Blue Bell Ice Cream and Shiner Bock Beer. Now, that is the breakfast of champions. Oprah used to spend big bucks importing Blue Bell Ice Cream in special air transports; I would too, if I had her wealth.
Making Texas Cows Proud
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Take beer. Texans rural and urban dote on long-neck bottles of Shiner bock, Shiner lager and other suds with the distinctive tang of the Rhineland, made by the little Spoetzl Brewery hidden away halfway between San Antonio and Houston.
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Perhaps less obviously, you could — you should — take ice cream. Blue Bell ice cream, to be specific, which is made in out-of-the-way Brenham and which many people consider the best in the country. So many people think so that Blue Bell, though sold in only 16 states, mostly in the South, and sold for a premium price, ranks No. 3 in sales nationally, trailing only Dreyer's (known as Edy's in some areas) and Breyers, ahead of the more widely available Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's.
The 100th anniversary of Blue Bell Creameries — “the little creamery in Brenham,” as it folksily and misleadingly describes itself — will be celebrated in 2007. For most of those years, members of a German-American family named Kruse (pronounced CREW-zee) have been at the helm, exhibiting an obsession with quality and a way with words. Ask why distribution is so restricted, and the Kruses answer, “It's a cinch by the inch but it's hard by the yard.” Ask about raw materials, and they reply, “The milk we use is so fresh it was grass only yesterday.”
Seriously, these are 2 regional delicacies that don't have distribution points in the Midwest, AFAIK, so every time I visit Austex, I must partake.
from your Mom:
well, come on home to Texas for a visit and we will make sure you have plenty of all of your favorites......