It was the height of foliage season in New England and we had planned a foliage drive that would include Historic New England's annual fine arts and crafts festival at Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut. We had no other fixed plans, but we know that Woodstock is in prime foliage country and it was a gorgeous day so all was well.

Although we live just a mile from Route 44, it's a slow road and we needed to make tracks, so we took the highway to Route 44 at I-295 west of Providence. From there we meandered through northwestern Rhode Island and into Connecticut at Putnam. From there it was a short hop to Woodstock, one of the prettiest towns in New England.

It's an excellent show with many vendors and very high quality, but I had work to do so Lorna shopped while I worked in the car. But I am not utterly impervious to beauty, so I did walk around a little and shot some photos while she shopped the show.

Eventually we left Woodstock behind us and headed south along CT route 169 to Griswold, one of my favorite foliage drives in all New England. It twists and turns and rises and falls through tunnels of ancient trees and past prosperous farms. Then we turned east on Rte 138 into Connecticut toward Jamestown and Newport.

We drove right into a surprise! In sleepy little rural Richmond, RI we sailed past a sign about a Jonnycake Festival! I have long been interested in this culinary artifact of Colonial Rhode Island, so this was an event not to be missed. I stopped the car and backed up to get the details.

The event was that very weekend! And it was already 4:00pm on Sunday! If I had not dawdled so along that foliage drive, I could have made it to the festival. Now I would have to wait a year.

But no! It said it was running until 5:00 pm. We could get in and scope it out, then decide whether or not to put it on the calendar for next year.

Jonnycakes are an old Rhode Island tradition dating from colonial times. Actually, they are older than that; the colonists learned about them from the Wampanoags and Narragansetts that preceded them. They are simply a cornmeal mush baked on a hot griddle until the are crispy-crunchy-toasty outside and tender-corny inside. You can get some details and a recipe at Jonnycakes.

If you really want to know all about this old foodway and why it gets a festival of its own (not to mention hot controversies and action by the RI legislature) then you really must read The Island Cookbook by Barbara Sherman Stetson.

Barbara is well-known in Rhode Island culinary circles. She has been in the field for a long time, and her knowledge is deep. She is sometimes on TV and in famous magazines, but she doesn't get big-headed about it - that's her making johnnycakes at the festival. She took some time to talk to me (wow! my brains was full in no time!) and I bought her book (linked above) so I could recall the lore that didn't stay in my brain. Remember that we had arrived at the festival at 4pm on Sunday and most of the vendors were eager to close up and go home. These hyperlocal, highly specialized festivals are a great way to discover things that you would never see otherwise, so it was a real whirlwind experience.  

Then I got to tour the gristmill where Kenyon's johnnycake meal is made.

Kenyon's is the biggest maker of johnnycake meal in Rhode Island, which I guess means in the whole universe. It's on the edge of a beautiful millpond (see the photo above the johnnycakes on this page), but they have had their share of natural disasters in the years since 1696, including a devastating flood a few years ago that badly damaged the millpond dam and caused much damage. During rebuilding, they finally switched away from waterpower to electric power.

The rest of the mill is still old fashioned, even the parts that were rebuilt. Kenyon's is serious about maintaining this old traditional food, so they still pour hard white flint corn from a wooden hopper down into the millstones below. There it is cold-ground and dropped down another chute to the ground floor where it is packaged for sale. When you see the familiar blue-and-white Kenyon's box in the supermarket, that meal was ground much the way it was in 1696.

You can tour the mill. I recommend it. The festival was fun and I hope to go again next year, but I don't plan to wait that long to get back to Usquepaugh. Fortunately I don't have to go that far for my authentic old-style johnnycake meal - you can get it at Stop & Shop!