Newport not-so-fast, and bachelorettes galore

Saturday was one of those hot, steamy nights that make you just want to be out on the water on a motorboat or sailboat. Not actually owning such a boat meant that RG and I had just about one good option for the evening: taking the fast ferry from Providence to Newport. We decided on this plan at around 4:30, and in a few minutes I had booked us online on the 6:05 boat with a return at 9:50 p.m. -- enough time for dinner and walking around, or so I thought. Cost: $48.

The main attraction was the boat ride, because when it comes to this ferry, "fast" is really not that fast, at least not for us. It would take us, say, 20 minutes to drive to the ferry dock at Conley Piers off Allens Avenue in Providence, another 10 to park and pick up our tickets, then 50 for the actual trip to Newport. By way of comparison, driving straight to Newport from where we live in Barrington might take us 40 minutes. Of course, then we'd have to park the car.

When we arrived at the Pier and saw big "LOT FULL" signs, we thought we were sunk. But it turned out that some kind of big noisy carnival and concert was being held, and when we said we were there for the ferry, we were directed to a far back parking area and told to "just squeeze in wherever you can." After picking up our tickets, we strolled over to the Tiki Bar waiting area, and right on time, here comes the Ocean State catamaran ferry. It was so hot, we sat in the open-air area on top all the way down and had fun identifying familiar Bay landmarks from the water side. There was Crescent Park, there was Blithewold mansion, there was Melville Boat Basin and finally the War College.

We stepped onto the Newport dock just after 7, windblown but definitely cooled off. Had we driven, leaving the house at 5, we'd have arrived an hour ago, paying maybe $8 for two gallons of gas and another $10 to $15 to park. But where would be the adventure in that?

Newport was really, really jumping. There was no sign of any slack-off in tourism or economic slowdown in the city that night. Walking up and down the waterfront nearly to Wellington Avenue, we were turned away from restaurant after restaurant. At all of my favorite places to eat on the harbor -- 22 Bowen's, Clarke Cooke, the Pearl and the West Deck, we were firmly told that without reservations, the wait would be an hour to an hour and a half. My last best hope, Cafe Zelda, I thought might be sufficiently off the tourist radar to at least sit us at the bar. No such luck.

So, sad to say, somewhere around 9 p.m., we staggered into a convenience store and seized on Milky Way frozen ice cream bars and bottled iced tea. Sitting on a curbstone, watching the parade of people passing by, we couldn't help but notice an inordinate number of bachelorette types, traveling in groups of 6 or 7, teetering precariously on high heels and giggling as they floated on cascades of chiffon ruffles, leaving clouds of perfume in their wakes. One girl even had a sash across her bosom that said "Bachelorette."

These women were so numerous, in fact, that even some of the young men they passed seemed to have had enough. "Oh no! Not more bachelorettes!" we overheard one man say as he stepped into Thames Street to dodge yet another pastel pod.

So intrigued by this phenomenon was I that, once back home and having revived myself somewhat with a peanut butter sandwich, I Googled "bachelorettes newport ri". What I found (from a blog called Be My Bridesmaid) is that Newport has become the unofficial bachelorette capital of the East Coast, possibly the country.

Who knew? I just hope that wherever they all were headed on those impossibly high heels, they had reservations for dinner.

In season: Free outdoor concerts

So Retired Guy and I headed down to Middletown last evening to check out the sounds of "The Elderly Brothers," who were performing an outdoor free concert at Sweet Berry Farm on Mitchell's Lane. Sweet Berry (already one of my favorite farmstands in the state) is playing host to a series of free Tuesday evening concerts (6 to 8 p.m.) this summer, and last night's "'50s Picnic" theme was the very first one.

Plenty of other people found it impossible to resist the siren call of free music and picnicking on the lawn. While it wasn't quite Tanglewood, there was an appreciative crowd of perhaps 75 people listening to mellow renditions of oldies such as Only the Lonely, Johnny B. Goode, and several James Taylor numbers.

Many brought their own picnics, including chilled bottles of wine and fancy baskets, and set themselves up with lawn chairs and folding tables with tablecloths. Others bought food in the Sweet Berry cafe or purchased the $9.99 menu special of Southern fried chicken, red potato salad, succotash and Jell-O in a cup.

We shared the chicken plate, and it was excellent -- the chicken crispy, the succotash farmstand-fresh and delicious. The music was relaxing, and for the livelier numbers some of the children in the audience caught the spirit and got up to dance.

Then the wind came up and the sky darkened ominously, so we packed up and left early.

Tonight, Rhode Island's own Duke Robillard and his blues band play a free concert at 6 p.m. at Westerly Town Beach (next to Misquamicut State Beach). The venue couldn't be nicer for the Blues On The Beach series: You can swim in the ocean, then picnic on the sand right in front of the band. Here are photos from a 2006 Blues On The Beach concert.

