I’m sitting outside watching a cardinal flit about the garden, perching on the top of wire trellis that supports the cherry tomato vines. It’s breezy and cool out today, but the sun is shining and I’m barefoot in a t-shirt. The morning is quiet—I can hear far-off voices now and again, and an insistent cheep of birdsong high above me. I left the heavy sliding glass door open to allow fresh air through the screen, and I can hear the gentle ping and clank of the washing machine and the quiet whooshing of the white noise machine coming through the baby monitor from the nursery upstairs.
Read moreSOUR CREAM BANANA BREAD
Remember small talk with strangers? Cocktail parties and the attendant chit-chat you’d make as you sipped a glass of Chardonnay in someone’s living room, or nursed a too-strong gin and tonic amidst a group of friends at a bar? Dinner parties where you politely conversed with the people on either side, finding out that the man to your left is an accountant who builds wooden canoes in his spare time and that the woman to your right only likes to humble brag about her three children?
Read moreSESAME PRALINE GRAHAM CRACKERS
I tap open the weather app and see a bold red “flood warning” above the day’s hourly forecast. It’s not yet 7 AM—an hour at which the day usually hasn’t declared itself, weather-wise. I step outside into a cloudy, opaque world: fog and mist obscure the street, making the houses and trees and cars appear pale and shadowy.
(I realize I talk a lot about the weather here. Either I should consider a career as an amateur meteorologist, or it’s a reflection of the fact that when you live at the beach (and anywhere really), a sunny day versus a rainy one greatly colors your daily experience. Anyway. Roll with it, okay?)
Read moreCOCONUT SWEET ROLLS
Let’s talk about birthdays. Are you the gung-ho sort when it comes to celebrating your own? The kind of person who proclaims an entire birthday week? When you were little, did you demand to be treated royally for the entire day, loudly stating “it’s my birthday!” to anyone within earshot? Or do you shy away from the whole ordeal, feeling sheepish about being feted for the mere fact of being born?
You might fall somewhere in between—increasingly indifferent to the showiness of it all, but fully willing to blow out some candles and request a special dessert.
Which brings us to the question at hand: what would your ideal birthday dessert be? Are you a classic traditionalist, preferring a golden yellow cake with a sturdy crumb swathed in rich chocolate buttercream? Maybe you like cake, but you’d indulge your inner 5-year-old and opt for funfetti with a fluffy vanilla frosting coated in sprinkles. Maybe you’d go with red velvet with cream cheese frosting or lemon layers with lemon curd and piles of seven-minute meringue frosting.
Read moreS'MORES CAKE
There’s an intangible but precise shift just before Labor Day—the air takes on a crystalline quality. Overnight, the hazy humidity of August disappears, as if it was absorbed by the ocean or as if a storm swept in and washed it away, like rinsing water on a glass then wiping it away, leaving it perfectly clear.
I love this time of year. It can carry a tinge of melancholy as summer wanes and slips away from you, but it’s such an achingly beautiful few weeks that you can’t help but be glad. The beaches are empty, showcasing their wild rambling loveliness. Waves tip up onto the rock-strewn sand, spilling white foam over the smooth surface of the boulders. Tangles of greenery cover the gently sloping dunes that hug the scalloped curves of the shore for miles. I learn the names slowly: northern bayberry and beach plum and winged sumac and creeping juniper and coastal sweet pepper bush.
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