Tubby’s has been open for nearly two weeks, and I’m not going to reveal how many times my husband, Clif, and I have stopped there for ice cream. Let’s just say that it’s been quite a few and leave it at that. 

Our summer routine goes something like this: Clif comes home from work. There is still quite a bit of daylight left, which means there is plenty of time for a bike ride. Our favorite route is along Memorial Drive, which runs by Maranacook Lake, a lovely ride that is relatively flat. At least for Winthrop. We go about eight miles and are working up to ten. On the way back, as we head toward town, Tubby’s is only a half-mile or so away from where we have to turn off to head home. How can we resist swinging by? All too often, we don’t. With our bikes propped nearby, we eat ice cream and sit on the low stonewalls that have been built around Tubby’s little gardens. The night is warm. People are waiting for ice cream. Summer, lovely summer. 

Recently in the Advertiser, a small area paper, there was another article about Tubby’s and the delights awaiting Winthrop residents. According to the article, the restaurant will open sometime around Labor Day, and it will have a seating capacity of about eighty. (With the current small parking area, Clif and I are wondering where everyone is going to park. After all, not everyone rides a bike to Tubby’s, and, alas, summer in Maine ends all too soon.) The promised menu includes lobster rolls, steak bombs, burgers, and, of particular interest to me, French fries. Oh, how I love fries. Will Tubby’s be frozen or hand cut? The suspense is nearly unbearable, and while I certainly don’t want to rush summer, my mind can’t help casting ahead to fall, when the question will be answered. 

Then there is the promised “good old-fashioned candy shoppe” with its selection of “sweet treats, penny candy, chocolate, nuts, home ground peanut butter, fudge…” Candy lovers will need no further descriptions. I certainly don’t.

So far, my favorite ice cream at Tubby’s is coconut, and I have a hard time branching out. But summer is still relatively young, and when I have had my fill of coconut, I’ll try some of the other flavors. Chocolate with chocolate chips is on my mind. As is chocolate with white chips. And, for some reason, grapenut is always appealing. I know. It is the type of ice cream a grandmother might eat. In fact, it was my own grandmother’s favorite flavor. 

Sometimes, grandmothers are on to something.

A rainy Monday in the neighborhood, but after a busy weekend, it’s something of a relief. My husband, Clif, and I rode our bikes and stacked wood, and I’m just plain tired today. We ordered six cords of wood for our wood furnace, and four were delivered last Thursday. We stacked a chord and a half over the weekend, and, weather permitting, we’ll stack another half chord during the week so that we’ll have room for the next two cords that will come this Wednesday. Nature’s gym! But, it’s nice to have this restful day. No biking, no stacking. Just a walk with my dog, Liam. And housework, of course, but somehow that doesn’t seem to end.

Looking ahead, I’ve found a bag online for the rack on my bike so that it will be easier to do errands around town. I went to the farmers’ market on Saturday, and I bought two pounds of sausage, a pound of ground beef, and four chicken thighs as well as lettuce, strawberries, and radishes. They all fit in the backpack and didn’t give me any trouble when I biked home, but soon enough the potatoes and squash will be in season. It’s hard to carry those heavy vegetables in a backpack and then bike home. The weight pulls you back. (I know this from first-hand experience.) Of course, I could take the car, but the whole point is to bike as much as possible and to figure out how to carry things on the bike. 

There are several reasons why Clif and I are so keen on biking. The first is that biking can’t be beat when it comes to low-impact exercise that really gives a terrific work out. For someone like me, who has creaky knees, this is quite an advantage. I simply can’t walk fast enough to get good aerobic exercise. The second reason, and one that shouldn’t be dismissed, is that biking is just plain fun, given, of course, that a person is in reasonable shape. What a delight it is to speed along the road when the sky is blue and the sun is shining. Depending on the season, I can smell lilacs or roses or, more enticingly, food being grilled. Dinners being cooked and the smell of garlic mashed potatoes wafting from the houses. When we passed by a marsh this weekend, I saw a great blue heron not far from shore. No matter when we go, there is always something interesting to see, yet we can zip along at a good pace. 

