Dairy Queen Blog

I don’t know how many of you live and work on the East Coast, but those who do can appreciate a story about a blizzard! I live in Virginia, the “Sunny South,” but this winter it’s been anything but sunny, and it surely hasn’t been “seasonally warm,” as the weather man likes to remind us.  Fortunately, I live in the part of the state that didn’t get the one to two feet of snow, but in our region we’ve had snow on the ground ALL winter long. I live in the mountains, where we should be somewhat used to living as tough mountain men and women, surviving cold hard winters, right? But this winter is getting ridiculous! Just as the snow is about to finish melting away, we seem to get five or six more inches to remind us that Old Man Winter is still in control.

When I learned that Punxsutawney Phil gave his “official” prediction of six more weeks of winter (whose idea was it anyway to listen to a ground hog?), I decided there just might be a fun way to survive the next few weeks and begin to think about the warm, sunny days of spring. My family and I decided to have a “Blizzard Bash.”

If you’ve noticed, right now every DQ store has a list of 25 Blizzard flavors from throughout the past 25 years to celebrate the 25th birthday of the world famous Blizzard Treat.  The goal of our family “Blizzard bash” is to try all 25 of the Blizzard flavors collectively by the start of spring—before the 21st of March.  Four members of my family still live in the same town, but my oldest daughter lives in Auburn, Ala., and the beauty of the “Bash” is that we can all still participate at our local DQ locations, even though we are miles apart.

Everyone has their all-time-favorite Blizzard flavor. For me, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, it’s Oreo®. Sometimes the Blizzard of the Month tempts me to try an exciting new flavor, but I always revert back to my favorite. The idea behind our Blizzard Bash, however, is to “think outside the cup,” and tip our taste buds upside-down.  The first week we each selected our favorite Blizzard flavor, of course, but from there, we had to select a new Blizzard flavor from each of the four flavor categories—Cookie Lovers, Candy Cravers, Fruit Fans and Chocoholics. 

As we each try the 25 flavors, we will rate them to develop a “favorites” list for our family. When we’re done, we’re going to take our list down to our local DQ stores in Virginia and Alabama and see if they will post them in their lobbies as “Smith’s Family Favorites.” Who knows, if you’ll join in, maybe we can have a national Blizzard Bash and turn every town across the nation, shall we say, upside-down!