Where would you live, if money and jobs and real life logistics were no object? Would you pick a flat in London or a pied-à-terre in the Loire Valley, surrounded by vineyards and all the Sancerre you could possibly drink? Maybe you’d want to live in Austin—eating the world’s best breakfast tacos and listening to great live music on the weekends. Or you’d pick a cool apartment in a cool city like Los Angeles or Sydney or Hong Kong, or in a suburb with tidy green lawns just outside Chicago so you could vacation on weekends in picturesque Door County.
Would you want a big house: many-bedroomed with a sprawling porch and spacious laundry room? Would you want a sleek loft, or a tiny stuccoed cottage with terra cotta shingles?
In any of my idle “wouldn’t-it-be-nice-one-day” dreams over the years, I never imagined the beach. I love love beach vacations—love windsurfing and paddleboarding and seaside towns and the general feeling of suntanned skin and salt water in my hair and outdoor showers. I love the vibe of it, whether I’m imagining the relaxed, hippie-like atmosphere of Byron Bay in Australia with its open-air cafes and avocado toasts and surfers, or Martha’s Vineyard with its preppy Lilly Pulitzer-clad women and marshy tidal flats and lighthouses. And some of my favorite memories are beachside: Nantucket Island and the British Virgin Islands and Pine Cay and the Dominican Republic and Santa Barbara and so on. But living there? It’s not what I lust after.
I’d pick a lake house in New Hampshire, close by to a network of steep and shady trails for endless adventuring. Or something on the coast of Maine where lobster boats depart in the early morning mist and the smell of pine mixes with the scent of mountain laurel. Or the gently rolling hills of Derbyshire in England with its cozy towns—all winding cobblestone streets with a hodge-podge of pubs and flower shops and yellow limestone houses.
I’d like to live on a farm like the one where I grew up, but in a modern farmhouse—all glass and blond wood and wide-plank whitewashed floors—overlooking green pastures and split rail fences. Maybe in Vermont, or somewhere close to a town where I could pop in and find a really great cheese shop and a small bookstore and a coffeeshop that sells fat wedges of kale-and-Gruyere quiche and slices of cornmeal cake studded with blueberries.
I’d like a bit of land where streams cut through the property, wending their silvery way into and out of the woods. I’d like to be able to wade ankle-deep in them, following their watery path for hours, finding rocks to skip and caches of tadpoles to examine and hearing birdsong bounce around the upper branches of the trees.
I want fresh air and access to places that make me feel like I’m in a grand, open-air church: worshipping at the altar of clean, crisp mountain air or the surface of a lake and how it looks exactly like a brushstroked painting when it ripples in the breeze.
And yet, I find myself—albeit somewhat temporarily—in a beach town.
It’s odd to live somewhere that people come to vacation; even in this weird pandemic world, the streets are flooded with people in August, holding coffees from Aldo’s and licking drippy ice cream cones from Ralph’s Ice on Front Street and parking their cars bumper-to-bumper at Town Beach.
It feels like home, but vacation home—not real, forever home to me. My surroundings are comfortable and familiar, but there’s an underlying sense of transience to it all. Instead of allowing this sensation to constantly throw me off-kilter, I’m just leaning into it. Trying not to overthink it all or be anxious about what comes next or jump ahead to planning.
So, I’m soaking it up—as much as one can when trying to avoid human contact. (I haven’t been to a grocery store since March 18! What a world!)
I sit outside in the sun. I paddleboard every single morning. I jump in the water at least once a day, but usually twice. I ride my bike to pick up blueberries and zucchini and local honey from the farm stand. I ride the ferry and watch the cormorants diving in the middle of the bay. I grill at least three times a week and I wear shoes only 10% of the time, if that.
Here’s what I don’t do, but would in…well, in any year that is not 2020:
I don’t sit at the most popular outdoor bar and order a tall glass of the daily frozen cocktail, which rotates nightly through a menu of high-brow options like slushy Negronis and the best frozen daiquiri you’ve ever tasted.
I don’t wander into the bookstore and lean on the counter chatting about new summer releases with the owner.
