Stumpjack caps & tees are in, baby!

Out first bunch of digitally printed T-shirts and embroidered caps are in the shop. Make sure you wear one of these stylish chapeaus on your noggin and a cool tee on your torso the next time you visit a different coffee house and you will surely be the center of attention and admiration! I wore mine this past weekend in Door County whilst quaffing espressos and lattes at several cafe's along the thumb, and was practically body-surfed around the room by the envious and admiring mobs of fashionistas.


Tees are $16 apiece...with XXL at $18
Low crown caps are also $16
AND...
You get a free coffee or latte with everyone you buy (which effectively knocks 'em down even more, to the neighborhood of $12 to $14)

Click on the images to get a blow-up pic.

gelato testimonials abound!

Yet another gelato testimonial (see Mike Z's in the post below) from one of the many highly intelligent, sophisticated and demanding gourmands who frequent Stumpjack Coffee Co.

WOW! I just finished a bowl of Gelato from Stumpjack Coffee, and all I can say is WOW! I've been all over the world (including Minnesota and the UP) and this is the best Gelato I've ever had! Keep up the good work David.

Marv
Co-creator of Dr. Marv's Morning Tonic and world renowned Gelato connoisseur

An absolutely uncanny image of Marv...Simpsonized.

Ok, here's another one from Kim from Persimmons:

Ok I am not a world traveler by any means.... I have been to Mexico once but stayed in a resort which hardly qualifies as experiencing the culture...... so when my friend David at Stumpjack told me he was getting gelato soon I didn't know what it was. Well I went there this morning and let me tell you gelato is flippin fantastic! Oh my it was the yummiest creamiest dreamiest thing I honestly ever tasted (I had pistachio). I love ice cream but I am afraid I will never eat another Dairy Queen cone without thinking if only this was gelato....so get to Stumpjack next week and get some.

I haven't Simpsonized Kim yet.

Disclaimer: Kim's comments reveal an almost orgasmic ecstasy over the gelato. While we will concur that it is a deeeeeelicious taste treat, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. So, while gelato has been shown to have powerful aphrodisiac qualities and will surely enhance your love life in ways too racy to recount here, we cannot absolutely guarantee that you will experience actual full-blown multiple orgasms while eating gelato here at Stumpjack (of course we can't guarantee that you won't experience those sensations either...the blueberry gelato might be a good bet).

Stumpy vacay this weekend/Gelato update

Stumpjack Coffee will be closed this weekend, August 25 & 26, and we will back on Wednesday the 29th as usual. Taking a much welcome little getaway with the family before school starts up in another week (I miss my girls! Didn't do any fishing or hiking together this summer at all). I think I'm going to be much more adamant and disciplined in making sure I take a little time off more regularly, even if that means closing shop for several days every so often. Cheyenne is going to Lincoln High this year as a sophomore and Jesse is entering junior high as a 7th grader. Man, time is surely a thief.

Gelato! Only have a few minutes to write this but we actually made some gelato this afternoon. Our rep, Ken, came in and showed us the ropes and we made some pistachio and blueberry gelato. Deeeelicious! I gotta boogie now if I'm going to make the finale of Lakeshore's Rising Stars! so I'll write more tomorrow.

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Ok, it's Thursday morning so let's talk gelato. Made some chocolate this morning and it is...very...very...chocolaty. Only made a half pan as I'm still experimenting and learning the process. But everyone who's been in has loved the stuff. We don't yet have everything we need, like proper gelato dishes and those cool little neon shovel spoons (some dingbat forgot to order them when he ordered product...yea, that was me), so we've been giving away samples in little drinking cups with plastic picnic spoons. This morning I found that the display freezer is running too cold as well...the stuff was hard as a rock. So I've been playing with the temp on that all morning.

Kim bought some decorative stuff for the display: wafer cookies, pistachio nuts, blueberries, drizzle...decorating the gelato in the display case will be a lot of fun. Shoot, the whole thing is fun...even cleaning the machine (although I won't be surprised if that doesn't take too long to not be fun anymore). Gotta order those dishes and spoons now.

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This just in the email pipeline from our pal Mike Zimmer:

Hello Everyone,

I know that it's a tough job, that's why I'm doing it --- testing Stumpjack Coffee Company's new Gelato offerings!

I can unequivocally tell you that calling this wonderful product "ice cream" is doing it a disservice. It is GOOD! It has a creamy mouth feel and richness that is positively decadent.

You must stop in to try it.

There it is, you have my recommendation.

Sincerely,

Mike

Michael S. Zimmer

Executive Director

Two Rivers Main Street, Inc.

Smackdown at the Forum

Well it's been a wild and woolly past few days. After the gelato equipment's arrival on Monday I thought we might have a day to chill a wee bit. Wishful thinking. Wednesday we began experiencing ghosts in the water pipes...cold water, then scalding hot water, then spitting and spurting water. The water heater in the basement needed both repair and exorcism.

