Greetings, and welcome to this week's edition of The Scoop, from Mad Maggie's Ice Cream.

Well, it must be spring, because here's how it seems to go every year: We have two weeks of warm spring-like weather while we sweat to get the store cleaned and ready to open, then we turn on the "OPEN" sign and the temperature immediately drops 20 degrees, and the sun seems to take a three week vacation!

I know it's New England, and we should expect these things, but I really wish that just for once we'd get off to a fast start!

We haven't made a lot of ice cream flavors yet, as we're still waiting out the weather and balancing supply orders with expected sales. Since the sales are practically non-existent with the weather, we're holding the fort on ordering ingredients and filling our freezers.

Hang in there, the forecast shows a chance of decent spring-like weather coming up this weekend, so hopefully we'll be able to kick things up and spring into high gear!

North Andover News

Our new location in North Andover is progressing -- still slower than we had hoped for, but the latest round of plans really looks great, and I'm convinced that the space is going to be wonderful when it's finally completed.

Maggie has been busy working with the interior designer choosing colors and tiles, and I think that work is pretty much done. I've been busy with the equipment planning and ordering, and with dealing with the town approvals, so although real, visible work seems slow, we are making progress, and I expect construction to take off with a bang real soon now.

One disappointing report from this week: I had ordered a new gelato case, and it's too wide to fit into the doorway, so the developer had left the siding off the front of the building so that we could open up the wall and slide the unit in when it arrives. Well, it made it all the way to Dracut late last week -- then someone at the shipping company backed a forklift into it and smashed it! The dealer promises that a replacement will arrive in the middle of this week, so hopefully we'll be able to get it inside, and finish off the front of the building soon.

(Late update: The replacement showed up last night at 11pm, so at the moment, it's an expensive piece of equipment, sitting in my driveway under a blue tarp!)

Summer T's

Yeah, I know it's not summer yet, but it's coming. And so are this year's T-Shirts! Once again this year, I decided that it was better for my sanity if I were to just do the order myself, rather than having Maggie do it and then having to watch her put it off for weeks, and finally have to jump in at the last second and rush to pull a design together.

This system seems to work well -- I haven't once had to sleep on the couch as a result of "t-shirt arguments" in the two seasons I've taken this approach.

I dropped off our order on Tuesday, and hopefully the shirts will be here within the next week. (Now, I need to figure out how I'm going to pay for them...)

This year's design was done by a friend up in Canada who I met through my ice cream chat group. Christine does graphic design for a living, so this year we can officially say that our shirts are "professionally designed".

We're trying something a little different this year, in that I've ordered four different colors -- two girls and two boys. The girls shirts are pink and blue, with a chocolate trim, and the boys shirts are green and blue.

I really like the looks of the design, and I'm eager to see how the shirts look.

We didn't order kids shirt sizes yet, but that'll happen in a couple of weeks, and with it I'm going to try something else.

My friends Greg and Kristi Hansen, of Calabash Creamery in Calabash, NC, told me about something they did last year: They had a special version of their t-shirts printed, on a pink shirt, and added a "Breast Cancer Awareness" ribbon. All of the proceeds from these shirts were donated to breast cancer research. I thought this was a great idea, so we're going to try the same thing this year. When we order the kids shirts, we'll also order a set of bright pink shirts with the ribbon on them.

Hopefully, these are a huge hit and we'll be able to donate a big check to help fight breast cancer. If any of you have a specific breast-cancer related charity that you'd like to suggest we donate through, by all means email me about it!

And come by and buy a shirt!

Flavor News

We currently have about 20 flavors in stock, and are slowly filling out our flavor lineup. Again, if you have a favorite that you don't see yet, don't be bashful about asking the kids at the window to write your flavor on my whiteboard -- I'll make it soon if I can. Vanilla Caramel Turtle got added quickly by this route!

Our newest flavor is one that I've been avoiding making since we first opened: Rum Raisin. I'm not a big drinker, and when I do have a drink, it's normally a beer, not a rum drink, so this has never been high on my list of things to try.

We have quite a few people come to the window -- mostly the older generation, but even some younger folks -- who ask for the "old time" flavors of Rum Raisin, Frozen Pudding, or Indian Pudding. I've always tried to deflect these requests, as I didn't see these flavors as being anything different than what other stands carry. And heck, we've already got 40 or so flavors, why do we need more?

Well, we've got a very nice older couple who come by on most Saturdays for their weekly ice cream, and the gentlemen always asks me for Frozen Pudding or Rum Raisin. So late last summer, I promised him I'd try making it for him sometime this year.

Serendipitously (I always wanted to use that word...!), a friend on my ice cream chat group shared his recipe for Rum Raisin this past autumn, and it's an interesting recipe, using real rum and golden raisins. So, stopped by the local package store, picked up liter of rum, and gave the recipe a try.

The base flavor of this one is a little bit mild, as I soaked the raisins in the rum, and they managed to absorb most of the rum, so I only had a cup or so of strained juice to mix into the base, but when you bite into one of those rum-soaked raisins -- WOW! You know there's real rum in it! Next time, I'll hold back a bit more of the rum for flavoring the base, but I still think it's pretty good. We'll see if the demand is strong enough for this one to make it onto our "regular" flavor list.

B.J.O.T.W:

Another goodie submitted by loyal newsletter reader Tracey:

Subject: FW: Milk bath - a blonde joke

A blonde heard that milk baths would make her beautiful. She left a note for her milkman to leave 25 gallons of milk.

When the milkman read the note, he felt there must be a mistake. He thought she probably meant 2.5 gallons. So he knocked on the door to clarify the point.

The blonde came to the door and the milkman said, "I found your note to leave 25 gallons of milk. Did you mean 2.5 gallons?"

The blonde said, "I want 25 gallons. I'm going to fill my bathtub up with milk and take a milk bath so I can look young and beautiful again."

The milkman asked, "Do you want it pasteurized?"

The blonde said, "No, just past my breasts. I can splash it on my eyes."

Staff News

Our returning staff is clamoring for hours, and I just don't have the hours to give to them due to the lousy weather, so our hiring in North Reading has been slow.

We did start to hire for our North Andover location, and so far we've got five very promising looking new team members for our initial North Andover staff. I'm trying to hire slowly, and because we know that the North Andover location will likely have later hours than our current stand, I'm also trying to hire older kids, so we have two college kids -- one from UMass-Amhearst, one from St. Anselms College, and two North Andover high students on board so far.

We have a thick stack of applications to go through, and we'll likely start hiring in earnest in three or four weeks. I always try to interview applicants in the order of the date that they got their applications in, but sometimes we make an exception.

One example: I got a very funny email from a North Reading teen looking for a summer job, and her last name was familiar -- her grandparents and my parents were best of friends when I was growing up. I contacted her and she came out for an interview and I hired her on the spot, as she's exactly the type of outgoing, funny, polite, eager person we look for for our serving team.

Her family happens to run a farm, and I know her parents all the way back from elementary school (her mom also happens to have been my older sister Cathy's best friend growing up -- I'm sure I must have spent some time as a kid bugging the heck out of her.) So I know she's used to working hard, doing chores around the farm. I think she's going to be a fantastic addition to our team.

Newsletter Coupon

Got a birthday, anniversary, or other special occasion coming up? Why not order a delicious Mad Maggie's ice cream cake and be the hit of the party?

Mention that you saw this coupon in our newsletter, and we'll take $4.00 off the price of any cake!

Well, that's it for this week's edition. Looks like we're in for our first warm, sunny weekend of the season, so round up your friends and family, load them into the car, and come on over! And pray that this nice weather stays around for a while! We sure hope to see you at the stand soon!