I don’t go to the 8 AM kettlebells class, followed by a stop—sweaty and red-faced—at the juice bar next door to get the Aphrodite smoothie (blueberries, coconut water, chia, banana, coconut oil, spinach) or the Chimp Chia smoothie (cacao, banana, dates, almond butter, almond milk).
I don’t wait in line for the world’s best morning glory muffin at the Italian bakery across from the wine shop, or idly peruse the silky dresses and soft cotton graphic t-shirts at the boutique down the street, where they sell scented candles from Brooklyn and pretty hand-painted greeting cards.
I don’t drive to Fork & Anchor to pick up a BLT on toasted white bread. I don’t sit under the shady pergola at the vineyard, sniffing tasting glasses of wine like I actually know what I’m talking about, throwing out words like leggy and juicy, and then promptly drinking all the sips of sparkling wine on the table.
I don’t walk across the street to the trio of gray-shingled houses with slate-blue roofs and a crushed shell driveway behind a wrought iron gate and ask if I can please join in their weekend parties. The compound—which I can see from the pier at the end of the street—is owned by a big family with an endless parade of cousins and siblings and kids. It sits right on the water; they have a small private swath of sand where they drop kayaks and surfboards and blow-up rafts. There’s a pool with a patio covered by a white sailcloth canopy that gives me strong St. Tropez vibes. At night they switch on strands of tea lights over the lawn and dance underneath them to loud music. You can smell burgers grilling and a yeasty smell from the draft beer they have on tap at the outdoor kitchen (I think most passersby want to join their family for this reason alone) and often rum, presumably for big pitchers of rum punch or mojitos.
It’s enough to make anyone want to live at the beach. To go barefoot and abandon all possessions save for a few t-shirts and a pair of worn jean shorts (coincidentally, that’s about all I do own at the moment, since nearly everything I own is in boxes in a storage unit somewhere outside of Baltimore).
If you are far from the beach, or emotionally far from that sort of carefree existence (aren’t we all at some point these days?), then you can at least have a taste of it. How? Dorie Greenspan’s coconut lime sable cookies. (YES I REALIZE A BITE OF COCONUT IS NOT THE SAME AS MOVING TO ST. BARTHS BUT ROLL WITH ME HERE.)
But seriously, these cookies do taste an awful lot like a piña colada, minus the booze. (But go ahead and pour yourself a drink while you make them to even things out.)
Note: I strongly recommend that you weigh your flour for this recipe—with any shortbread-like dough, it’s crucial to get the correct ratio of butter to flour so that the dough isn’t too dry and crumbly but also so that the cookies have a nice snap when baked. I add a little cardamom to the dough, which is optional but good.
Coconut Lime Sables
Lightly adapted from Dorie Greenspan
1 2/3 cups (200g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (28 grams) cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon cardamom (optional)
2/3 cup (132 grams) cup sugar
zest of 2 limes
1 cup (227g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup (63g) sweetened shredded coconut, divided
1/4 cup (28g) unsweetened shredded coconut
First, toast half of the sweetened shredded coconut in a 325 degree oven (spread it on a baking sheet) for about 7 minutes, or until just beginning to take on color and smell fragrant. Set aside.
Whisk together the flour and cornstarch with the cardamom.
Place the sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and add the lime zest. Rub the zest into the sugar with your fingertips until fragrant.
Add the butter and salt and vanilla to the sugar and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium-high speed.
Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined, then add the toasted coconut along with the remaining untoasted sweetened coconut. Mix until well-combined, then divide in half and shape each half into a log, about 9” long.
Wrap the logs tightly in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours, or freeze for up to one month.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Remove the logs from the fridge (if frozen, let them come to room temp first) — slice the logs into rounds about 1/2” thick.
Spread the unsweetened coconut in a shallow bowl or plate and roll the edges of each cookie in the coconut.
You can either bake them on a parchment-lined sheet or in the wells of a muffin tin. I like to use the muffin tin because it means all the cookies come out perfectly uniform in size. I never grease mine and I’ve never had an issue with them sticking but feel free to grease yours lightly if you’re worried about that.
Place the cookies on the baking sheet or in the muffin tin wells and bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until just barely pale golden. Remove from the oven and let cool fully.