This summer, thanks to Tubby’s, my husband, Clif, and I have spent more on ice cream than we ever have. Normally, we go out a few times each summer for ice cream. Nowadays, with Tubby’s right in town, we try to keep it to a few times a week. As I noted in a previous post, Clif and I ride our bikes nearly every night, and as luck would have it, most of the routes we take seem to go right by Tubby’s. After riding ten, twelve, or eighteen miles, how can we resist stopping? Too often, we don’t, and my favorite flavor is Pucker Up, a lemon ice cream that is the right balance of tart and sweet with an intense lemon flavor. 

However, in the Dining & Wine section of today’s New York Times, I read a piece that gave me a bit of comfort. In “You Scream, I Scream…at the Price of Ice Cream,” Julia Moskin writes about the high price of artisan ice cream and gelato, and how a place called Grom, in Manhattan, charges $5.25 for a small cone. Moskin considers $2.95 for a small cone to be “a relative bargain ” and notes that it is possible to get good ice cream at that price. 

If memory serves me correctly, at Tubby’s a small cone, dubbed a “Baby Bear,” costs about $2.95. Now I can think of it as “a relative bargain” and not feel so bad about indulging a few times a week.  

Also in the Dining & Wine section is a piece about making ice cream—“Egg-Free Ice Cream Lets Flavors Bloom.” And, there is an interactive feature, “Notes from the Ice Cream Taste Test,” where “The Dining section conducted a blind taste test of 11 kinds of strawberry ice cream.” I was a bit surprised by the winner, but then that is often the case with blind taste tests. The unexpected and the cheaper often win.

Well, late summer is here, and what better time is there to enjoy ice cream at a stand where it is made in small batches? Along with summer itself, ice cream is a fleeting joy, too soon gone, but oh so sweet. Fall will be arriving shortly, and after that, well, we know what comes after that. In the meantime, let’s raise our ice creams in tribute to summer, in all its warm, green glory.

Deep summer is here, and although the weather has been hot, it hasn’t, for the most part, been unbearable, the way it has for much of the east coast and, indeed, for much of the country. There has been a pleasing mixture of sun and rain, good for gardens and—especially—good for bicycle riding.

This year, in part to mitigate the effects of being a good eater, I am working at becoming a good biker. I have friends who serve as inspiration—Bob and Kate Johnson, Jim Leavitt, and Don Robbins. All are strong riders who think nothing of going for a twenty-five-mile bike ride.

This spring, I started out gradually, first on an exercise bike and then to the road, where I would ride about four or five miles, usually doing errands around town. Then, when the leg muscles became stronger, I started going farther, down Memorial Drive, by the lake, where the road is relatively flat and the water sparkles in the summer sun. To the end of Memorial Drive and back again is ten miles, and when that became an easy ride, I moved to another route, the Holmes Road route, which is twelve miles with hills—one very long one. Now, that has become routine, and this week I decided the time had come to go even farther, to Monmouth village, an eighteen-mile round trip with several very steep hills.

On Monday, I did it. My friend Claire, who works at home, is my back-up buddy, and I tuck my cell phone in my bike bag, just in case I should collapse in a ditch somewhere. (Fortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.) I also tucked a special sesame nut bar in my bag so that I could have a tasty snack when I reached Monmouth village, home of splendid Cumston Hall, the Shakespearean theater of Maine.

And off I went, on the back road to Monmouth via the Holmes Road, with its long, loping hill. It was a windy day, which made pedaling a little harder, but I was primed and ready for the ride, and I didn’t want to wait for a calmer day. The back road to Monmouth is classic central Maine countryside, with fields, forests, and rolling hills that give the landscape beauty and variety. But, those very same hills are a real challenge to bikers. Still, there is something so fine about pedaling on a sunny day—the blue sky, the moving bike, the motion of legs, the wheels turning, the countryside going by at a good clip, but not too fast. Things can be noticed. The ducks on the pond, the queen Anne’s lace, golden rod, and yes, even the purple loosestrife by the side of the road. A huge patch of yellow and red day lilies. Lush golden and green fields. The dead snake in the road. (A reminder that all is not beautiful.)

But, oh the hills! The way to Cumston Hall had a hill that was long but manageable, and when I pulled into the parking lot, I headed straight for the bench by the ticket booth. That sesame nut bar, sweet and salty, tasted pretty fine, and I rested on that bench for about ten minutes before heading back to Winthrop.

