Scoop the Tillamook
Second-best is no insult when the ice cream comes from an Oregon dairy co-op ... and tastes this good.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream is now available at Albertsons on Government Street. Ice cream snobs—put your hands up; you know who you are—may be dismayed to find the nation’s best ice cream in a tub at a grocery chain that rarely cracks consumers’ top 10.
But Albertsons somewhat redeems itself in the ice cream aisle. If you find yourself there in need of ice cream, pass on the Jeni’s; it’s cheaper at Whole Foods on Corporate, and pick up a tub of the second-best ice cream in the grocery store: Tillamook.
Tillamook is delicious because it’s made by a cooperative, and it gets extra credibility from its home on the Oregon coast. The company began in 1909 as the Tillamook County Creamery Association, when local dairy farmers banded together to standardize and market their cheese. That cooperative structure still exists today, made up of dairy-farming families, and the brand leans heavily on that heritage.
Every word on the package is true. Tillamook is creamier than Blue Bell and the other popular brands. The ingredients mixed into it are worthy of that creamy texture, and the seasonal flavors keep you going back for another tubful.
A good place to begin is with Tillamook’s near-maniacal assortment of chocolate flavors. We recommend the Dark Chocolate Cookies & Cream and the Chocolate Peanut Butter.
And if there’s a little less jingle in your pockets at the end of the month, Albertsons sometimes discounts two tubs of Tillamook to about a third of the price of Jeni’s. Fiscal responsibility never tasted so good.
