Thirty-one flavors? Please. That’s child’s play.

How about 700 — or better yet, 1,000? Now we’re talking. Now we’re in world-record territory, and that’s exactly what two Pueblo natives are aiming for with a sweet quest.

Matt and Mike Casarez own Crook’s Palace restaurant and bar in Black Hawk. The brothers bought the business last year after living in Denver for most of the decade. Both graduated from East High School. Both started their food industry careers working at Rosario’s restaurant. Both attended Johnson & Wales University to study culinary arts.

“We’ve been planning to own our own restaurant for about 15 years,” said Matt. “We saved up our money and this restaurant kind of fell in our laps.”

Mike, 30, is the restaurant’s baker and pastry chef. Matt, 28, is the head chef. Their rule is that the dishes on their menu are homemade. That includes ice cream, which is what has brought them to this daunting, self-imposed challenge.

“We started doing the ice cream, just making different flavors, and it started to catch on,” Matt Casarez said in a phone interview last week. “We decided there’s an infinite amount of flavors we can do, so why not try to break the record?”

Casarez said the official Guinness record for one business is 521 flavors of ice cream, set by a shop in Italy. Another ice cream shop in Venezuela claims more than 850 flavors, though it’s not clear if that has been certified. Regardless, the Casarez duo’s plan is to beat both.

“We decided to just double (the official record) and bring it to America,” said Casarez.

Thus began their Willy Wonka phase. The Casarezes make their own ice cream base so they can easily adjust the ingredient amounts to suit each flavor. From there, they just let the ideas fly.

“We’re always churning ice cream so we always have some base left over,” Casarez said. “We bounce ideas off each other (and) if we have time, we’ll say, ‘Let’s try this one.’ We have a shelf of things you wouldn’t normally find in ice cream and we use those.”

Sure, there are the expected ones: cookie dough, chocolate-covered cherry, strawberry, coffee. When you’re aiming for 1,000 flavors, those standbys are no-brainer additions.

As the list progresses, however, things get curiouser and curiouser. Try a sample spoon of these concoctions:

Ghost raspberry — This combines raspberry with bhut jolokia, the “ghost chile.” A ghost chile measures more than 1 million Scoville Heat Units; by comparison, a jalapeno measures 10,000. ”That’s a pretty popular one, actually,” said Casarez. “It’s one that we try to keep on hand.”

Chocosauersteiner — That’s chocolate, sauerkraut and Warsteiner beer. Matt said there’s actually an old chocolate cake recipe that includes sauerkraut, which is where the idea originated.

Popcorn — Simple. “It’s kind of our flagship (flavor),” he said. “People don’t want to try it, but we put it in front of them and they’re hooked.”

A Day at the Ballpark — Caramel popcorn, peanuts and sunflower seeds. “That’s Mike’s. I told him when he made it I think that’s the new rocky road. It’s absolutely amazing,” Casarez said.

Vegemite — “That’s our delivery driver’s idea. Everyone’s involved in this.”

Triple jalapeno — Three versions of the pepper are used: candied, roasted and dried.

Lox — “Salmon actually goes well with ice cream,” said Casarez. “(Lox) is cured and smoked and those flavors actually aren’t too hard to mix in to ice cream.”

Foie gras brandy — “Foie gras (fattened goose or duck liver) is just a beautiful piece of food, anyway,” he said. “Very flavorful, very fatty. All we’ve got to do is get a little taste of it in there.”

Some of the other flavors are wasabi sesame, avocado, strawberry Champagne, olive oil, honeycomb, lobster Newburg, pear walnut blue cheese, sweet onion, cucumber poppyseed, prune espresso (aka The Laxative), sweet ricotta pistachio, loaded hot dog, coconut curry and Pac-Man (cherries, strawberries, peaches, apples and melon).

Most of their ice creams are smooth; the chefs are more interested in incorporating the flavors than textures.

“We don’t do a lot of mix-ins,” Casarez said. “Ben and Jerry’s pretty much has that covered.”

Casarez swears the point is not to disgust people but to show them how the unexpected ingredients actually can produce a pleasant taste.

“We can talk about ice creams, but until you really taste them . . . It’s just going to open your mind to all the possibilities,” he said.

Record-breaking day is scheduled for July 17, 2011 — National Ice Cream Day. Per Guinness rules, all of the Casarez creations must be on hand for the Guinness representative to see; Casarez said they’ll probably make two pints of each for the occasion.

If you think this would be an interesting process to follow, you’re not the only one. Their friend Jeremy McGovern, another Pueblo native, was visiting from Los Angeles earlier this year when the Casarezes’ sister, Joie, told him about her brothers’ culinary adventure. McGovern, a filmmaker, decided to visit Black Hawk and quickly realized there was a story to be told.

“Jeremy said he wanted to pitch the idea to his (production) team and we said, ‘Great,’ ” said Casarez.

The result is, or will be, “Sweet Dreams,” a documentary chronicling the brothers’ attempt to break the record (see sidebar). McGovern isn’t surprised his buddies created this type of challenge for themselves and is thrilled that they did.