It was on the way back that I encountered “The Hill,” a black, vertical strip of road that reared straight up and almost seemed like a living creature. I saw its broad back as I approached it, and I squinted, wondering aloud, “Is that the road?” Oh, yes it was. All right, then. I took a deep breath, downshifted to the lowest gear, and pedaled. Slowly, slowly, I climbed, wondering if I would have to humiliate myself by walking my bike up the hill. But miracle of miracles, I made it to the top, and when I did, I looked back down its long, dark spine. Did the tail at the end snap a bit? No, of course not. It was just my overactive imagination.

After that, it was back toward Winthrop, down the Annabessacook Road, into town, and straight past Tubby’s. Well, to be honest, not straight past. Readers, I stopped and had a lobster roll, some fries, iced tea, and a small chocolate ice cream (with chocolate chips) for dessert. Seldom has a meal tasted so good, and I want to note that Tubby’s lobster rolls are exactly the way lobster rolls should be—full of fresh lobster with just the barest hint of mayonnaise to keep it together. As I ate, I mused about how all my bike routes seem to go by Tubby’s, and how I seem unable to resist stopping there. Usually it’s just for ice cream, but that is certainly enough.

Hence, the need for biking.

Dennis Price, one of the actors from the Theater at Monmouth, was at Tubby’s, and we chatted a bit. He was duly impressed with my bike ride, and his wife, Molly, was duly impressed with my next challenge—riding to Hallowell for fish and chips at the Liberal Cup, where she just happens to work. It’s about fourteen miles one way, depending on the route, with fiendish hills aplenty.

But first I need to master the road to Monmouth village and that dark hill. When I do, I’ll be ready for Hallowell.

I have never been what you might call a cupcake person—pies and donuts are more to my taste—but last summer, when we went to the Taste of Brunswick in Brunswick, Maine, I discovered a cupcake so good that it changed my opinion of them. The cake was moist, dense, and extremely chocolately, and the frosting seemed to be a perfect combination of icing and whipped cream. In fact, I was so taken by these cupcakes, from 111 Maine in Brunswick, that I wrote a long article about cupcakes for Wolf Moon Journal.

Oh, the things I discovered. A woman named Suzanne Rutland claims to have eaten over 50,000 Hostess CupCakes. As a child, she started the Hostess Cup Cake Club, and she still eats four Hostess CupCakes every day. And, no, she doesn’t weigh 300 pounds, the way she should. She is trim and attractive. Unfair, but that’s how life is sometimes.

In the course of my research I found out that there are blogs such as Cupcakes Take the Cake dedicated solely to cupcakes.

In researching the origins, I read that cupcakes might be descendents of fruitcake, baked small. Alan Davidson, from the Oxford Companion to Food, writes about baking batter in cups and even suggests that in the U.S.A. the name might have come from our measuring system, which is based on the cup. He then goes on to describe how small pound cakes were “baked in individual pans [and] were quite popular in the 18^th century.” He notes that “Queen Cakes” were an example of this kind of diminutive pound cake, and they “evolved from lighter fruitcakes baked in England.”

There is even a slogan associated with cupcakes: Keep calm and Have a Cupcake. As my husband, Clif, put it, there is a whole cupcake subculture.

Who knew that such a small dessert could be so big? But, I thought, surely after a ten- year run, started perhaps by Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, the cupcake craze would begin to wane. Apparently this is not the case. At least not in New York City. According the Wall Street Journal, not only are cupcakes still going strong, but also they actually might be helping the economy. They are small, sweet, and relatively inexpensive. People aren’t afraid to indulge in them. “‘One segment of the industry that seems to be adding the most outlets is cupcake cafes. This could be a fad, or not,’ Barbara Byrne Denham, chief economist at real-estate services firm Eastern Consolidated, wrote in a report Thursday.”

Well, if cupcakes are a fad, then it’s a long one. And while, for me, cupcakes will never replace donuts and pies, I can’t help but admire their tenacity. After all, how many donut cafes or pie cafes are there?

At the end of a blazingly hot week, we had Shannon’s wedding shower at the Grange in East Vassalboro. When I write “we,” I certainly do mean “we.” I had so much help that it almost puts me in a daze—albeit a happy one—to think about it. Before the shower even started, my husband, Clif, took off two days from work to help me with various projects, the chief one being to make over twenty little floral arrangements in empty tea tins. Since this was a bridal tea, we decided to make tea-tin floral arrangements as party favors for each guest to take home. Our eldest daughter, Dee, came home last Thursday, and she and Clif spent the better of a day on Friday making the arrangements as well as filling crockery and a brass pitcher with flowers. We wanted the Grange to have a country, floral look, and I think we succeeded.

