Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Day Seventeen, Part One: Chips, Ale and Giant Jenga!

Wednesday would be our last day on Cape Cod.  After a busy day in Boston Tuesday, we were ready to take it easy.  Plans for going to the beach fell through due to cooler weather, 
but we had a Plan B...

A quick internet search of things to do in Cape Cod steered us toward
Like my mom, I love potato chips, and I was curious about how they are made.

Yes...absolutely yes!  And they smell amazing.
A sign at the entrance said they were making BBQ and Salt & Vinegar chips that day.
My favorites!

Cape Cod buys potatoes locally.  Today's chips were from Snowden, Massachusetts. 
Did you know that the best chips come from potatoes with a high specific gravity?
That means that the potatoes have a low water content.

They started in 1980 making 200 bags a day.  Today they can make 350,000 bags per day!

They make popcorn, too.  
In one eight hour shift they can make 2,000 pounds of bagged popcorn.
The white cheddar corn is fantastic!


No pictures of the actual process are allowed.  But the process is pretty interesting...
It's almost 100% automated, with just a few workers supervising the machine-driven process
and a few people picking out any bad chips toward the end.

The gift shop at the end was cool.  
Of course, with a long drive to Philadelphia ahead of us tomorrow,
we had to buy some chips and popcorn for the road!
All those samples were making us thirsty, so we headed down the road 
to another local food factory...

Surf's up! Cape Cod Beer Tour, here we come!

They had a cool Matchbox beer truck collection.  Who knew there was such a thing?

Dad was ready to do some sampling!  I was ready for some ginger ale.

Beer is made from simple ingredients:  water, malt, hops, and yeast.

The brewer had just emptied out the mash.  That what's in the dumpster.
Mash is the crushed malt used to make the beer.


The Tasting Room was a cool place! It had lots of games to play, like checkers and...

...Giant Jenga!

As we were about to leave, one of the brewers asked us where we were from.
We explained that we were from Nevada and that I was home-schooled this year.
"Have you been to Plymouth Plantation," she asked?


The birthplace of our nation was only a short drive away? 
It was 2:00 and they were open till 5:00.
Pilgrims, here we come...!

TOO BE CONTINUED...






No comments:

Post a Comment