“Mike and Matt are overachievers and they’re in this little mountain town and have to entertain themselves somehow,” he said. “People love this stuff. It’s fun, not so heavy and dark.”

The Casarezes are focused now on expanding their list. It’s up to about 700, though not all of the flavors have been tested yet. Joie recently helped them organize all of their ice cream notes and recipes (more information for Guinness).

Now it’s on with the great dessert experiment. Who knows what tastes await them? Filet mignon, maybe? Sweet potato casserole? Turducken? The keys to this candy store are in their hands.

“Nothing is impossible,” said Casarez.

Originally Published in The Pueblo Chieftain

By Amy Matthew

It’s a sweet gig for filmmaker Jeremy McGovern, in more ways than one.

Not only is he making a documentary about two of his longtime friends, Matt and Mike Casarez, the movie is about a happy topic — ice cream — and he gets to film in his home state.

“On a very selfish level, I finally get to do a project where I can come home and see my friends and family,” he said.

That’s not the primary motivation, however. The story is what hooked McGovern: two brothers in a tiny mountain town attempting to break the world record for most flavors of ice cream.

“I really like documentaries — fun documentaries that don’t ruin your day and make you hate life and curl up and cry after you see them,” said McGovern. “There are still good things going on, fun things to be had.”

McGovern, 32, has lived in Los Angeles for seven years. He graduated from East High School in 1996 and attended the University of Southern Colorado (Colorado State University-Pueblo) before moving to the West Coast. Last year he started a film company, Mattoid Entertainment, with two partners. They’ve got several movies besides “Sweet Dreams” in the works. Their first completed feature, “In the Darkness,” can be seen on Hulu.

For a microbusiness like Mattoid, funding is the biggest challenge to getting projects to the screen, and that fact hasn’t been helped by the recession.

“For us to go out and do a $5 million movie . . . it’s just not happening now,” McGovern said.

Therefore, the filmmakers are seeking contributors for “Sweet Dreams.” They hope to raise at least $20,000 by mid-August and McGovern wants to make his initial filming trip this month, with follow-up visits every couple of months to track the Casarezes’ progress.

Anyone interested can visit http://www.indiegogo.com/sweet-dreams to donate as little as $5 or as much as the full $20,000. A donation of $100 entitles the giver to name his or her own flavor of ice cream — a name that will be recorded with Guinness when the record is broken.

“People in Colorado are going to get way more excited about this than people in L.A.,” McGovern reasoned. “If Matt and Mike are going to have 1,000 flavors, this is something a lot of people can be part of.”

Originally Published in the Pueblo Chieftain

Hulu Plus is currently beta testing and early adopters have to be invited to take part in what is sure to be a crucial step towards the eventual demise of physical media formats and possibly of television providers such as Time Warner and DirectTV (way down the road).

Along with gaining access to entire seasons both past and present, Hulu Plus users will also be able to enjoy their favorite programs on their home televisions courtesy of several new apps that will be making their way onto numerous HDTVs, Blu-ray players and video game consoles soon. In another big move Hulu Plus will be bring Hulu video to Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch via a special free app.

While no news was given as to how Hulu Plus will affect Hulu’s movie content, odds are moving to a subscription based model will put many Hollywood studios at ease about the once free platform, and potentially open Hulu up to show newer films versus the library titles they currently offer. Hulu Plus video will be available in HD in resolutions up to 720p. Hulu officials stated that it was a conscious decision on the provider’s part not to go to 1080p in order to ensure fast streaming speeds and error free playback for more users.

While the response among industry players at the major networks has been favorable, Hulu fans and users have been less receptive to the news; especially given Hulu’s announcement that paid subscribers will still have to sit through limited advertisements.

Only time will tell if Tuesday’s announcement is the right move for Hulu, but one thing is certain; it’s another step towards breaking free of the shackles of physical media inching us ever closer to a download only world.

As you may have noticed we’ve changed a few things around here. Welcome to the new Mattoid Entertainment. While the site may look radically different it retains a lot of its previous functionality, however we’ve revamped some areas and even added a few new ones. There are bound to be a few bugs or areas that still need some tweaking, however we felt the site was far enough along to share it with all of you, our fans.

Going forward MattoidEntertainment.com will be THE place to catch up and follow all of our current and future films. As of this week we are dissolving sites like InTheDarknessMovie.com and its Facebook page and rolling them both into this site. For the latest news about Mattoid and its films be sure to tune into the Mattoid News section of the site, and for the latest commentary from the creatives at Mattoid Entertainment tune in to Mattoid Unplugged.

We’re going to be covering a lot of ground in the second half of this year as we welcome new filmmakers, partners, creatives and more to the Mattoid family. Be sure to check in often or follow us on Facebook or Twitter for the latest breaking news.

Lastly, we’re close to launching our e-mail newsletter so please sign up (if you haven’t already) for the first issue is coming very soon.

We appreciate all of the support and hope you’ll continue to hang with us for we’re just getting started.

Sincerely,

Mattoid Entertainment