In Which There Is Ice Cream for Breakfast!

"The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream." - Wallace Stevens.

I have not spoken much about this on these pages, but the university where I work makes some pretty awesome ice cream. Back in the 1980s when I was a Penn State undergrad, I lived in North Halls, and the Creamery was located at Borland Lab, less than a block away. So I went there often, even for breakfast!

Eventually, they renamed it to become the Berkey Creamery, and in 2006, they moved the operation to the new Rodney Erickson Building, near East Halls, which is its present location. The operation has expanded and the Creamery has many more products available than they did in the early days, when it was primarily just milk and ice cream and cheese.

I was walking past the Creamery on this sunny morning, on my way to a meeting on campus with the new copyright librarian, when I saw the sign on the window: Celebrating 150 years! And I figured - hey, I'm down with that. And I was hungry; starving, in fact. And so I went in and had a dish of ice cream for breakfast; yay, me!

According to the Creamery's website, "a herd of over 200 Holsteins is milked twice daily" to provide the milk that makes the ice cream. I love the thought of that: lots and lots of cows, chomping contentedly away on these green hills and valleys, quietly but happily making the milk that makes our ice cream. (Is this world a magic place, or what?)

When you walk in the front door of the Creamery, the first thing you will see is a sign with a list of the day's available flavors. On this day, here was the list, according to the sign:

Sir Paul McAdamia
Bittersweet mint
Black walnut frozen yogurt
Butter pecan
Chocolate
Chocolate chip cookie dough
Chocolate frozen yogurt
Cookies - n - cream
Coconut chip
Death by chocolate
Happy happy joy joy
Horchata
Keeney beany chocolate
Lemon sherbet
No sugar added vanilla
Orange sherbet
Palmer Mousseum with almonds
Peachy Paterno
Peanut butter swirl
Pumpkin pie
Russ "digs" roseberry
Strawberry
Vanilla
WPSU coffee break
(You can see the list of all flavors here.)

Around the holidays, I am always hoping to see my personal favorite, peppermint stick, but alas, they did not have it on this day. You can see from the list, though, that it was going to be a difficult choice. And so I started by narrowing it down to just a few of my own favorites: butter pecan, cookies - n - cream, peachy Paterno, peanut butter swirl.

In the end, butter pecan won! And you can see my dish of ice cream sitting on the table beneath that blue umbrella. Doesn't it look delicious? It was! And I ate it happily as I made my way across campus to what turned out to be (and I kid you not) a really fabulous and exciting meeting.

And to think, it all started here at the Berkey Creamery. What a great way to begin the day, with the breakfast of champions! :-)  And a shout-out and a great big happy 150th birthday to Penn State's Creamery!

The soundtrack: Sarah McLachlan, with Ice Cream.