local ice cream

I moved to Minnesota in 1998, and was surprised by the ready availability of great local ice cream and frozen treats. Why should a state that's cold for seven months of the year specialize in a warm-weather treat? Soon, I stopped wondering why and just appreciated it.

It's not so mysterious, though. Minnesota's dairy farms provide about 40,000 jobs, and produced 776 million pounds of fresh milk in April 2010. (Wisconsin produces about three times as much: 2.2 billion pounds!) In addition to milk, dairy farmers help to provide cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream and other frozen treats. (In the U.S., dairy usually refers to milk produced by cows, but worldwide, dairy is produced by sheep, goats, yaks, buffalo, and horses.)

photo credit: Zazzle.com"May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.”

Leave it to an Irish blessing to anticipate overindulgence! Though my Morgan roots came originally from Scotland, my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother – O’Keefe and Brennan respectively – handed down some definite ideas about how an Irish lass such as myself might honor St. Patrick.

Tucked quietly beside Turtle Bread near the corner of 48th and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Pumphouse Creamery doesn't really scream for ice cream; rather, like its owner Barb Zapzalka, Pumphouse wins you over one locally made, organic, scrumptious ice cream scoop - and, as of this spring, one locally made, hearty, 9-grain organic cone - at a time.