Got Dairy?

Last week I travelled to Dallas, Texas to attend the International Dairy Show. I spent the last nine months working on promoting the show and got to see it come to fruition. My clients are really fun, smart people so it’s been a great experience working with them and learning about the dairy industry. And while this show is targeted to processors and packagers, there was plenty of food tasting to be had. The ingredients folks are there—giving away samples of new flavors. I was loving the funnel cake ice cream.

I felt like a kid walking the show floor. I got to meet Chester Cheetah and the Nestle Quick Bunny. I got my picture taken at the Got Milk? booth. Yup, I’ve got a milk mustache photo of me on the fridge now. Then there was the flipbook booth. I donned some silly glasses and hat and danced with maracas while holding a sign that says “single and looking.” It was turned into a book where you flip the pages quickly making it look like a movie clip. Got to get that for my other clients!

What’s that you say? Did I work? Yes, and I’ve got blisters to prove it. I interviewed lots and lots of people for a video I’ll be working on later. I got an extensive tour of a cold delivery truck, and detailed lectures about a clean seal bottling machine-thingy, a new kind of packaging machine, a cow-milking type machine, and some food-safety technology. I also ran some focus groups (that can be another topic altogether), tried some funky tea, and heard President Bush speak.

So, lots of fun was had at the Dairy Show. Next year we’ll be combining some peaches and cream and heading to Atlanta. Oh, and as my long-delayed flight neared home I looked out the window and saw a view of the Big Dipper that I’ve never seen before. It was so low on the horizon that it looked like it was even with the plane. Cool. Irrelevant to this post (except maybe I was dreaming of a big ice cream scooper), but cool.

I’m back now and going to try to lose the weight I gained. The new thing now is yogurt. Not quite as good as strawberry milk, yummy cheese cubes on forks, ice cream samples, and cream cheese, but it’ll have to do. Off to work on my other clients—just as important, I just wish they had cooking demonstrations in their exhibit halls!