Summer night: Cruising in South County

I'm almost afraid to say it, but so far, this has been a summer of spectacular weather.

Yesterday afternoon, having done a few mundane errands in Warwick, RG and I decided to cruise on down to the shore in Charlestown and Westerly to catch a little of that summer-vacation feeling. We did have a couple of goals in mind, including rounding out our continuing exploration of the state's best ice cream places and fried clam shacks. (Look for the results soon on Projo.)

South County is prime territory for clams and ice cream, and a Mini Cooper is the ideal mode of transportation for the winding back roads that took us through the pretty villages of Hopkinton, Hope Valley and Wyoming all the way down to Route 1. (To whom do we complain about the new traffic lights at so many intersections that interrupt what used to be a beautiful flow along Rhode Island's premier shoreline highway?)

After a while, we landed in Watch Hill.

Having spent my favorite childhood summers in nearby Weekapaug, to me this part of the Westerly shore is summer on a plate.

A few things had changed since I'd last been in town, including the reopening of the beloved Book & Tackle used-book shop near its old spot but in a new building on Bay Street, and the raising of a skeleton of a new Ocean House Hotel up on Bluff Road. The price to ride the beach-side carousel had gone up (are the horses fueling up with gas?), and the walkers' entrance to Napatree Point had been refurbished (see photo, below, of the new entrance).

For more on exploring Watch Hill, look for an upcoming feature in Projo. In the meantime, check out the slideshow of my harbor photos from last night that follows this post.


We headed over to Misquamicut to try to catch some of Duke Robillard's free concert at the beach (see yesterday's post for more about that), but by the time we got there the parking lots were full and the sand in front of the stage was entirely covered with people in beach chairs. It was standing-room-only, with your feet in the ocean and the great band's sounds muffled by the roar of the surf.

So we headed home, sated with clams and ice cream -- a full plate of memorable South County summer specials to share.

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.

Kayaking on Brickyard Pond

Last week, RG and I explored Barrington's Brickyard Pond in the 9.5-foot kayaks we bought in April.

The pond, which is next to the East Bay Bike Path, is accessed through Veteran's Park behind the YMCA on Maple Avenue. For this first kayak adventure, RG and I recruited pals from North Attleboro, Gail and Stan, who have already bought one kayak and ordered a second. (This simple type of kayak, which you steer by paddling like a canoe, because it doesn't have a rudder, costs around $400.) We saw some turtles, these stately swans paddling with their new chicks, and a pair of ospreys, one carrying a fish in its beak.

Stocked with trout, Brickyard is mostly surrounded by trees, so you can feel as if you're in a far more remote location than the East Bay. Next time out, RG plans to bring his fishing rod and give those ospreys some competition.

To find out more about kayaking in Rhode Island, visit the Rhode Island Blueways website for launch spots and events.

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.

Mini Nation: Fun and games in NH

Ever since we ordered our Mini (vanity plate CHEEKY) back in April, Retired Guy and I knew we'd go to the Minis On Top rally run up Mount Washington. Who could resist the idea of hundreds of gaily accessorized Mini Coopers caravaning up the highest mountain in the northeast? At 6,288 feet, the mountain's height matched the date of this year's (the sixth annual) Minis On Top: 6-28-08.

And we did have fun. Along with 215 other goofy Mini owners, we gawked at all the other interesting color combinations and car graphics, beginning with those in the caravan of Minis that started for the North Country from Area 51 off Route 93 just north of Concord. The Minis followed three different routes to get to Gorham, the town just north of Mount Washington where we spent the night. The next morning, everyone drove down to the Loon ski area parking lot in Lincoln for a meet that featured contests in various categories such as Best Sound System, Dirtiest, Cleanest, and Best Overall Car.

RG was hopeful he'd get a nod from the judges for his roof decal of the Rhode Island state flag, but he lost out to a very flashy number: a gull-wing door modification of a Mini that captured everyone's attention and took two separate Best awards.

But the most fun of all was watching the entries in a Mini Driving Skills (O)lympics. (The organizers weren't allowed to officially call it Olympics, because of copyright issues.) Dozens of hopeful Mini drivers waited in line to take their cars through an obstacle course of orange traffic cones, starting off by picking up an apple from the ground and then driving a short distance to balance it carefully on top of a traffic cone.

The course was much harder than it looked, and it was fun to watch the most macho entrants rev their engines only to stall out repeatedly. One guy in particular (a fellow Rhode Islander) came in dead last while more precise drivers — especially a woman from New York City — maneuvered far more delicately to place close to the top of the order.

"Next year," said Retired Guy. "I need to practice."

After all that excitement, the actual climb to the top of Mount Washington (in heavy fog) came as almost an afterthought. The best part of the Mini vacation weekend was meeting new friends Jeff, Monica and Catherine, with whom we've already planned to enter as a team in the Mini Trivia Contest next year.

Mini vacation: 215 Mini Coopers climb Mount Washington in the MOT (Minis On Top) rally