Grand Ole Creamery, 750 Grand Ave., St. Paul

I knew, going into vacation last week, that I wanted to continue an annual tradition of representing my company at the Twin Cities North Chamber of Commerce summer picnic planned for Thurs., July 22, at Central Park in Roseville. So I went that day knowing I couldn't count the event as somewhere new to eat for a report on this blog, but I hoped to find something else after the picnic -- where my presence was definitely productive as I met with an area architect who wanted to pitch a story about her second career of teaching art to senior citizens (including one 100-year-old).

Members and guests at the chamber picnic enjoyed hamburgers, bratwurst and house-made potato chips from Sarna's Classic Grill in Columbia Heights, and sliced watermelon. (Wouldn't be a chamber picnic without that!) But there was really no dessert. True, watermelon is a dessert at times, but on that day it was unmistakably a side dish.

So I left the Roseville park and stopped at the SuperAmerica near County Road B at Lexington Ave., to find (in a phone book) a relatively close ice cream shoppe to check out before heading out of the metro. I drove a few miles south to the Grand Ole Creamery, near Dale Street on St. Paul's Grand Avenue.

Did I need ice cream on that day? Well, no, but in a huge, HUGE two-scoop serving in a waffle "bowl" I ordered one scoop banana ice cream and one scoop red raspberry. Certainly the fruit-flavored choices (over various chocolate, caramel and marshmallow options) gave the impression I was still health-conscious? The house-made ice cream was as rich as you would want it to be, and at the Grand Ole Creamery you will find that a two-scoop serving may literally overflow out of a waffle bowl. Some little drips from my top scoop fell on the table and I simply wiped them up, but when a bigger chunk (a near-boulder, really) fell from the mountain, I pretended that the five-second rule also applied to food that falls onto newsprint -- I was reading that week's edition of The Onion while eating. Did I take the handful of banana ice cream and toss it in my mouth? Heavens no! What kind of pig do you take me for? I merely placed the little lump of lusciousness back atop the mountain and continued to eat.

With tax, my stop on Grand Avenue cost me $6.50 (high, maybe, for people used to paying $1 or $2 for cones at other places). But, compared with the $5 I spent at Target Field the previous day on a waffle cone filled -- barely -- with chocolate-vanilla twist soft-serve that was nothing better than what you'd get at an OCB, $6.50 for two scoops of homemade ice cream that would choke a snowman seemed fair in the end.