Thing 39: The Strawberry Festival

I just bought an ice cream maker. Happy summer to me!

That purchase is key to understanding my motivation for begging and pleading the Boyfriend to drive us out to Delaplane, VA for the Strawberry Festival last weekend. Because at the strawberry festival there would be cheap and abundant strawberries, and that meant fresh, homemade strawberry ice cream and sorbet. I had to test out my new Cuisinart ice cream maker, cherry red, and David Lebovitz's beautiful book that I ordered along with it.

Where exactly is Delaplane? I still have no idea, but I think it's about 50 miles West of here. I had it in my head that it was a suburb of DC, which it decidely did not turn out to be, so it took a lot longer than I thought it was going to. We drove about an hour out on 66, then turned onto a country highway lined with rolling green hills, cows and silos. The Boyfriend has a Miata convertible, and we took the top down for the first time this year and drove and drove with the wind in our hair and NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me blasting from the radio.

Finally we pulled into Sky Meadows State Park, where the festival is held. We paid the $20/car fee, and parked in a large, grassy lot. By this time it was noon, and the sun was beating down pretty hard. We slathered on the sun screen, and trudged across the wide lot into the festival.

We did a lap of the festival, checking out the children's games and activities, the local crafts for sale, and the food vendors, before finding a grassy spot in the shade for our picnic lunch. We'd packed our own ahead of time, although there were a half dozen food booths selling pit BBQ sandwiches, homemade potato chips, kettle corn, fruit smoothies, crab cakes, and New Orleans gumbo. Everything smelled wonderful. We ate our modest sandwiches, leaving room for the strawberry sundaes that were the main attraction.

At 1:00, we bought a large glass of strawberry lemonade and then made our way to the stage area, grabbing a sunny seat on a bale of hay. It was time for the World Championship Strawberry Eating Contest.

I had never been to a professional eating competition and I must say, it was amazing in that car wreck kind of way. I could not look away. And yet, I knew that this sort of gluttonous competition is a lot of what I think is wrong in this country. And great about this country. Do we celebrate the triumph of an incredible physical feat (which truly, it was)? Or do we frown on such extreme excess? The term "food warrior," which the competitors used to describe themselves, makes it sound like food is an enemy to be destroyed rather than one of life's simplest pleasures. I remain conflicted.

The amateurs were up first, a group of fifteen local people doing this for a lark rather than cash money. Only one woman in the bunch, and she ended up winning! In five minutes, she put down an impressive three and a half pounds of strawberries. She will have the privilege (punishment?) of competing in the pro contest next year.

And then it was the turn of the professional "Food Warriors." The emcees, two veteran 'warriors,' were manic faux gangstas, trying to display their street cred with their 'yo yo yo's and their tough talk. They introduced the ten professional competitors, who all had really impressive (terrifying?) credits to their name -- most matzoh balls eaten if five minutes, 115 chicken wings eaten in seven minutes, world record cookies and milk holder.

They had seven minutes to eat as many pounds of strawberries as they could. Seven one pound baskets were laid out in front of them; enough to beat the previous record of five pounds and some change. The timer started, and they were off! Whereas the amateurs all omitted eating the green stems, opting to place them in a separate bucket to be weighed against the amount eaten, the professionals all ate the entire strawberry, greens and all. Like machines, they just kept putting one after the other in their mouths, chew, swallow, chew, swallow. The most impressive and ultimately successful competitor, Tom "Goose" Gilbert, is an army reserve officer, and he ate those berries with a will and precision that would have been admirable had it not been so gluttonous. "Goose" ended up eating nine pounds even, a decisive win, and a look of total misery when it was all over.

The Boyfriend and I spent the next hour wondering around the festival, eating ice cream, petting barnyard animals and giggling at the tacky local knick knacks (awesome tie dye t-shirts, anyone? Floral tea cozies, perhaps?). Around three, on the verge of suffering dehydration, heat stroke and/or sunburn, we headed home. On the road back to the highway, the Boyfriend swears he saw Tom "Goose" Gilbert in a car pulled over to the side of the road, throwing up about nine pounds of strawberries out the side door.

And the homemade ice cream? Oh, people. It is what heaven tastes like. I made two of David's recipes -- strawberry sour cream ice cream, and strawberry rhubarb sorbet. They were both incredibly easy, requiring almost zero cooking. The ice cream is a rich, light pink ice cream with real strawberry flavor at the center, not the sugar or the cream tastes. And the sorbet is light and tart and sweet, a dark red-pink, and with barely any sugar, the stuff is downright good for you! I have a quart of each in the freezer that I'm slowly working my way through, a refreshing, delicious reminder that summer time is here!

Thing 38: The Wolf Trap

Sometimes life throws perfect moments at you. Everything comes together in a great swirl of contentment, satisfaction, joy and peace. The night I met the Boyfriend comes to mind, when we both managed to say exactly the right thing, keep saying the right thing, telling just the right jokes and anecdotes to realize that this was gonna be something big. There was the time I made my first roasted chicken, one week after I turned 21, and it was juicy and shiny and and crispy, and I realized that this whole being-an-adult thing wasn't so bad. There was the night the week before the 2004 presidential election, when I was working on the campaign in Florida, and two friends and I went to the beach late at night. We stood looking at the ocean, and I remembered that for all the stress and hard work and sleepless nights, the tide would still come in and out every day. Everything was going to work out and move forward.