While they “played” with the flowers, I brewed tea. Literally, gallons and gallons of it. With Clif’s help, I had come up with a procedure: Make a double batch of tea in the big teapot; put the teapot in the refrigerator to cool; when the tea was lukewarm, pour half into a pitcher; add water to the teapot and the pitcher; pour tea from each into a gallon jug and put it in the refrigerator. I know this sounds fairly straightforward, but each batch, from beginning to end, took quite a bit of time, and I had to really hustle to be sure I had enough tea for twenty-four guests or so. And, because tea will go bad, I couldn’t make it too far ahead of time. With diligence, I did manage to brew more than enough tea—peppermint and black—for everyone.

In between making tea, I also made a double batch of cinnamon pie knots and lemon frosted shortbread. Compared with making all that tea, those two desserts were a snap.

There were, of course, other details to attend to—packing the napkins, tablecloth, sugar, lemons, and so many other things that on the day of the shower, our little Corolla was so full that all the way to the Grange, I had to hold the cookie sheet of shortbread in my lap, and Dee had to straddle a big jug of iced tea.

On Saturday, the day of the shower, Dee and I got to the Grange very early. The older I get, the less I can hurry, and I like to give myself plenty of time to get things ready. Dee immediately started setting the long tables, and when she was done, the Grange looked absolutely charming. The red napkins and the tea tins with flowers complemented the country look of the Grange, with its dark woodwork, clean white walls, and red- and green-checked table coverings. I’ve written about the Grange in another post, so I won’t go into a lot of detail except to quote my friend Diane who said, “This place has a great energy.” Yes, it does.

The Grange has a big kitchen, complete with an old slate sink, and while Dee was setting the tables, I organized the various counters so that when the first wave of helpers came, they could start making sandwiches. My mom’s friend Esther was there to let us in—she only lives a couple of miles from the Grange—and help clean. Then came Kate Johnson, Andrea Maddi (a friend of Shannon’s since first grade), Claire Hersom (the groom’s aunt), and Gail Hersom (the groom’s mother.) What followed was a flurry of sandwich making—cucumber, ham salad, and pesto, fresh mozzarella, and tomatoes on sliced baguettes. Esther went home and brought her egg salad rolls. Lemons were sliced. Sugar bowls were filled. Plates were rinsed, wiped, and set aside. Desserts were set in platters so that they would be ready to serve after the sandwich course.

Oh, the desserts! Two kinds of moist chocolate cookies, lemon squares, coconut bars, blueberry cake, and, of course, the shortbread and pie knots.

My sister-in-law Rose came with a big bowl of fruit salad for the first course. My friend Diane helped serve the fruit. Shannon arrived, looking very fetching in a new sundress. A short time later, the shower began, first with the fruit salad, then with the sandwiches, and finally with the dazzling desserts.

Then there were the presents, a whole long table of them. We cleared a large space so that we could all be circled around Shannon as she opened the presents that would start her on her married life. Can it be any surprise that most of the gifts she received were kitchen presents, and very, very nice ones? Shannon will be able to ditch her dented old pots and pans and have a well-stocked kitchen.

One of the nicest presents came from my mother’s friend Esther, and it is one that will last only a few days. In her garden, Esther has some lilies that belonged to my mother, and on the gift she brought for Shannon, Esther attached one of the lilies along with a card explaining the lily’s significance. Shannon read the card aloud, and when she was done, there were plenty of sniffles in the room.

On the invitations, I had asked each of the guests to bring a family recipe for a recipe book I had bought. The book has plastic sleeves where the recipes can be tucked, and the book had been placed on a table upfront. Before the shower started, the guests put their recipes into the book. My contribution was Mom’s tourtière pie recipe, written in her own hand. Tourtière is a Franco-American dish, a spicy meat pie that we have for Christmas every year.

We didn’t use any paper plates or cups, and while this was exactly right for the tea and for the environment, I couldn’t help but wonder if Dee and I would be at the Grange until 9:00 P.M. or even later, washing and drying dishes. Instead, we were out by 6:30. As soon as the shower was over, a cadre of ten women or so sprang into action. Dishes were washed and wiped; food was divided so that the extras could go home with the various guests and helpers; floors were swept; tables and counters washed. When the hot water ran out for washing dishes, water was heated on the old gas stove. All I had to do was supervise and help bring presents to Shannon’s car.

Even today, the following Wednesday, I am still floored by it all. It felt like part of a tradition, ancient and nurturing, where women come together to help each other. (I know men have similar traditions.) As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, this is the best of the old days, so appropriate for the Grange. If only my mother had lived long enough to be part of it.

So, the shower is over. Now onward to the wedding in August!

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.