by: Anna Frost
As a 5’3”, pale and freckled girl of Irish and English heritage, I often surprise people on two accounts – the amount of food I can eat and the speed at which I burn. Today, on a trip out to Aquinnah for seafood and sun, my two housemates were thoroughly astonished and amused by both these facets of my being.
To be fair, the three of us went out there with the goal of eating more than we should. Nick was assigned articles on the two restaurants on the cliffs – Dreamcatcher and Aquinnah Shop – so we decided to kill two birds with one stone, or rather two meals in one afternoon. I prepared semi-well for a day in the sun, applying sunscreen on my face and wearing light layers (jeans and a tank top with a sweater, which I only took off briefly), and didn’t think too much about the amount of time we would be outside. And so off we went on the 40-minute drive out to the cliffs, with Nick and I jamming to Led Zeppelin in the front seat of my trusty Corolla and Jo dozing in the back.
Dreamcatcher, a little stand among the shops of Aquinnah, provided us with seafood that I can only describe as luscious. I consumed a perfect lobster roll, overflowing with sweet claw meat and the lightest bit of mayonnaise spread on the bun – no fillers, as the woman at the window proudly proclaimed – while Nick got his fried scallop fix. But as delicious as both our meals were, we both coveted, and then stuck forks into Jo’s fish and chips. The beer-battered cod was crispy, then succulent and flavorful. The chips were well above average too, even if they weren’t technically thick enough to be “proper chips,” as Jo noted in her native British accent.
As we finished the last of our food, I offhandedly remarked that I had room for an ice cream cone as we watched a family pick up a few of Dreamcatcher’s soft-serve ice creams. This elicited looks of confusion on Nick’s face, who declared he was stuffed full. But then we ended up getting a cone each to enjoy while we looked out on the cliffs, knowing full well that we would be eating at Aquinnah Shop in less than two hours.
We spent enough time on the beach for Jo to stand in the chilly water and for me to build a sandcastle – actually a sand Colosseum with a moat and a bridge added on – and to sit in the sand to digest our first meal. Then, feeling like Hobbits, we went off in search of second lunch.
Now, although we did accomplish the feat of two meals in four hours – crab cake and a clam roll, followed by raspberry rhubarb pie with a perfect, flaky pie crust at Aquinnah Shop – I must say that in retrospect, I do not recommend this course of action. Still full from the previous lunch, it was more of a task than a pleasure. I ate half of my crab cake, which was an appetizer. In the end, it was Nick that surprised Jo and I by downing the entire gigantic clam roll he ordered. Alas, my stomach’s feats of volume had come to an end. But not until I had a few bites of that pie. Ironically, our one regret was that we got too full to get one of Dreamcatcher’s floats and we enviously eyed an orange soda float being handed out the window as we trudged back to our car.
We arrived home completely in a state of food-induced comas – the ride back involved me staying awake to the Black Keys while Nick and Jo dozed in and out of consciousness. One look in the mirror at my arms told me that a few hours of sitting outside to eat and create sand architecture was too much for – as Jo put it – my pasty skin.
So as Jo and Nick realize that I really do burst into flames when I go out into the sun, I just ordered nearly a week’s rent worth of high SPF products from Sephora to prevent this from happening next time. Because with our appetites, there will be a next time. Nick and I just ate a bit of the Murdick’s chocolate-walnut fudge I had laying about and I’m contemplating retrieving the other half of my crab cake from its to-go box in my fridge.
