our pants are fitting a little bit tighter this week, but it’s for a very good reason.

after serving hormone-free, all natural ice cream made with locally sourced ingredients at events throughout the triangle for the past eleven years, lumpy’s ice cream will open their first brick & mortar store in wake forest this saturday, march 24th…& we, along with some other area food bloggers, were invited to preview the good things that are on the way.

in addition to serving 14 made fresh daily flavors of ice cream, lumpy’s ice cream shop is taking things a little old school, offering hamburgers & hot dogs along with all the sweet treats.  fitting in with lumpy’s simple philosophy ” to find the finest ingredients locally and craft them into the best ice cream without any preservatives, additives, or synthetic hormones” all beef hamburgers & hot dogs will come from 100% grass fed beef supplied by harris-robinette farms.

{patrick robinette, of harris-robinette farms}

we were able to sample both the hamburgers & hot dogs, & the mister was happy to oblige.  every time the tray came back around.

then, we were on to the ice cream!

lumpy’s founder, buck buchanan, talked us through each one of the nine flavors we sampled, from their maple view farm cream base to the house made extracts as each ice cream was served.

{from left to right: top row: blogger’s special baklava, mad mae’s mint chip, peter’s pumpkin pie, middle row: sally’s silly strawberry, kenny’s kicking’ chocolate, drunken berry, bottom row: bernie’s butter pecan, chris’s gone coconut, cathy’s coffee cinnamon}

did you know that 5° is ice cream’s perfect temperature?  neither did we, but apparently it’s makes for the perfect creamy texture, but is just warm enough so that your tastebuds don’t freeze & the flavors to really come alive.  i have been a lover of really hard hand scooped ice cream for a long time, but was surprised at how much i liked the smooth, & almost light, texture of lumpy’s.  it was creamy, without being melty, & melty is my main complaint with softer ice cream.

we had a wide variety of flavors, from the expected, like chocolate & strawberry, to a bit more inventive, like the drunken berry, made with raspberry that have been soaked in 12 year scotch.  lumpy’s even makes a bacon & bourbon flavor!  despite being a major chocolate fan, tom’s favorite flavor of the evening was the mad mae’s mint chip, & even though it’s 80° & march, i seriously loved peter’s pumpkin pie.

to find out more about lumpy’s, check out their website, this feature by the hartford

& come out to their grand opening this saturday at 306 East Wait Avenue, Wake Forest, NC.

any & all views presented in this post are ours.  we weren’t compensated in any way for this post beyond the obscene amount of sampled ice cream.  we just so happen to thoroughly support buck’s food philosophy & the ice cream really is that good.