me a question that I've never been asked before. Of course I am asked every single time I work why you aren't allowed to mix flavors, and what are store hours are and things like that. But Saturday, man. It was something new.

Saturday was a pretty busy night. I had to scoop so much ice cream, which is nuts because I never scoop ice cream. So while I was standing in front of the nut flavors chatting up my high school buddies, a girl comes up to us and asks "How many calories were in my ice cream?" My high school buddy, Alex, and I looked at each other and then turned back to her and asked, "what flavor did you get?" and she replies "Bittersweet Mint."

So then Alex and I went to the back counter and opened up this massive book that has all of the nutritional information for all of the ice cream. We found Bittersweet Mint, after a little while because apparently high school kids don't know the alphabet very well, and saw that a cup of the flavor has 340 calories. Now I have no idea what the serving size is at the creamery, but I'm pretty certain that it's significantly more than a cup.

I told her this information about the calories and she looked quite upset and walked away. I don't understand who asks questions like how many calories are in my ice cream. Ice cream is delicious because it is so bad for you, don't worry about your calorie count.

Photo Op

The Creamery is a common stop in scavenger hunts that happen throughout the year for Penn State groups. They come in, write down ice cream flavors, take pictures, make a lot of noise and then never buy anything. On Monday, we were pretty sure it was that time of year again when huge groups of boys kept coming in and writing things down and taking absurd pictures. The one guy took a picture with a sausage and a bottle of milk. I made strange faces at these boys from behind the register and they laughed some more and continued to take pictures. Finally the boys wanted to check out, but checking out consisted of buying sausage and then asking to take a picture of me and my fellow employees. We don't usually have people ask to take our pictures they usually just want us to hold the ice cream for them and they take a picture of that, so this was a weird experience. We of course had to ask why and they said they were doing a project for CAS 100. Huh. So I, along with three of my other employees, will be part of a CAS 100 presentation. Super.


In other news, Strawberry Cheesecake isn't in three gallons anymore, crazy! Some flavors of note are Orange Vanilla Sundae (essentially a creamcicle in ice cream) and Black Cow (vanilla ice cream with rootbeer sherbet swirl). You should probably go try them and give me a better opinion on them. I hear Black Cow is a favorite. Sounds gross to me. They're both pretty easy to scoop to, so I won't be upset if you come in on say Saturday Night between 6-11 or Monday between 6-10 and ordered it!

It's That Time of Year Again...

Spring is just around the corner. Bringing flowers, warmer weather, lots of rain and of course Easter (or Pascha if you're an Orthodox Christian like me). With Easter comes the seven preparation weeks of Lent where, if you are a practicing Christian/lent-doer, you give up something to get ready for the holiday. At my church, we all give up meat and dairy for the entire lenten period. I am no vegetarian, and I have to admit cheese and ice cream are staples to my diet. Lent is a hard time for me. When I got my job at the Creamery last semester I did not even think about the lenten period that would come in the Spring...so of course I didn't take the time to realize that I would be surrounded by one of my favorite foods for seven weeks without being able to eat it. Woops. Monday was my first day scooping ice cream without the ability to eat it, and let me tell you it was rough. It will be interesting to see how the rest of Lent plays out.

Now back to the flavor of the week....

Strawberry Cheesecake is cheesecake flavored ice cream with strawberry swirl. It's easy to scoop and looks incredibly delicious, though I have never eaten it so I'm not sure how good it actually is. Maybe you should give it a try?

Nobody orders Strawberry Cheesecake and it is shocking to me! It sounds like such a good flavor, where can you go wrong with cheesecake and strawberry? I don't even know. But the good news about no one eating it is that since it's not being eaten, we will have the three gallons for a longer time. Which means I may potentially get to try it after Pascha! Oh hope, hope!

Have you ever had a Shamrock Shake?

Where was I last Saturday? Not drunkenly walking the streets of downtown State College or puking my guts out in a bush, or a sidewalk, or a dorm room...I was at the Creamery. I've got to admit, the night started out pretty rough. Right when I arrive at the Creamery I'm informed first that I have to do dishes and then told that there was no warm water in the whole building. Let me tell you,  a sink full of dirty dishes that I will have to wash with ice cold water is not a pleasant thing to look forward to.

However, after I was told I'd be doing dishes later, I was then told that I was going to be on register. The first group of  kids I wait on are drunken boys in State Patty's Day shirts. My conversation with the first boy went like this:

DB(drunk boy): Your ice cream is soooooooo gooooood.
Me: Oh I know, it's just the best.
DB: I think I need a milkshake. Your milkshakes are soo good! Can I get mint? It's green.
Me: Of course you can get a mint shake. Is that all?
DB: Have you ever had a Shamrock shake? They're green too. I bet you haven't had a Shamrock shake because you work here. You must really like this ice cream. (leans in) Your ice cream is way better than McDonald's.

