"Here's to the Dog Days of Summer. Romans thought it was when the Dog Star rose and set with the sun. Between July 3 and August 11 is still usually the hottest, driest time of the year, and it's when Chilliwackians tend to slow down, sometimes seeking out more leisurely pursuits."
Sweet, frozen ice cream.
Is there any taste that better represents the Dog Days of summer?
Frosty's at Cultus Lake is thrilled to be celebrating its 10th anniversary this season, says owner Wendy Croshaw.
"It's busy," she says. "We're in a lake resort area here at Cultus, so ice cream works."
The indulgence of ice cream tends to give people the warm and fuzzies — often with a pleasant whiff of nostalgia for summers gone by.
The owners bought the former horse-riding business Funland about 10 years ago, and launched the ice cream venture at the same time, across from the Cultus Lake Water Slides.
The local kids get treated well, too, she says, and some of the kids of her long-time customers end up with a scoop in their hands for the summer as a first job.
And oh so many flavours to choose from.
They carve out generous scoops of hard ice cream into regular or waffle cones. To offer even quicker customer service, they went with a multi-coloured "token" system for people to pick up at the pay kiosk, indicating the type and size of cone they are ordering.
"So it means you're not sitting there in line waiting for someone to decide what type of cone they want."
It streamlines the whole process wonderfully.
"It was modeled after what they do at International Ice Cream in Vancouver which has over 200 flavours."
Croshaw always makes a point of seeking out the most interesting flavours she can find from a range of suppliers.
Intriguing sounding flavours include: Blueberry Cheesecake, Apple Pie, Creme Brulée and all kinds of Moose Tracks, like brownie, mint and regular.
Or how about some Green Tea, or maybe a bit of Mango Sherbet which she says tastes like you're biting into a fresh mango.
They started with just 18 flavours.
"Over the years, ice cream grew to become the staple of our business," she says.
Now Frosty's proudly serves up a whopping 55 flavours, sourced from several different suppliers.
"We offer the most flavours in the Fraser Valley," she says. "And almost all of them are great."
If a flavour isn't doing that well or it turns out to taste worse than it sounds, say like the N.Y. Chocolate Cheesecake recently, it gets dropped.
"The more time we spend developing the business, the better it gets."
jfeinberg@theprogress.com
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