I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Three years ago we entered our first ice cream competition at the Watertown Farm Show. Being novices at this, we armed ourselves with a borrowed ice cream maker and every imaginable piece of equipment that was necessary to make homemade ice cream. We hauled all the boxes into the Extension Complex, set up, and began the process. We had experimented with various flavors of ice cream the prior week at our Estelline bank location, and with the help of fellow co-workers, came up with the perfect vanilla base and added to that maraschino cherries and almond flavoring. We thought it was sure to be a winner - it was not. We vowed to wow them next year......

On to 2008....... we decided to do a theme of "Pirates" and set up our table with treasure chests, costume jewelry, gold coins, and yes, Cindy and I even donned eye patches, pirate necklaces and bandana's. We meant business, we even purchased a beautiful new electric ice cream maker! If we were to win, we were going to win big! Our ice cream flavor that year was POT O'GOLD Ice cream with crushed malted milk balls, caramel and chocolate flavoring. It was a big hit with the people stopping by our booth to taste test. Would the judges feel the same way? We listened for them to announce th winners over the loudspeaker - and YES, our name was called for 2nd place! Not bad for our second attempt!

And this year? Well, we tried various flavors again and finally decided to go with ULTIMINT Oreo Ice Cream. (Get it? Ultimint to tie to our Ultimate checking account, how creative!)
By now, we considered ourselves pros and were able to pack all our necessary items into one large box to haul to the competition. The ice cream turned out perfect, and after the judges came around to taste test, people attending the Farm Show then got to sample our creation. Many told us ours was the best they had tried out of all the others (too bad there isn't a People's Choice category in the competition) so we were sitting pretty confident by the time they started announcing the winners - "and second place goes to ..................... Reliabank for their Mint Oreo Ice Cream" ok, so we didn't get first but we didn't NOT place either.

I do want to give a big thanks to the Watertown Chamber that hosts this competition each year - they supply the ingredients and presented us with a beautiful plaque (pictured above).

Watch for us in 2010 - who knows what concoction we'll come up with next.

Lisa, Marketing Director

There's nothing wrong with me a little ice cream won't fix. ~Author Unknown