A Chilly and Sometimes Slightly Drizzly but Heartwarming Day at the Market

The woman with the Eastern European accent who I mentioned a couple weeks ago on the blog let me keep the change from three pints and told me I have to figure out what I'm going to do next with my business because she and her family love my ice cream so much. That interaction warmed my heart on a day that was pretty miserable weatherwise and my lowest ever saleswise. This woman, who didn't have her family with her on Sunday but had an adorable German shepherd pup in tow, is the type of customer who makes me determined to bring Huge Hound to the next level. Whatever that may be.

I also appreciate the support of my friends Carl and Betsy, who have been great about increasing awareness of my products, both on Facebook and at the Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers' Market, where Carl is a volunteer. (And, as I've noted on the blog before, he's a trustee of the HLT, too.)

Matt from Hand Picked Farm, whose produce I regularly buy at the Sergeantsville Farmer's Market on Saturdays, stopped by and bought a VFD. (Anise Hyssop, if I remember correctly.)

I lowered my price to $6 a container and will continue to do so for the next two weeks to unload as much of the stockpile of frozen desserts in my chest freezer as I can.

I neglected to mention in my previous post that, as in my most recently made Chocolate-Ginger Vegan Frozen Dessert, I increased the amount of the more subtly flavored flax milk and decreased the amount of the more flavorful hemp milk in my Pomegranate VFD. There was no noticeable effect on the texture of the product. Hemp milk is higher in fat than flax milk, which is why I had been using more of the former in my recipe. But both of them are downright watery in comparison with the refined coconut oil, which gets 100% of its calories from fat. When I started experimenting with my VFD base last winter, I used only the two nondairy milks at first and quickly realized I needed to increase the fat content if the mouthfeel was ever going to mimic that of dairy ice cream.

I sold the last three of my Vanilla Fudge Ice Creams to my first two customers and also the last Peach Melba VFD. After dinner Sunday night, I ate a few more spoonfuls from the last container of Vanilla Fudge I have here at the house. My Dad has the only other remaining container of Huge Hound VF at his house. He said he'll take some to my Granny at her nursing home at some point.

Here are a few pics to finish off this post. First up is a pair of sphinxes at the driveway entrance to the market:

My signage:

I used Desirée's new name for Beet-Nutmeg. I sold one, and someone else said he'd buy a pint next week, when he had more cash.

Finally, here's Chesney, who was tired out after meeting some people and dogs at the market:

She belongs to Chris and A.R., of Stony Brook Gardens, my neighbors most weeks at the market. She's 11 1/2 years old. A.R. said she still wants to get in the truck with him whenever he's going somewhere. I petted on her for a while.