Then the local newspaper online forum, one thread of which I have been recently and occasionally posting concerning the singing competition Lakeshore's Rising Stars! (Stumpjack is a sponsor) started getting some real skunky and vitriolic attacks on yours truly (to paraphrase the verbose Mr. T, "I pity those fools...they don't know who they messin' with!"). After verbally smacking those ne'er-do-wells back into the stone age we have heard nary a peep...thanks BigJ and Bored for the extra help in spanking those naughty little tykes . It never ceases to amaze how some people seem so eager to tear down others and only ever succeed in looking like fools themselves. It's that old law of sowing and reaping in action again.

And today I was the guest on our friends Terry & Riley's radio program, "Rising Stars Replay," a show that spotlights the previous night's performance of Lakeshore's Rising Stars! Those two cats are the producers of LRS. While these kinds of media things are always fun and easy for me (they are little breaks in the routine and are really just hanging out and chatting with friends) I also find them to be a bit inconvenient in that the time traveling to and from is greater than the time actually spent on air. But like I said, they're light-hearted fun.

Riley pretending to be an International Male model and Terry pretending to be a dot.com executive.

I told Terry that I was going to hijack the show in the name of Stumpjack Coffee and that's just what I did! Each question about Rising Stars was an opportunity to interject the name "Stumpjack" ("Carli's voice was dry after her song last night? Well she was obviously in need of a cup of fine Stumpjack coffee!") and when the guys would banter with each other about the show I'd be in the background chanting "stumpjack...stumpjack...stumpjack..." (not-so-subliminal advertising, baby!). By the end of the show they're rolling their eyes and cussing at me during the break and we're all laughing. It was fun...thanks Terry and Riley for being good sports. After all the crap those guys have also had directed their way in the chat room I think it was nice for us to just laugh and let go a little bit.

Next week Wednesday is the finale of Lakeshore's Rising Stars! What a great production, what great fun, and what a great thing for this area this event has been. I don't talk to much about LRS here on this blog...I guess because I seem to constantly be talking about it or doing something related to it almost daily anyway...but it is a fantastic accomplishment and I'm very pleased and proud of our friends Terry and Riley for what they've been able to do with this, and I'm grateful to be a part of it in whatever way that I might be. Well done guys!

Check the LRS site and blog to get the gist of things.

Gelato and the DooDah

Just got our gelato batch freezer and display case in! Eeehaa!! Tomorrow (Tuesday) I'll be talking to the guys who bring in the actual products that we use to make the gelato, we'll be running through some test batches and should, hopefully, have the real McCoy ready to offer by week's end. Yes, it's a couple weeks later than what we had anticipated and hoped for but deliveries were delayed for whatever reason (equipment from California, via Italy originally)...and if you see our little ad in the newspaper tomorrow just hang tight (it says that we "have gelato" now)...btw, I'm amazed at the number of people who saw the ad before I submitted it who don't know who those guys are that are pictured in it...if you recognize them, bring the ad in when we're ready with the gelato and we'll knock something off your first serving.

The DooDah Hops Smoothie looks like it's going to be the official name of the beer smoothie...named in honor of the chap who challenged me to come up with it (our own Doug Day, whose nickname is DooDah...or should I say one of his nicknames, he's been called other things I'm sure!). We'll be setting up an unofficial historical marker downtown, doing a fake ribbon cutting ceremony, taking some quick pictures and drinking a few DooDahs to celebrate (we don't need much of an excuse to have fun around here).

Heading up to Green Bay now on more coffee business...our closed days are really work days, after all, but I want to remind everyone again that we will be closed the weekend of the 25th and 26th, along with our regular Monday and Tuesday (Saturday through Tuesday) this month...for decidedly non-work activity (it'll be "book, beer and bug-spray" time in Door County for this mother's son).

Chaos reigns supreme...I'll drink to that!

Well, my posting has been a bit sporadic lately, because we've got so dang much going on right now. Last week during the muggy-wave our AC didn't work, problems with the phone and Internet, our bakery case up and died after overheating, gelato equipment was scheduled to arrive and got delayed, and we were running up to Green Bay every day to work on our new cafe...not to mention all the other usual living life things that we all do (you know, like concocting beer smoothie recipes and Simpsonizing ourselves).

We opened the shop in GB yesterday (softly, quietly, don't even have the sign up yet...). More on that location and that cafe' later. Gelato equipment was supposed to come in today (after it was supposed to come in on Monday) but it's looking like tomorrow will be the day. Guys are coming in today to fix the bakery case...the kitchen fridge is full of everything that was in the case.

Beer Smoothie! Spent the last week playing with the blender (really looking forward to getting a new one) refining my beer smoothie recipe ("drinking" might be a better word than "refining" actually). It's definitely a winner. Everyone who tried it really likes it (except for Kelly, but she doesn't like beer anyway...go figure...). Have to credit a friend on the HTR forum (won't reveal his identity here...don't have his permission) for challenging me to come up with a "hops-based smoothie." It hits your palate with chocolate, then you taste the hint of coffee mixed in, followed by a really nice chocolate/beer aftertaste. It's the perfect combination: chocolate, espresso, stout.

We're taking suggestions on a name for it now. Drop in and have one and give us your name suggestion. We'll have a beer delivery Friday afternoon so come on in this weekend if you can.

PS: We are planning to be closed Sat & Sun, August 25 & 26. I'll repost this over the next couple weeks and periodically move it to the top of the list to keep it in front of people. You might want to come in and buy some beans before that weekend. Thanks.