By Christy Solo – Editor
The first Saturday in February is National Have Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, and we’re on board with that. We’d argue it should be just…every Saturday.
While there is no shortage of ice cream options in the frozen food section of your local grocer – because this is All Things Oregon, we’re going to explore Oregon’s own Tillamook and Umpqua ice creams.
Not to play favorites, we’ll go in alphabetical order, so let’s explore Tillamook first.
Fun fact: Tillamook isn’t just one factory owned by one person/family/corporation. “Tillamook” is the Tillamook County Creamery Association which was formed in 1909 by several of the Tillamook area’s cheesmakers.
Currently Tillamook Cheese employs more than 800 workers and is partnered with over 90 farms, most of which are in Tillamook County.
There is a central visitor’s center for all your cheesy needs which includes a café, restaurant, store and a viewing room to see “how cheese gets made.”
Before we dig our scoop into Tillamook’s ice cream options, here’s another fun fact: What’s up with that ship on all their labels?
The ship is the Morning Star and in the early days, that’s how the group of Tillamook cheesmakers got their products to “places that weren’t Tillamook.” The collective began loosely in the mid 1800s, they had the cows and the lush grass to make tasty dairy products, but they had no roads to the “outside world.”
They opted to get together and build/buy a ship and sail all that cheesy goodness from Tillamook Bay to the Port of Portland. While the farmers were great at farming, and cheese, they were not great at sailing and their first two ships wrecked before the Morning Star (built from bits of other boats) finally got them up and sailing.
Now, back to ice cream.
Tillamook ice cream comes in a few forms, family size or pint containers and for those who like ice cream on a stick – bars.
Before we dig into some of the more famous flavors, you need to know Tillamook currently has two Limited Edition flavors: Strawberries & Cream and Sugar Cookie. Generally the limited edition flavors sell out within seven months of their creation so if you want to sink your teeth into real sugar cookie dough chunks for your National Have Ice Cream for Breakfast Day – hit the store now.
Tillamook has many flavors of ice cream, we won’t list all of them, but we’ll hit the highlights.
First, if it’s variety you crave – or if you have a fave flavor – bigger just may be better. There are 10 flavors available in pint-sized; chocolate chip cookie and cookies and cream are the newest pint flavors.
When it comes to family sized cartons, Tillamook has 31 Flavors beat by one. There are 32 flavors available including the two current limited-edition flavors.
For chocoholics, Tillamook’s classic Mudslide (chocolate ice cream with a ribbon of fudge and chocolaty chips) is available in either size, but for the full chocolate collection which also includes dark chocolate cookies and cream, chocolate hazelnut, brownie batter (yes, please!) and German chocolate cake – you’ll need to go fam sized.
There are four ice cream bar flavors, mudslide (of course!), cookies & cream, mint chocolate chip and vanilla bean.
Plan your Feb. 7 breakfast accordingly.
Now, let’s learn about the Umpqua Dairy and their ice cream options.
Umpqua Dairy was founded in 1931 by Ormand Feldkamp and Herb Sullivan. Back then it was them, a 1929 delivery truck and an icehouse by the railroad tracks in Roseburg.
They’ve grown a lot since then, but a fire in1974 was almost the end. However, with the cooperative efforts of other dairies, Umpqua was able to continue deliveries to customers. Other dairies who lent their facilities to Umpqua were Darigold, Echo Spring Diary, Dutch Girl and Crater Lake Creamery. Umpqua employees used the other dairies’ facilities at night until their main facility was rebuilt.
Now Umpqua has several facilities and distribution centers with products sold in nine western states, they even manufacture and deliver Dairy Queen’s mix for those classic DQ soft serve cones, and they are still a family owned business.
As with Tillamook, you will find a larger variety of Umpqua ice cream in the larger packaging. They offer 8 flavors in pint-sized and 29 flavors in the 1.5 qt. cartons.
Umpqua also has sherbet and best of all for folks with health issues such as high cholesterol or diabetes, Umpqua has no-fat frozen yogurt (in vanilla…or vanilla if you’re feeling adventurous) and reduced fat no sugar added ice cream in strawberry cheesecake and…you guessed it! Vanilla.
For folks with dietary restrictions even having “just” vanilla is an awesome thing, the reduced fat strawberry cheesecake is a huge bonus flavor.
For those who can eat ice cream with abandon, we’ll highlight a few of those 29 flavors. Umpqua has your chocoholic side covered with chocolate brownie thunder: dark chocolate ice cream with brownie bits and chocolate ganache.
They also have some fanciful flavors such as lemon bar and cotton candy.
We’ll leave you with our vote for Umpqua’s clear winner in the ice cream category: Huckleberry Cheesecake. Rich cheesecake ice cream with a huckleberry marble and graham cracker cheesecake pieces. That’s like Oregon in a bowl (or cone, or straight out of the carton).
Sadly, Tillamook has discontinued their Mountain Huckleberry ice cream, but they do still make the yogurt.
