The heist of the century! Or at least of 2018. Seven days, 1,500 miles, and 8 million calories later, I attempt to squeeze every last delicious drop of chocolate milk from the state of Pennsylvania, which is no easy task-- and not for the uninitiated, unprepared, or undetermined. Unkempt is ok.
Wisconsin is America's Dairyland, and produces some excellent chocolate milk-- but only one can be the best. Would Lamers Dairy live up to the hype?
A visit to beautiful Sassy Cow Creamery in Columbus, Wisconsin, a brief tasting of some of the other chocolate milk available in the Madison area, and the skunk drops in for a quick cameo.
Wisconsin is known as 'America's Dairyland' and it's not impossible to see why-- the streets are veritably paved with cheese curds and chocolate milk is rarely (if ever) beyond arms reach. Here we hit up the Saturday farmers market and UW Madison campus for some Babcock Hall Dairy chocolate milk and a touch of nostalgia.
The future of chocolate milk is indulgently bright, and led by innovators like Traderspoint Creamery of Zionsville, Indiana. How can 'less' be more, and 'more' be...more-- at the same time?
(spoiler alert: less volume, more flavor)
Both Warren Buffett and Burbach's Countryside Dairy chocolate milk can be found in Omaha-- however, only one of them is delicious. Would the search yield any other (previously untried) chocolate milk?
South Dakota is known for lots of things, including Stensland Family Farms Creamery, Wall Drug, and Adam Vinatieri. Oh yeah, and there's Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Deadwood, the Corn Palace, Sturgis, and the Badlands National Park to name a few more. We go from one side of the state to the other in search of increasingly elusive chocolate milk, discovering a few universal truths along the way, such as why cut cantaloupe and road trips don't go well together.
Let’s face it— ‘eleven hundred’ is not nearly as sexy sounding as an even 1,000, despite being 10% larger, and theoretically more impressive from a counting-stats perspective. Once you cross the 4-figure threshold though, the next legitimate ‘milestone’ seems to be 1,500— it just works that way. I can assure you that 1,500 will be achieved but not without significant amounts of time, effort, and gluttony.
From Missoula, Montana to Devils Tower, Wyoming, we left very few stones unturned in the continual quest for chocolate milk. What little was found turned out to be uniquely memorable and satisfyingly congruent with its surroundings.
Nearly 1,000 miles separate San Jose from Spokane, and we picked up some phenomenal local chocolate milks along the way representing California, Oregon, and Washington. Sometimes the gathering is as much fun as the tasting, though perhaps not in this case.
