Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread
Our first stop was at a cute building near Logan High School which was landscaped with native plants. That was my first clue that these guys were probably more environmentally-conscious than the average person. I was right. The building was made with wood taken from an old bridge over the Great Salt Lake. The yeast was wild yeast rather than commercial yeast, which meant it took 3 times as long for dough to rise. The flour was organic and local. The lighting was natural. They had taken every effort to make their bread the same way it had been made for thousands of years.
Except maybe the oven. Imported from Italy, 40,000 pounds of cement . . . it was pretty cool.
And the bread was delicious. So were their pastries.
Bluebird
We made a quick stop at the Bluebird candy store. They didn't do tours on Mondays, so we didn't plan on that, but we still tried to make it feel like a tour.
"What should we get?" we asked, hoping to hear which kind of chocolate was their pride and joy, which may then lead to a story of the history of Bluebird. The lady behind the counter responded with a friendly smile but no soliloquy. We looked around, trying to find things to ask about. I could see some machinery in the back, and by the machinery were the biggest chocolate bunnies I had ever seen.
"What do you make those for?" I asked.
"Oh, we just make them for fun. For Easter." Of course.
On the counter, there was a toolbox with chocolate hammers and screwdrivers and the like. Come to think of it, I should have taken a picture. Oops.
"This is cool. Do you use a mold to make these?"
"Yeah." Of course.
Well, since our tour wasn't happening, we just decided to grab a few chocolates and go. And they were good.
Aggie Cheese Tour
After lunch with friends, we came home and got ready for the Aggie Cheese Tour. When it was about 10 or so minutes before we needed to leave to get there on time, I realized that it had been a few hours since Joseph had eaten, and that when he woke up he would want to eat. So I hurried and began to pump. He woke up just then and I began to feed him at the same time. Problem was, it was one of his rare times where he spent more time screaming than eating. So between burping him, putting him back on, calming him down, and trying to pump enough so that we could dump him on my mom to finish eating, we ended up leaving about 5 minutes later than we would have liked.
"But it's okay," I said. "I mean, all of these other tours have been really flexible, some self-guided. We've been the only ones there. I'm sure that being 5 minutes late won't make a huge difference."
We got there, realized that we weren't sure where to park since it was a Monday and school was in session, went around the student parking lot and then realized there was actual Aggie Ice Cream visitor parking. When we were turning in, we had to wait for two other cars to pull in ahead of us.
"Wouldn't it be funny if those two cars parked in the last two visitor parking spots?" I asked. They did. So then we had to find other parking (we decided to take a risk and park in non-visitor parking in the Aggie Ice Cream parking lot because the parking lot was mostly empty anyway). We then followed a very old and slow man into the store. When we finally got to talk to someone about the tour, we found out that yes, where we parked would be fine, but no, we were too late for the tour. If we joined in now we would mess up the entire world somehow.
"Just come back tomorrow," she said. "Okay," we responded and we grumbled the whole way home. By the end I was mostly annoyed that we hadn't fought harder. If we had said "We're not coming back tomorrow. We're never coming back. We're moving across the country and this is our only chance to ever see how you make cheese (never mind that we've been to 2 other cheese places)," we may have gotten in. But whatever. I decided in my bitterness that I would never patronize Aggie Ice Cream again.
Cox Honeyland
Well, the Aggie Cheese Non-Tour had left a bitter taste in our mouths, so we decided that we had to try once more for a tour. And what better way to get rid of a bitter taste than with honey?
So off we went to Cox Honeyland down the road just a few miles, making jokes along the way about Cache Valley being the proverbial land of milk and honey. (The other pun I'm proud of was unintentional: "I feel so cultured going to all these cheese places.")
Once there, we sat down and watched an awesome movie about how bees pollinate and make honey. And by awesome I mean one of the kids had a mullet. "It's kind of geared for 6th graders," the lady in the gift shop told us. But Kevin and I both thought we would have made fun of the video in 6th grade, too. Still, it was educational and cool to learn about the bees.
When it was done, we went to a glass frame where we were able to watch the bees at work. We saw them spitting the nectar into the honeycomb, dropping pollen, and being kind of cute in an odd sort of way. I never thought I would say that honeybees looked cute.
"They're actually pretty tame," the gift shop lady told us. "They've been domesticated for thousands of years. Farmers generally kill off the aggressive ones. They'll only sting you if you step on them or agitate them." Who knew? (That doesn't go for wild honeybees, though.)
And then we got to sample different kinds of honey. Even though it makes perfect sense, I'd never stopped to think that honey tastes different based on what the bees are pollinating. They were all really good, though.
And thus ended the Great Cache Valley Food Tour. No Mr. Rogers-esque factory tours, but still fun.
Oh, and since every post can be improved with a picture of a baby, here:
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| I kind of love his frowny faces. Until they turn into screaming faces. |
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