Hello, and welcome to more of my rantings in this edition of Mad Maggie's Ice Cream Email Newsletter -- now informally known as "MMICEN" among the digerati (...the more well informed internet users ;^)

Our tiny little stand is rounding into shape. I fixed our roadside sign lights, so people can actually tell that we're open now. I've repaired our picnic tables that the snowplows seemingly used for target practice over the winter. Our flavor lineup is just about in mid-summer form. And by the time you read this, our new soft serve machine should be up and running, and our new awning should be up. [Late update: They're both up!]

The awning is a funny story that illustrates what I'm up against. When we decided over the winter that we just couldn't get through another season with that battered collection of rags that passed as our old awning, I knew that choosing a new fabric was going to be a headache.

Maggie has a way of dodging all decision making responsibilities on things like this, then griping later when she doesn't like what I've chosen. So I decided to take the sneaky approach of staying out of the way -- I told her that the choice of awning fabric was entirely up to her. A month later, with our season was fast approaching, she hadn't done anything to get this started, so I had to jump in and force her to make a decision.

I dragged her into the kitchen one February night, and we went through every single fabric option that the awning company offered. I tried my hardest not to influence her decision in any way, other than steering her away from a couple of the lighter colored ones -- the oak trees in our parking lot aren't kind to white canvas...

After looking through all of the fabric swatches, Maggie was adamant on her choice, one that was mostly red, with yellow and green stripes. (Sunbrella's "Hartwell Fiesta", if I remember correctly...) OK, so I phoned the awning company, and told them the decision. They promised me that they'd have the awning up for April 1st (yeah, right...)

About a week later, I stumbled across an online tool that creates an image of an awning in your fabric of your choice, so I entered the fabric code Maggie had chosen and printed out the resulting picture. Looked good enough to me, but I have no talent for judging these things. I left the image on the kitchen table and pretty much forgot about it.

Maybe a week later, I casually mentioned that I hoped that the new awning would be ready in time for our opening. "Yeah, that'd be nice", Maggie replied, "By the way, what was that awful picture you left on the kitchen table last week anyway? You didn't choose *that* one, did you?"

When I told her that, yes, *that* was the fabric that *she* had chosen, she denied it -- no way would she have chosen that color! So I guess the story is going to be "Steve chose the awning fabric".

Unless it looks good. Then it'll have been her choice all along.

I'm sure the awning will be just fine in any event.

Summer T's

I wrote about this in the last newsletter, and the story is just like the one above -- I got tired of waiting for Maggie to make a decision, so the T-shirts this year are pretty much all my doing. If you like them or hate them, blame me!

In any event, they're here! I chose a bunch of different bright colors and adult sizes, hopefully there's something that everyone will be happy with. The shirts are embroidered on the front, and silk screened on the back. The standard T is a "Hanes Beefy T", and the women's model is an "American Apparel Ribbed T", both of which are high quality fabrics, so with the embroidering and silk screening, they're not cheap.

Still, we'll sell them to you for roughly our cost, which is about $14 per shirt.

If you want these in children's sizes, please let me know as I'll likely put in an order for kids sizes toward the start of May. If I have a rough idea of who is interested, it'll help me get the right quantity.

Nice Safety Idea

Last week, a woman who had a couple of small rug rats with her approached me in the parking lot and pointed out something that I hadn't noticed before. The short fence that runs along the street in front of our stand ends right about at our sign, but there's nothing beyond it to stop small children from running from our grassy area into the street. She asked me if we could possibly extend the fence a few sections to protect against this.

I thought that was a great idea. With my own kids being older, I tend not to look at things with an eye toward what might be dangerous to toddlers, so I really appreciated her pointing this out to me.

A funny little side note: When I asked our landlord if he'd allow me to extend the fence, his response was "Just put up a sign that says you're not responsible."

What the heck has happened to our society, when the first reaction to a dangerous situation is to "cover your butt so you don't get sued"? Does anyone think I'd feel *better* about myself if some little kid ran into the street and got hurt, but I had a sign there, so I could argue that it wasn't my fault? Amazing to me that peoples' minds are conditioned to work this way. I think Mark Twain had it right "First thing we oughta do is round up all the lawyers, and shoot them!"

In any event, we'll have the fence extended in the next week or so.

As always, should you ever notice something like this that we could improve on, I'd love to hear about it.

Thieves

Running a little business like this provides an interesting view of the general public. We meet lots of interesting, kind, wonderful people, and it's a fun part of the business.

Then there are the tiny minority who make you really mad.

Last fall, I was at Home Depot, and noticed some garden benches that were marked down for clearance. I decided to pick one up for the grass area. I put it together, and set it out on the lawn last September.