Exercise and pleasure would be reasons enough to bike, but there is a third issue—for those of us who are interested in living a low-carbon life, biking is a low-carbon form of transportation. I’m reading a book called how to live a low-carbon life: the individual’s guide to stopping climate change by Chris Goodall. Currently, the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is about 390 parts per million, and by 2050 it is expected to exceed 500 parts per million. Goodall writes, “To hold carbon dioxide levels to a maximum of 550 parts per million in the atmosphere, the world can probably afford emissions of no more than about 3 tonnes per person. Any more, and temperatures will continue to rise beyond the 3 degree level.” (Goodall is British, hence “tonnes” rather than “tons.”) As I’m sure readers know, even though 3 degrees doesn’t sound like much, it’s enough to cause a lot of trouble—glaciers and the poles melting, rising sea levels, droughts, extreme weather. In short, climate change. And here’s the really, really bad news: On average, Americans use over 20 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. That’s right. Twenty tons. Per person. A lot of that carbon dioxide comes from driving cars, and, if I’m going to be completely honest, from the food we eat as well. 

I’ll be writing more about this in future posts. Clif and I are in the processing of figuring out how much carbon we use, and in just our preliminary figuring we know it’s going to be much more than three tons each. Because I work at home, and we only have one car, our energy usage isn’t as high as most Americans’ energy usage, but even with just one car we use about 5 tons of carbon per year.

So abiking we will go, whenever we can. Clif and I are working at building up our strength. This weekend, we made it to the end of Memorial Drive. Ten miles round trip, and a long, tiring hill at the end of Memorial Drive. Once that hill is mastered, we have the Holmes Road route, which makes the Memorial Drive hill look like the merest bump. And after that? A birthday bike trip in September to The Liberal Cup in Hallowell, with a hill that could aptly be named “Misery Hill.” Oh, my! 

Kermit had it right. It is certainly not easy being green.

In yesterday’s New York Times there was a piece by Kim Severson called “For a Healthier Bronx, A Farm of Their Own”, which covered so many food issues that it should be required reading for everybody in this country who reads and eats. (And that would be quite a lot of people.)  

Severson’s article is about how “Dennis Derryck, a 70-year-old mathematician and professor at the New School for Management and Urban Policy,” bought a ninety-two acre farm in upstate New York so that people in South Bronx could be part of “a commercial community-supported agriculture plan (C.S.A.) that lets residents determine what they’ll get, with an enticing prize at the end for people who stick with it: a chance to own shares in the farm.” To do this, Derryck took out a $300,000 loan and raised $562,000. He got nonprofit organizations to help sponsor Bronx participants who couldn’t afford the full price of belonging to a C.S.A. 

I found the whole article fascinating and hopeful, but two things really struck me. First was Derryck’s assertion that “If there is a food revolution, it’s not yet including the low income.” The South Bronx is a very poor community, and, as is often the case with such communities, good, fresh food at any price is hard to get. So while those of us with enough money try to buy as much local and organic food as we can, folks who live in poor communities must rely on convenience stores and fast food chains to get their food—most of it highly processed with too much fat, salt, and high fructose corn syrup. As the writer Mark Winne has put it, you can’t be free when your food choices are restricted to food that is not good for you. 

The second thing that caught my attention came from the farmer Richard Ball: “If we simply got New York to be New York’s customer, we’d be in great shape.” 

That really sums the situation up, doesn’t it? So simple but yet not simple at all.

Yesterday was the first day of summer, and I biked into Winthrop to have lunch at Sully’s Restaurant with my friend Barbara Penrod. Barbara and her husband, Wally, have a cottage on a lake in a nearby town, and they come from Pennsylvania to spend summers in Maine. I met Barbara when we were both volunteering at the Theater at Monmouth in Monmouth, Maine, and though we aren’t exactly sure how long we’ve been friends, we figure it has been at least fifteen years, and, in fact, it is probably heading on twenty. Time certainly does pass. 

Somehow, over the years, I have come to associate the beginning of summer with Barbara’s arrival, and to me summer doesn’t really start until I see Barbara. How fitting, then, that we should meet for lunch on what was actually the first day of summer, which was also my mother’s birthday. Mom passed away two years ago, and yesterday would have been her seventy-fourth birthday. In addition, Mom knew and liked Barbara very much. So this longest, loveliest day of the year was a day full of meanings. 

