As a tyke, my summers were spent in glorious Cape Cod, so I can’t be sure just how much of my love for this place is nostalgic, but darn if it isn’t a perfect place to be today! This weekend was an amazing Taylor family reunion, with MomMom and her four sons and daughter-in-laws, plus 10 of the 12 cousins (myself included) and their wives/fiancees/boyfriends congregating in Osterville for beach and beer pong… It isn’t often that I see my extended family, but every time I am reminded how awesome this family is; we have our mini-dramas for sure, but everyone connected to MomMom and DadDad is a wonderful human being and I have deep love for each of my relatives. I look forward to watching this family grow up and produce another generation of good people!
And then the storm blew in! It happened to arrive on the day we set out to Nashwena, a small, private Elizabethan island about 12 miles out from Woods Hole belonging to descendants of the Forbes family, one of whom is a close friend of my brother. Three kerosene-burning houses and a wandering pack of Highland cattle are all that maintain this timeless environment. After a rough bounce through Vineyard Sound and Buzzards Bay, we moored the boat and hunkered down in the red house through some brutal winds and stinging rain. But even in those conditions, it can be impossible to resist the pull of the ocean and its bounty of fish, so we marched to the wave slathered rocky coast and whipped our frozen-mackerel-on-a-hook or shiny, spinny lures into the sea and waited for the hook to set in the jowls of some foolish sea creature. Our legal (28in+) catch was minimal, but I’ve always preferred quality to quantity and Andrew turned our meager supply of Striped Bass into crudo; raw fish with oil, lemon, herbs and cured pig. Amazingly unforgettable, but that’s par for the course when Andrew steps into the kitchen… potatoes au gratin, duck with pickled jalapeno and rose hip sauce and fantastic salads from the island’s bursting gardens was some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. With food, family and friends, complemented by some epic late-night jam sessions, the wannabe hurricane could not even begin to dampen our joyous celebration of the good life.