This spring, when we went to open, I noticed the bench was gone. I asked the flower shop folks if maybe they had moved it into storage for the winter, but no, they hadn't.

The money isn't a big deal -- I think the bench cost $45 or so. But it astounds me that someone could be so low as to steal a simple bench like this. And it's not like it was stolen by kids, as it was fairly heavy, someone with a truck had to make the conscious decision to come by when the flower shop was closed, and load it onto their truck.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that there are people like this out there, but it really makes me steam. I sure hope there's a monster splinter on that bench that gets the rat that stole it right in the butt!

Postcards from the Edge

One of my team members went on a family vacation last week, and I asked her to send me a postcard. We got the postcard, and the message on it read:

Having a great time.
Where am I again?

Yes, it was from one of my blondes.

Flavor News

A woman came to the window this week asking for Dulce de Leche, which is a flavor we made quite a bit of over our first couple of seasons, but probably only made it once early last year.

"Yeah", I replied, "I'll probably make that in the next few weeks...".

"You told me that *three* times last year!" she laughed.

OK, so sometimes I get a little optimistic in forecasting the amount of time I'll have to make ice cream. I dug out a jar of the flavoring, and we now have Dulce de Leche on the menu board. I don't know how long it'll last, but at least it's there!

Last year, we made a flavor we called "Brownie Blast", which was Brownie batter ice cream with chocolate chips, chunks of fudgy brownies, and some fudgy, er... fudge. Too much fudge for me, but the brownie lovers really went for it, and we sold a ton of it.

During the winter, I had a discussion on our little Yahoo ice cream chat group with some others in the business, and the subject of making ice cream from brownie mix came up. Someone pointed out that not all cake mixes are safe to use without cooking them first, as they might have raw egg products in them. I contacted the maker of the brownie mix I was using, and sure enough, their brownie mix isn't pasteurized, so they don't recommend using it in ice cream as they rely on it being cooked at oven temperatures to make it completely safe. This is unfortunate, as it *was* a very nice mix -- it not only had a great taste, but had little bits of real chocolate morsels in it that made it even chocolatey-er (if that's a word.)

Until I can find a similar mix that's pasteurized, we won't be making Brownie Blast. But to fill the void for choco-holics, we have two other new chocolate flavors, both making re-appearances from the past.

One of these is Chocolate Peanut Butter, which is chock full of broken up peanut butter cups just like our normal Peanut Butter Cup, but with a chocolate base. The other is one of my personal "flavor of the week" favorites: Big City Brownie -- chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips, a streak of fudge, and nice, big, fresh Walnuts. Yum!

Come on by and ask to try them all, we'll be happy to give you taste samples!

Staff Profile

This edition of the newsletter profiles a special team member -- my son, Michael!

I get a little blinded by being surrounded by my "other kids", the ones who don't live with me, and sometimes Mike gets shortchanged, as he has in this newsletter feature where I *think* I got through nearly everyone on the staff last year, other than my own two kids!

Mike is a senior at Andover High. He likes to skateboard, play video games with his buddies, and annoy the heck out of me by playing his guitar too loud. From the time he was two, he's had a facination with video games -- I can remember bringing him with me to pick up a pizza when he was barely walking, and when I turned to leave he was no where to be found. I tracked him down in the corner, boosted up on milk crate, pretending to operate the joystick of an arcade game that was running through its demo mode.

Mike has taught himself to play guitar, and he's gotten surprisingly good at it (don't tell him I said that though.) He and his friends have a small garage band, and they seem to have fun with it (though the music they prefer sounds a lot like a cat with its tail stuck in a fan if you ask me.)

He has been part of our serving squad since we first opened, and has slowly grown to taking more and more responsibility. This year, he's done well enough that I've promoted him to one of our Team Lead positions, which puts him in the enviable role of being the "boss" over his younger sister, Amanda, and brother, David. Mike is one of the kids who *always* welcomes every customer, and thanks them for coming, so he sets a good model for the rest of the kids.

Mike does a great job of keeping the store running smoothly, and it's been fun (sometimes aggravating, but mostly fun!) to watch him grow into a young adult in this job.

Here's a link to a photo of Mike from last season:

http://madmaggies.com/photos/albums/2005/PJParty/tn/100_3239.JPG.html

If you see him serving you, don't be afraid to embarrass him by telling him you read about him in the newsletter!

Newsletter Coupon

Bring this coupon to the stand, and we'll sell you one of our snazzy new T-shirts for just $12 -- that's a $2 savings off of our cost.

Beware, people have reported that wearing our T's has made them irresistible to members of the opposite sex, as well as to small animals, songbirds, and roaming Yeti. Wear them at your own risk.

That's it for this edition. Thanks for reading, and we sure hope to see you at the store soon!