At Sully’s Barbara ordered a BLT and fries—fresh, not frozen—and perfectly cooked, a little soft on the inside—but not mushy—with a satisfying chew. Barbara’s plate was mounded with these long, golden delicacies, and she told me to help myself. Showing remarkable restraint—let’s just say that fries are one of my many weaknesses—I only took a few. I really do try to stick to one “cheat” day a week, where I indulge my love of sweets and fried food, and yesterday wasn’t that day. But, readers, it wasn’t easy to take only a few of those fries. 

I ordered a lobster roll, with a side of coleslaw, and the roll was disappointing. The meat tasted bland, not sweet and punchy, the way fresh Maine lobster is supposed to taste. I didn’t ask, but my guess is that the meat was either previously frozen or, even worse, it came “from away,” and it wasn’t even Maine lobster. Whatever the case, I won’t be ordering the lobster roll again. 

Nevertheless, it was great seeing Barbara and catching up with all that had gone on with her family during the winter. (Pennsylvania got blitzed with snow while Maine had a mild winter.) We’ll be meeting again many times before she and her husband head back to Pennsylvania in September, when the weather takes on that certain little chill that signals much colder times are coming.  

But September is months away. In the meantime, we have summer, my favorite season. Barbara is here. It has begun.

This year, because of our daughter Shannon’s schedule, we celebrated Father’s Day on Saturday rather than Sunday. Normally, my husband, Clif, and I stay pretty close to home, but on this special occasion, he decided he wanted to go on a little road trip to Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park in Freeport, Maine. Weather permitting, of course.

The weather did permit, and the day was sunny and very warm. Shannon had put together a picnic lunch—a macaroni salad mixed with Dijon mustard as well as mayonnaise; cold chicken that had been marinated and then cooked with a spice rub; and a multigrain boule from Hannaford, our local grocery store. I brought some peaches to round out the meal, and for dessert, I had made strawberry shortcake. What a feast we had at a picnic table in the shade!

While Freeport is pretty well known for L. L. Bean’s, that bastion of outdoorsy retail shopping, Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park is not as well known, and even on the sunniest, warmest day, the park is not crowded. A smallish state park of 246 acres, Wolfe’s Neck is on a peninsula of land, with Casco Bay on one side and the Harraseeket River on the other. The park gets its name from Henry and Rachael Wolfe, who, as the park’s brochure puts it, “settled here in 1733, the first Europeans to do so permanently. They and their descendents cleared most of the peninsula for farms, but over time this part returned to forest.”

And a lovely forested peninsula it is. Along the Casco Bay side, there is in island with an osprey nest, which, for as long as we’ve been coming to the park, has had a pair of osprey raising young ones. This time was no different, and after our picnic lunch, Shannon, Clif and I paused on our hike around the park to watch the osprey and listen to their  high-pitched calls. Their island is close enough to the mainland so that viewers can see the nest and occupants without needing binoculars.

After admiring the osprey, we  followed the trail along the rocky shoreline and then into the woods, with ferns so lush and large that I felt as though I stepped back in time millions of years. We passed a little stream coming down a rocky incline, and the stones on each side were covered with dark green moss. We saw lady slipper leaves and stems, but alas the flowers had gone by. Uphill and downhill we want, chatting and admiring the cool woods.

Two and a half hours later, we came back to the parking lot, and we all agreed that we had walked off our picnic and that it was time to head to Freeport for an ice cream.

Clif has given me permission to write that he had a very nice Father’s Day at one of his favorite places in Maine.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers. Here’s hoping that they can spend it as well as Clif did, at a favorite place with their families.

In today’s New York Times, there is a wonderful piece about Paula and Billy Ray Brown, a couple who have started an organic dairy farm in Oxford, Mississippi. The piece’s title—“A Modern Dairy Tale—is the perfect summation of Billy Ray’s struggle to have a farm and the happy ending as he succeeded in a way he didn’t expect. It really is a heartening story, which gives me hope that those with small farms and green ways can make a go of it. What is particularly moving about this piece is the way Billy Ray’s father—the writer Larry Brown—wrote about his son’s efforts. Excerpts from Brown’s essay, “Billy Ray’s Farm,” are included in the Times piece.

A rainy day. This morning, my cat Sherlock deposited a mouse on my bed, and I spent a merry hour chasing the little creature around the bedroom and finally out into the hall, where I was able to sweep it into the blue bucket. All right. It wasn’t such a merry hour. In fact, it was a downright irritating hour. But the mouse was caught, and with the rain dripping over my black umbrella, I took the mouse way down the road and let him or her go. Now, let’s hope the mouse finds a happy home in the woods and stays outside. 