Too funny. Unfortunately, the rest of the night was highly drunk people-free and they were the only entertainment I had to hope for. There were a shocking number of families where the young children were wearing Irish paraphernalia. State Patty's Day is not a family holiday. Silly parents.

So since the drunkards weren't feeling ice cream, my high school buddies and I spent the majority of the night using the hot water thing from the coffee machine (you know, the water for tea) to fill up buckets and then dumped them into the sink. It didn't work very well, because the hot water was being used too much and so it ended up being cold water, but at least it wasn't the ice water the sink was giving me!

The lack of hot water didn't only affect my dishes, it affected the ice cream scooping. Scooping was impossible because the scoopers were sitting in cold water basins, as opposed to the hot water they are usually sitting in, and cold scooper+ice cream=SO difficult to scoop.

I'm Coo-Coo for Coconut!

Coconut Chip is by far my favorite flavor at the Creamery, it's vanilla ice cream with coconut flakes and chocolate chips. It's sort of an unfortunate favorite to have though. Every time a customer asks what my favorite flavor is in order to help them make their decision, I always say Coconut Chip and people always make faces at me. It hurts my feelings to the extreme. I'm very serious about my ice cream.

It's such a good flavor, that is if you like the taste of coconut, and is really easy to scoop. Sometimes too easy to scoop, making it slightly soup-like. The average scoopability would have to be a 2. Not so bad! It's pretty hard to find an ice cream that's a perfect three, believe me. 

Even though customers tend to not enjoy my favorite flavor, my fellow members of the "Cream Team" (yeah, we call ourselves the Cream Team. It's a really ridiculous place to work, in case that wasn't already clear. My coworkers are actually all insane.) enjoy it. I like that I'm not alone and can share the flavor I love with my coworkers. If you ever order it, you should get it in a shake! It's delicious! 

Speaking of Coconut Chip! I did have a bonding moment with a customer on Saturday Night (Thon weekend) about our mutual love for the flavor. Ice cream can really bring people together! The power of ice cream never ceases to amaze me :)

Valentines and Ice Cream

Monday was a pretty depressing night at the Creamery. And not just because I was at work instead of spending time with my "sweetie".

It started out as a normal winter night. Meaning, no one was there and all of the employees were standing behind the counter doing the crossword. The few people that did trickle in during the early hours were mostly single guys buying milk (boys in athletic clothes always buy milk, it's just what they do I suppose).

These single guys didn't have the same attitude as the usual milk-boys did though. Each one had a sad look on their face and when I would give my typical "Have a good night!" at the end of the transaction, all I got was a shrug in return. Not even a smile or a "Right back-atcha".

One boy responded to my "Have a good night!" with a "How can I, it's Valentine's Day and I'm alone." Talk about depressing. I stopped working the register after him.


The Creamery was a wasteland of depressed singles sitting at tables the whole night. Up until around nine when all of the people who DID have Valentines finished their dates and came in for some dessert. These couples could not keep their hands off each other! The sight was a like a slap-in-the-face that I was at work and not with my boyfriend, while at the same time being completely revolting.

Let's be real here, high school kids work at the Creamery. They don't need to see your PDA.

So between depressed milk-boys and overly loving couples, I am able to draw out this conclusion:

Creamery + Valentines Day = Disaster

Milkshake Hate

I decided for this week's post that instead of focusing on a single ice cream flavor, I'm going to write about a form of ice cream that I hate. Milkshakes.

Don't get me wrong, I love drinking (eating, slurping?) milkshakes, but making them is another story all together.

Any ice cream flavor at the Creamery can be made into a shake (except for "no sugar-added" flavors because they have an artificial sweetener in them that make people sick if they eat too much, and milkshakes have a lot of ice cream in them). This means that all of the flavors that are just TOO hard can be made into shakes. And as I said before, there's a lot of ice cream in a shake.

So after the ordeal of scooping the ice cream, it is likely that the scooper will be unlucky enough to have to make the shake. Though sometimes there's a designated "Shake Person" who will make all of the scooped shakes, but you have to be really lucky for that to happen.

First, a little cup of milk is added to the ice cream in the metal shake container. After the shake is put onto the "Shake Machine." It takes about two, two and a half minutes to complete the shake. Which means two minutes of constant twisting of the cup, which freezes your fingers, and a horrible screeching sound that happens when the cup gets too close to the metal blender.