March of the strawberries: '08s are history

"Sad but true," says the sign at Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown. "Strawberries are over."

They mean local strawberries, of course. Strawberries are marching up the continent, and they've just moved north of us now. At least for a few more weeks, you'll still be able to find boxes of berries picked in Massachusetts and New Hampshire at farmstands like Walker's in Little Compton and Schartner Farms in Exeter (Schartner even has a satellite farm on West Side Road in North Conway, NH, so they'll be getting their farmstand berries from there for a while longer.)

For now, local pick-your-own places are featuring raspberries. In a couple more weeks, there'll be blueberries. Those are the big three for local berries; after that, it's all about corn and pumpkins.

In addition to picking raspberries, you might want to head to beautiful Sweet Berry Farm on Tuesday evenings (beginning tonight) for their summer series of free outdoor concerts. Tonight's is a '50s picnic with "The Elderly Brothers." You can bring a blanket to sit on and your own picnic, or purchase food from the farmstand, where the menu is paired with the music and includes nostalgic items such as mini-marshmallow Jell-O, fried chicken, and macaroni and cheese.

Pick your own (damn) strawberries

It's probably only me who reads the emphasis as, "Pick your own strawberries," as in, "Hands off of mine!"

Last week, my friend Deb and I picked these berries (20 pounds total!) in about an hour at Middletown's Sweet Berry Farm, the place which every year seems to me to have the sweetest, reddest, best-tasting berries around. (Other great places I can personally vouch for are Four Town Farm in Seekonk and Schartner Farms in Exeter.) While the going rate for they-picked berries at most farmstands seemed to be around $5.50 this season, these "picked-them-ourselves" berries were $1.79 a pound, as long as you picked at least ten pounds, which Deb and I made sure we did.

With my berries, I made three pies -- two of my family's ancestral recipe for a glazed pie, and one double-crusted strawberry-rhubarb (a favorite of my Retired Guy, who finds the ancestral recipe too sweet). I still had plenty more berries, and they weren't going to keep because they were so ripe and so full of water, so I didn't even wait till the next day to freeze the rest in containers (after slicing the berries and dusting them with sugar).

The ancestral pie recipe was allegedly discovered by my grandmother Zeller back in the '50s in a Ladies' Home Journal type of magazine, which printed it as a favorite of First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Having terrible sweet-tooths, we all loved it, and the pie has been enshrined in family recipe boxes ever since. Unfortunately, as those boxes predate the internet, I'll have to type here the recipe as given by Mamie herself. Don't wait to make it, though. "Pick your own" berries are going by fast.

MAMIE EISENHOWER'S STRAWBERRY PIE

1 baked pie shell (supermarket brand is fine here)
1 generous quart strawberries
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 to 4 ounces softened cream cheese
1 cup cream, whipped and sweetened as desired

When the pie shell is cool, spread the cream cheese in the bottom, being careful not to break the crust. If you do, just cover over the break with some cream cheese. Put half (one pint) of the berries into a blender or food processor and puree them. In a saucepan on the stove, bring the puree to boiling, then add the sugar and cornstarch, which have been mixed together for ease of blending. Cook this mixture slowly, stirring continuously, for about ten minutes or until it loses the cloudiness from the cornstarch. Then place the hot saucepan in a sink of cold water to chill it. Meanwhile, place the other pint of whole, perfect berries on top of the cream cheese in the pie crust. Pour the cooled strawberry mixture over the top of the whole berries and spread it around to cover them completely. Refrigerate the pie, just to set it, and before serving, top with the sweetened whipped cream.

SOLD! in Portsmouth: Auctioning art and antiques

Ever wonder where dealers go to get the antique paintings, silver, furniture and artifacts they sell in their stores?
They go to auctions like those held about once a month at the Portsmouth, RI auction gallery run by auctioneer-extraordinaire Mike Corcoran. (You can find a list of upcoming auctions all over New England at Antiques and the Arts online.)
Even if you don't buy anything, you'll learn a lot about what things are worth by going to an auction — and if you go to one of Corcoran's, you'll be entertained as well. At yesterday's auction of estate items, you would have learned that your great-grandmother's long-handled brass bed-warmer isn't worth much more than 50 bucks — and that a 1920s California landscape painting by Maurice Braun would draw rapid-fire phone bids from California art galleries topping off at $34,000.
In between, there was plenty of action in the $500 to $5,000 range as Corcoran entertained the crowd with the antics they've come to see. Every once in a while, he draws gasps by lobbing a just-sold vase or cloisonnee dish to sidekick "Murph." At one point during yesterday's show, he removed a tiny fig leaf from the front of a bronze male nude: "Spitzer last week. . . Spitzer today!"
When a beautifully carved wooden music box came up for bid, he lifted the lid so the audience could hear it play a tinkling waltz. Then, calling one of the women in the crowd to join him, he took her for a little spin, saying in a broad aside to the audience, "When the moment is right, will you be ready?"