The whole chase left me unsettled, a feeling compounded by the rainy day. During the summer, I want to be out as much as possible—gardening, walking, and biking. Reading and writing on the patio. And a rainy day, while necessary, always makes me feel cooped up. 

However, tomorrow promises to be a sunny day, and this is true in more ways than one. Tubby’s will be opening in Winthrop. Oh, happy day! Initially, only the ice cream window will be opening, but according to an ad in the Advertiser, a little local paper, “A restaurant and candy store are under construction.” More details were promised in the next issue of the Advertiser. A candy store as well as an ice cream shop and restaurant? It just keeps getting sweeter. Somehow, although I no longer go for Smarties or SweeTarts, I have never lost my childish love of candy, and I am exremely keen to see what kind of candy Tubby’s will be offering. If their ice cream in any indication, then the candy should be very good and thus hard to resist. 

Fortunately, I have gotten better at having just one cheat day each week where I indulge my sweet tooth with such delicacies as whoopie pies, ice cream, and candy. (Well, maybe I do allow myself a small portion of ice cream on noncheat days.) For the other six days, it’s fruit, vegetables, and other healthy food, delicious in their own right. (That’s how it is when you’re a foodie; you pretty much love it all.) 

The ad in the Advertiser proclaims in bold headlines “Tubby’s Ice Cream Makes Winthrop a Destination.” That might be somewhat of a stretch, but there is no denying that the residents of Winthrop and Manchester are eagerly anticipating Tubby’s arrival. Only time will tell if Tubby’s has a larger draw, say, from Augusta or Gardiner or Litchfield. If people come from quaint little Hallowell, with its wealth of good places to eat, then Tubby’s can proclaim itself a real success. Who knows? If that happens, customers from as far away as Lewiston—twenty miles away—might flock to Winthrop. And if from Lewiston, then why not from Portland? 

Teasing aside, it will be a fine day for Winthrop tomorrow, and I sincerely hope that Tubby’s brings some more people to our little main street, which is usually pretty quiet. My husband, Clif, and I will be visiting Tubby’s tomorrow, and Clif will be sure to bring his camera so that we can record the big event and post it on the blog. 

Stay tuned.

My daughter Shannon’s wedding shower is less than a month away. We will be having it at the Grange in East Vassalboro, in the lovely, restored old building that was such a big part of my mother’s life. (She passed away two years ago, and for more about the Grange, see my post Tea at the Grange with Esther.) 

Let’s just say that plans are afoot. The invitations have been sent, RSVPs are coming in, and we already have a nice little group who will be coming. I expect there will be more RSVPs in the next couple of weeks. 

Last year, I went to a wedding shower for Sara Clark, the daughter of our friends Beth and John Clark. Beth and her youngest daughter, Lisa, put on a charming bridal tea for Sara, and, as I like to say, I stole the idea from them for Shannon’s shower. The bridal tea was served in three courses, which is what we will do, and all the food for Shannon’s shower will be homemade, just as it was for Sara’s. 

Right from the start, I knew I would need some help. Twenty-seven guests have been invited, and while this is not much bigger than some of the parties we have at our little house in the big woods, it would nevertheless be quite a stretch for one person to do it all.  My eldest daughter, Dee, is helping me host the shower, but she lives in New York and is coming home only a day before the shower. So I asked my friends Claire and Kate if they would help, and they graciously agreed. Ditto for Andrea, one of Shannon’s bridesmaids, and for Gail, Shannon’s future mother-in-law. What a relief to have so many helpers who will cook, make sandwiches, help set up, and most important, wash dishes afterward. (There will be no paper, and, I hope, hardly any trash. I want this shower to be as green as possible.) 

But then other offers came in. Esther, a good friend of my mother’s, said she would make egg salad sandwiches; Debbie, Andrea’s mother, offered to make some kind of dessert; Rose, my sister-in-law, volunteered to make a fruit salad to be served as the first course; and Beth Clark will bring her luscious blueberry cake that Shannon and I are so crazy about it. (I could eat a piece of that cake right now.) 

Both Shannon and I are incredibly moved that so many women will be pitching in to help with this very special event. This outpouring of help feels like the best of the old days, and how fitting this is for a shower that is to be held at the Grange. It is also in keeping with my mother’s philosophy. She had an unwavering commitment to community, family, and friends, and she understood how necessary they all were to live a good life, a life rich with connection and meaning. 