Most of the time I don't have to make shakes, because I find something else to keep me busy (dishes, register, mixing sprinkles). But when I do it's quite a miserable time.

The worst thing about milkshakes though is that someone, or a group of someones, will ALWAYS come in and order them five minutes before we close. This means that:

• the dishwasher has to wash the scooper(s) and milkshake cup(s) (when the dishes were already done)
• the person making the shakes can't do their other job (cleaning glass, wipe down of freezers, etc.)
• the person who just finished cleaning the shake machine five minutes ago (and believe me, that is a job that takes a lot of time) has to clean it all over again

Moral of the story is: milkshakes are delicious and people love them, and we love to make them for you as long as it's not five minutes until close :)

Chocolate Flakes, Pieces and Swirl

I've got a confession to make: I HATE chocolate ice cream. I know it's a weird thing to hate, believe me every time I tell someone they look at me like I'm crazy and then of course they ask me why. But the truth is, I just think it tastes bad. And the whole brown color thing? Yeah, not appetizing at all. So this will be the first, and last time I talk about chocolate ice cream in this blog.

Since I'm only doing one week of chocolate (and the creamery probably has 20+ chocolate flavors alone) I had to choose the one that causes me the most pain. Ironically, the name of the flavor is Death by Chocolate.

Death by Chocolate could not have anymore chocolate in it if the Creamery people tried. Not only is it chocolate ice cream, but it also has chocolate flakes AND fudge pieces AND chocolate swirl, aka, my worst nightmare. The sight of it repulses me, but clearly I am alone in this because it has got to be one of the most popular flavors. It reaches all age demographics. Little kids, college kids, parents, and super old people all enjoy the flavor. I guess being a chocolate-lover starts at a young age, I wouldn't know. So because everyone loves this flavor, it is ordered all the time which means it has to be scooped all the time, which is a task that I actively avoid.

When an ice cream is ordered at the Creamery, it is the person at the first (out of three) freezers job to "call out" what was ordered so that whoever is closest to the flavor can scoop it. To simplify the calling, the Caller (that's what we call them, because we're super creative) abbreviates the ice cream flavor and then adds "dish" at the end, if the ice cream is in a dish, if it's a cone, just the flavor is called. So in a case where Death by Chocolate is ordered, which, as I said, is all the time, the Caller yells "Death" or "Death Dish". Of course, every person who orders this flavor finds that hilarious and laughs and then turns to the person next to them and says something along the lines of "I knew my family was trying to get rid of me! A Dish of Death!" Man people are clever.

After these annoying comments are made, it never fails to happen, it's time for the ice cream to be scooped. If I am the one unfortunate enough to have to do it, I instantly am in a bad mood. It's a justified bad mood though, because Death by Chocolate on the scoopability scale? Yeah it's a 5. Terrible! I know, but it gets worse! As I struggle to get the scooper to break into the hard-as-a-rock ice cream, my arms become COVERED in chocolate sauce from the sides of the three gallon. You may be thinking: man that's disgusting and how can this happen all the time? Well yes, it is disgusting, but don't worry, no one eats the stuff that's stuck on the sides. It goes in the trash when the three gallon is empty. And how can I always get covered in it? I honestly have no idea. But every single time I scoop the deathly flavor it is at least half-way gone so the sides are just begging me to have my arms squish into them.

I'm truly sorry if I offended anyone with my hatred of chocolate ice cream, or repulsed anyone by telling them my arm gets covered in their favorite flavor. All I can say is, ice cream is delicious...unless it's chocolate.

Ice Cream Song

Bitter for Me, Sweet for You

Customer: "Do you have Mint Chocolate Chip?"

Me: "Yes, but it's called Bittersweet Mint."


Customer: "Oh...that's the green one, right?"


Me: "Right."

I thought for my first post I should write about an ice cream flavor that I like, but not my favorite one just yet. I have to have a little bit of suspense, you know, add some drama. So I chose Bittersweet Mint.

Bittersweet Mint is a favorite of customers young and old. I mean where can you go wrong? Green, mint flavored ice cream with chocolate chips sounds pretty perfect to me. I am rather partial to the flavor myself.

But as delicious as this flavor is, it can really put me into a bad mood. First of all, whenever someone orders it the next five people in line will order it too, leaving me stranded with a scoop in my hand scooping cone after cone. And if scooping the same flavor over and over isn't bad enough, it is practically unscoopable.

I give it a Scoopability rating of: 4

So while you're enjoying the sweetness of your delicious green ice cream, I am being bitter about the pain in my wrist caused by the repetitive motion and the too hard ice cream.