The BBQ sauce is Cowboy John's brand, made in Des Moines.

Want to jazz up your salad? Try our Amablu Gorgonzola cheese in a 5 oz crumble pouch. This cheese won Best of Class in the 2010 World Championships.

Moo Roo will close at 8:00 p.m. this Saturday night, July 3, due to the Waterloo fireworks.

The Cedar Falls fireworks are Sunday night, so the Outlet will close that day at 8:00 p.m.

The big CA$H COW prize is now $300 for July.

June's $5 winners: Jason Zelle; Charles Figura, Waverly; Camden Dierks, Cedar Falls; Darlene Groothuis, Nashua; Debbie Baker, Hudson; and Holly Hintzman, Cedar Falls.

This month, the Cedar Falls Outlet will be serving Root Beer Floats featuring Hansen's ice cream and Millstream Root Beer, made in Amana, Iowa. Stop in and give one a try for $2.75.

Check us out on RAGBRAI! Hansen's ice cream will be served up in sundaes and on pie at the Community Church of Hudson's booth on the route through Hudson.

We will also have some special treat days:

July 8: National Sundae Day - Patriotic sundaes (vanilla ice cream, strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream) for $1.75 at both stores.

July 17: National Ice Cream Cone Day - Single-dip cone, $1 at Moo Roo; bull-size soft-serve cone, $1 at Outlet.

July 23: National Vanilla Ice Cream Day - Half-gallon vanilla, $4 at both stores.

Be sure to stop in at the various markets in the Cedar Valley. Pick up a copy of the BUY FRESH, BUY LOCAL flyer available at the Outlet and Moo Roo for a listing of the producers and market locations and times.

Both stores are selling a limited supply of fresh produce as it becomes available.

July's Cow of the Month is Liberty, in honor of Independence Day. Liberty is 3 1/2 years old. She has had two heifer calves, Luxury and Lake, and is due to have her third calf on Dec. 29. In her lifetime, Liberty has produced 41,835 pounds of milk.

Liberty is a good, quiet cow to work with. When she calves in at each lactation, she usually leads the pack into the parlor so she can be the first to get milked. Liberty is very young looking and has a great future ahead of her. She was a good sport about being decorated for the Fourth of July.

We've had some comments turned in at our Moo Roo store in Waterloo we would like to address. First, thanks to all of you for the many compliments. They are all appreciated.

Several people have suggested we make special ice cream flavors - black walnut, lemon, rainbow and key lime, to name a few. Some of the flavorings we use can be very expensive and the quantities are such we'd have to sell a lot of ice cream of that flavor to make it pay. If it is not a good seller, we not only lose the ice cream but the remaining flavorings as well.

Regarding the debit and credit cards: This was addressed quite awhile ago in our newsletter. A very high percentage of our customers preferred saving the 10% by using our own Moo Roo card than to have us raise the prices to accommodate the use of credit and debit cards.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. If you've had a good experience or an uncomfortable experience at either store, please let us know, via a phone call or e-mail. Thanks for your support - we do appreciate it!

Food for thought from the Farm Bureau Spokesman, May 12, 2010:

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) a decade ago had asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to crack down on the misappropriation of dairy terminology on imitation milk products. The NMPF has again sent another petition asserting that the practice has gotten worse in the past 10 years.

Terms such as "soy milk" continued to proliferate, but also terms like "yogurt," "cheese" and "ice cream" are now being used by products made out of a wide variety of non-dairy ingredients.

"The FDA has allowed the meaning of 'milk' to be watered down to the point where many products that use the term have never seen the inside of a barn," said Jerry Kozak, president and CEO of NMPF. "You don't get milk if comes from a hemp plant, you can't say cheese if it's made from rice, and faux yogurt can't be made from soy and still be called yogurt," he said.

In a letter to the FDA in February 2000, the NMPF asked the FDA to make clear to the manufacturers of imitation dairy products that using the term "milk" are to be used only on foods made from milk from animals like cows, goats and sheep. The FDA has failed to act.

New artificial dairy products on the shelves don't contain the equivalent levels of nutrients that real milk does. Some use "cheeze" in an attempt to skirt the standards.

Non-dairy products "can very wildly in their composition and are inferior to the nutrient profile of those from dairy milk - although they are marketed as replacements for foods that consumers are familiar with and which have a healthful image," Kozak said.