Scoop Friday: Apple Valley Creamery – Cow Trax
Joined by my parents (AKA Nonna and G-Pa) and niece, Ella, I traveled down Route 15 to this week’s Scoop Friday destination. Along the way, we drove past a few seedy-looking diners and a few even seedier-looking roadside motels with rooms likely utilized for any of the typical heinous motel activities beginning with the letter H: Homicide, Heroin, or Hookers. (Sometimes, all three!) As we continued our drive further south, we were greeted by the official Adams County welcoming party consisting of apple orchards, ads for the upcoming gun shows, signs for gun bingo, and streets named after local gun clubs.
Upon our arrival at the farm, I immediately noticed how much larger the sky feels in the country. Tranquility envelops you in these parts as time begins to slow down. The fresh air, however, is not for the weak of olfactory as the smell of cow shit simultaneously inundates your nostrils. Holding her nose, my profound and precocious 23-month-old niece aptly noted, “Ew! Stinky cows!”
Originally, we planned on taking a tour of the facility and attending a meet-and-greet event with the aforementioned hellaciously-odorous Holsteins, but we needed to modify our plans to just an ice cream-and-milk-acquiring experience after learning the additional dairy excursion led by milkmaids to exhibit how the milk is made would have set us back $50. Maybe next year I’ll finally get to meet trans icon Otis.
Little Ella at least found some free entertainment that both thrilled and frightened her in the form of a switch-operated green tractor ride located in the interior of the creamery.
As we waited in line, I snickered at the sight of raw milk for sale situated centrally inside a cooler door. I considered buying and adding some to my frozen treat to provide a more authentic taste, but I feared my nickname would change from Ev Dog to Ev Coli. After my dad discovered his coveted half gallon glass container of whole non-raw milk fresh outta the utter and seamlessly sent through a pasteurization process that likely skirts safety procedures, we ordered our midday desserts. While Nonna enjoyed a dish of chocolate marshmallow and Ella shared a delicious dish of vanilla with G-Pa, I opted for the country folk favorite, Cow Trax.
This flavor evolved from its Moose Tracks ancestor by making peanut butter the focal point of its mound’s core while retaining the classic PB cups crust and shedding its fudge ripple mantle. As an advocate of the peanut butter and chocolate alliance, it’s not surprising that I was delighted by its taste. What did catch me of guard, however, was the scoop’s crisp yet airy essence. Midway through my medium-sized dish, I lost enthusiasm for the overly-peanut butter taste and felt that the absence of a third element like a fudge ripple resulted in a glaring miscue. At the end of the day though, it ain’t much but it’s an honest scoop.
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