Many, many thanks to Andrea, Beth, Claire, Debbie, Dee, Esther, Gail, Kate, and Rose. And if you need me to cook or to help with some event, I will be there.

Last Friday, I drove to Portland to have lunch with my friend Kate and to celebrate her upcoming birthday. Because I work at home and because I try to drive as little as possible and thus reduce my carbon footprint, most of my time is spent in Winthrop. Now, Winthrop is a pretty little town with lots of lakes and ponds, and I am perfectly happy to walk and bike and stay close to home most of the time. But it is nice, now and then, to go on an excursion to the big city, especially when it involves meeting a friend and going out to lunch. As my mother would have put it, these little trips “change the mind.”

As luck would have it, the day was sunny and warm, and the ride to Portland was an utter delight. As I drove, I listened to alternative rock on WCLZ, and I felt enveloped by the lush green of June. The lupine, still a deep purple, covered the banks of the highway. Off to the side along one stretch was a farm, complete with pastures and cows, who were doing what cows should be doing—grazing on grass. There were even a few little ones to admire.

My daughter Shannon is also a friend of Kate’s, and as Shannon works in Portland, she was able to join us for lunch. The three of us have established a birthday ritual of meeting in Portland for lunch (the birthday girl gets to choose the place), strolling around the Old Port, and then stopping somewhere for tea so that we can sit and chat some more. We are all in complete agreement: These outings are as much fun for the ones who aren’t having a birthday as they are for the one who is.

This time for her birthday, Kate chose the The Salt Exchange Restaurant on Commercial Street, and I was especially eager to eat there. I had heard good things about this restaurant but had never been there. The same was true for Shannon and Kate.

The Salt Exchange, with its brick walls and high ceilings, manages to feel cozy and airy at the same time. On the walls were paintings by a local artist —unfortunately I didn’t get the name—whose vivid use of color made even a grouping of buoys seem fresh, no small feat in buoy-saturated coastal Maine. Best of all, the tables were not crowded together, which meant there was no hemmed-in feeling, and our conversation was our own.

The menu at the Salt Exchange is small. Nevertheless, it took us a while to make our choices. Everything looked so tempting, but finally we decided on tempura fish and shoestring potatoes (Kate); a Brie sandwich with roasted tomatoes along with a bowl of artichoke soup (Shannon); and barbecue braised duck sliders along with a bowl of artichoke soup (me).

The Salt Exchange bills itself as serving “seasonal small plates,” which means, of course, that the portion sizes aren’t huge. No basins of pasta and no mounded servings of fish and shoestring potatoes that would prove daunting even to “a good eater.” While teenaged boys probably would not be thrilled by the size of the portions, Kate, Shannon, and I thought they were just right. And the food itself was terrific—the fresh rolls, the tang of the barbecue sauce, the moist and tender duck, the mellow artichoke soup, the smooth, purple coleslaw, as mellow as the soup, a chocolate dessert that was a cross between mousse and fudge.

Kate’s fish and shoestring potatoes were, in a word, amazing. Essentially, what she ordered was a fish and chip dish, and I was tempted to do the same. I am a fish and chip fanatic, and I usually have them once a week. (Which is why I decided to branch out to barbecue duck.) What Kate got was unlike any fish and chip dish I have ever seen—light tempura-battered chunks of fish on top of a bird’s nest of potatoes cut impossibly thin. (Who has shoestrings like that?) The dish looked so ethereal that it might have been served to Oberon or Titania or any other of the fairies in their retinue. Kate let me have a bite of the fish, and it tasted as light as it looked.

My one complaint with the Salt Exchange was with our server. While he was friendly and polite, he was so zealous about clearing our plates—even when they still had food on them—that at one point I wanted to slap his hand.

As a foodie and a good eater, I have mixed feelings about Portland. On the one hand, there are so many good places to eat in that small city that I wish I lived closer. (Every place we have chosen for our birthday meals has been smashing.) On the other hand, this would not be good for either the budget or the waistline. Perhaps it’s best that I live in Winthrop and don’t make it to the big city very often. I know I would give in to temptation much too often.

So three times a year, on our birthdays, we go to Portland and splurge. While eating out in Portland more often would be good—I won’t deny this—only going a few times a year makes it all the more special. A real treat.