Who Wants Ice Cream?
I’m just having the day from hell. Can I just go home and go back to bed? At least this evening should be better. I’m going to taste ice cream – and get paid for it.
Not too far up the road from Sewer City is Wells Dairy, in the town of Le Mars. (“The Ice Cream Capital of the World!”) Wells Dairy is the nice people who make Wells Blue Bunny ice cream – Bomb Pops, Champs cones, Hi-Lites, you name it. A couple of years ago I answered an ad for sensory participants to evaluate products – try this new flavor, tell us what you think. In return, you get the equivalent of about $10 an hour.
It’s not a bad gig, and you get to try some new flavors of ice cream in the process. Well, usually it was ice cream. Some nights it turned out to be something like cottage cheese or yogurt, which are okay one on one, but when you have to try 10 – 15 different samples in the course of two hours, it gets a little old. But tonight it’s definitely ice cream. Much easier to get down than cottage cheese.
Here’s how it usually works – they give you a tiny sample of ice cream, labeled with a 3 digit number. Could be Blue Bunny, could be Haagan Daaz, could be Hy-Vee store brand. They won’t tell, so don’t ask. You then taste it and rate it on appearance, color, texture, flavor, right mix of ingredients, etc. When you’re finished you can either spit it out (into a plastic cup – disgusting as all hell) or down the hatch! You then have a salt-free cracker and some luke-warm water to wash the last flavor out of your mouth before trying the next one. With any luck you'll go home with a really good sugar buzz and not a stomach full of small curd low-fat cottage cheese.
Sometimes you only try 5 flavors of ice cream per night, but sometimes it’s 15. On occasion it might be 5 different brands of vanilla ice cream – which do you like the most? (Truth: most taste alike.) Sometimes it’s flavors you’ve never imagined – we tried a hot chili ice cream once that really wasn’t that bad.
I used to evaluate quite a bit for them, but they haven’t called me in months. I’m not sure how or why I fell out of their good graces – I certainly don’t think I did anything to insult them, but you never know. Part of the problem is that the lady who used to run the sensory panels went on maternity leave, and the new woman in charge doesn’t know me. So I was mighty surprised to receive an e-mail inviting me to come tonight. I’m not sure why they did it that way or if they realize it’s me, but I guess we’ll find out.
So it’ll be interesting to see what happens tonight. Hopefully it’s not cottage cheese flavored ice cream.
Not too far up the road from Sewer City is Wells Dairy, in the town of Le Mars. (“The Ice Cream Capital of the World!”) Wells Dairy is the nice people who make Wells Blue Bunny ice cream – Bomb Pops, Champs cones, Hi-Lites, you name it. A couple of years ago I answered an ad for sensory participants to evaluate products – try this new flavor, tell us what you think. In return, you get the equivalent of about $10 an hour.
It’s not a bad gig, and you get to try some new flavors of ice cream in the process. Well, usually it was ice cream. Some nights it turned out to be something like cottage cheese or yogurt, which are okay one on one, but when you have to try 10 – 15 different samples in the course of two hours, it gets a little old. But tonight it’s definitely ice cream. Much easier to get down than cottage cheese.
Here’s how it usually works – they give you a tiny sample of ice cream, labeled with a 3 digit number. Could be Blue Bunny, could be Haagan Daaz, could be Hy-Vee store brand. They won’t tell, so don’t ask. You then taste it and rate it on appearance, color, texture, flavor, right mix of ingredients, etc. When you’re finished you can either spit it out (into a plastic cup – disgusting as all hell) or down the hatch! You then have a salt-free cracker and some luke-warm water to wash the last flavor out of your mouth before trying the next one. With any luck you'll go home with a really good sugar buzz and not a stomach full of small curd low-fat cottage cheese.
Sometimes you only try 5 flavors of ice cream per night, but sometimes it’s 15. On occasion it might be 5 different brands of vanilla ice cream – which do you like the most? (Truth: most taste alike.) Sometimes it’s flavors you’ve never imagined – we tried a hot chili ice cream once that really wasn’t that bad.
I used to evaluate quite a bit for them, but they haven’t called me in months. I’m not sure how or why I fell out of their good graces – I certainly don’t think I did anything to insult them, but you never know. Part of the problem is that the lady who used to run the sensory panels went on maternity leave, and the new woman in charge doesn’t know me. So I was mighty surprised to receive an e-mail inviting me to come tonight. I’m not sure why they did it that way or if they realize it’s me, but I guess we’ll find out.
So it’ll be interesting to see what happens tonight. Hopefully it’s not cottage cheese flavored ice cream.
posted by Tommy G at
2:28 PM
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