And there was the time I went to see Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion by myself at the Wolf Trap, two years ago.

I'd gone to the Friday night show on Memorial Day weekend in 2005, and no one would go with me, so I headed over by myself. I brought a simple supper of a turkey sandwich from the Safeway deli, a bag of chips, and a 22 oz Miller Lite. I found a spot near the top of the center lawn, sat down on my little blanket, and as the show began I munched my sandwich and sipped my big beer. The stars came out, Garrison took his stool out to center stage to tell us all about Lake Wobegone, and I leaned back in the grass, staring at the stars and listening to that steady, nostalgic monologue. I was content and at peace. Everything was as it should be.

In an attempt to recapture that moment of pure peace, I returned to see A Prairie Home Companion at the Wolf Trap on Friday, with Good Friend Lisa this time, and her new roommate.

I've already written briefly about Wolf Trap, so you may already know it is high on my list of things to do in the summer heat. And it is an easy tradition to start, as Garrison does a live broadcast of his NPR program from the Wolf Trap every Memorial Day weekend, and a dress rehearsal performance on the preceding Friday night. I met GFL and her roommate in the theater, having staked out a small square of lawn. I had brought a cooler filled with arugula-red onion-feta fritatas (without which, I would never have run into ?uestlove), as well as white chocolate macadamia cookies, and tiny individual bottles of pinot grisio. GFL brought some blanched asparagus, about three dozen shiny bright green stalks, and a small container of homemade wasabi mayonnaise for dipping.

We ate and drank and laughed, enjoying the mild summer air and our beautiful setting. The Wolf Trap is a national park for the performing arts, and the main attraction is a huge wooden stage, with a sheltered section of real seats and a sprawling lawn above that for those of us in the cheap seats. I actually prefer the lawn, as I think it gives you more freedom to come and go, the ability to picnic and drink wine, and a better chance to commune with your neighbors. Our neighbors to the front of us, for example, were a large group of young adults in their mid-twenties, apparently college friends and lovers, and then one of their moms. They kept going to their picnic basket and pouring deep cups of straight gin. The mom was hammered by the show's end, and one the guys couldn't find his flip flops when it came time to leave.

Our neighbors to our left enjoyed singing along, and luckily they could harmonize with what was going on on stage, so it wasn't even irritating. The man had brought his harmonica, and accompanied the star spangled banner with it, with perfect pitch and musical warbles.

The Prairie Home gang did a slew of political sketches and jokes, and poked fun of the musically inclined fauna that might live in a national park for the arts. The musical guest was the Wailin' Jennys, a quartet of three women and one man, a variety of stringed instruments (violin, bass, guitar, ukulele), and beautiful, haunting melodies in three part harmony. The other guest of the evening was Billy Collins, who read his comedic and moving poems in a monotonous dead pan, adding to the inevitably funny observations about lanyards or how your dog really feels about you. You can listen to the live broadcast here, but it will differ slightly from what I heard at the dress rehearsal, mostly tightened up to meet the time requirements of a live show.

And finally, as the moon rose high into the clear night, Garrison took the stage all by himself to tell us the news from Lake Wobegone. He told us about his home town's Memorial Day celebration, the VFW's ceremony honoring the fallen, and how one veteran, having forgotten to prepare his speech, simply winged it by saying "if ever there were a time for silence, it would be now." And he recalled how, as a child, everyone in the class had to memorize the Gettysburg Address, as it might fall on any one of them to recite it. And then he did, reciting the whole speech, in its simple eloquence, to the audience. And most of us realized that we'd never actually listened to it. Read it, skimmed it, perhaps even recited it, sure, but I mean really listened. To the beauty and the weight and the economy of words, their meaning then and how it still holds as much meaning now. The three of us by now had laid back in the grass, gazing up at the small dipper, letting that voice wash over us, full of too much asparagus and just enough cookies. And there it was...that perfect moment, once more.

Side Note: With a gusto that is both admirable and incredibly optimistic, the Boyfriend has decided he will be running a 5k in 18 minutes by the end of the summer. You can track his progress here. It promises to be both entertaining and incredibly foolhardy.

Thing 37.5: Meet ?uestlove

Ok, this doesn't really count as a fun thing to do in DC, but I need to shout this from the rooftops. I MET ?UESTLOVE!! (That's pronounced 'quest love' to those of you unfamiliar with the fabulous Roots Crew drummer). On my way home after the gym, I popped into the CVS at 14th & L to buy a dozen eggs for fritatas. As I was walking out, a towering black man with an unmistakable afro with a comb sticking out of it (yes, he was coiffed with comb!) came sauntering out of a big white van, and crossed my path heading for the front door.

I am master of subtlety. My eyes bugged out of my head. I'm not entirely sure, but I think my jaw physically dropped open.

He noticed this, of course, and reluctantly said hi. I stammered, "so...um, are you guys playing a show here?"

"Yeah, at Love, which used to be Dream."

"Oh...cool..."

My eyes were still popping out of my head, but ?uestlove at this point continued walking into the CVS. I tried to decide if I should wait, stalk, follow, request a picture, but after a moment's hesitation I just turned and continued on my home to make fritatas.

In DC, Senators and Congressman are a dime a dozen. So you saw Congressman Grijalva on his way to the gym, or you saw Tom Daschle dining at a sidewalk cafe. Big deal. I spoke to ?uestlove. I win.