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December 13 - 26 2011Fun & frolic on Cape Cod.

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I’ve always loved the holidays on Cape Cod. When we lived away, in a land that had no discernable seasons, it was the oddity of Christmas decorations glinting in 65 degree sun that always made me aware of the proverbial sand in my shoes, far more so than actually having sand in my shoes, which was just kind of grainy and irritating. I would wistful-ly imagine leaves falling from trees, crisp mornings, the grey ocean and being able to bundle up in sweaters and see my breath as a I wandered un-crowded off-season streets lined with festive décor and fellow stalwart New Englanders who curtly grunted hello.The holidays are a time for coming together, and here on Cape they also signify the gateway to the longer stretch of winter. Sure, we may have bitter cold and ice to deal with, but this is also our time, a time when our home is truly ours. No one asking directions, or causing a stir at rotaries or driving the wrong way down one way streets. The air is still, as though the land and sea itself is recharging for the imminent frolic of summer. I’m always amazed at the number of friendly faces I run into when running errands, faces that I know are there all the time but must somehow become lost in the crowds of sun-drenched weekend warriors that populate our shores for half the year. It becomes a way to recharge and reconnect for us too, re grounding and reinforcing our community. It’s not that I begrudge the fair weather folk, it’s more like having old friends come to visit – you love having them, but it’s nice to have the house to yourself after as well.As you navigate the holiday chaos over the next couple of weeks make sure to take some time and appreciate the people and places around you. More than any video game or knick-knack they are what make this time of year so special.

Cover photo: December sun burns through the fog and illuminates a classic wooden boat. Photo James Joiner

Baby, it’s cold outside!

Warm up at the

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(Not so) fine print.Dinghy is published bi-weekly right here on Cape Cod, by a locally owned business. We believe in supporting local at every possible opportunity and think you should too. We’d love to hear your comments, story ideas, or submissions. Send ‘em to hey@thelittlemagazine.com. If you’re not of the digital persuasion, you can use the good ol’ USPS at P.O. Box 414 Centerville, MA 02632. Although at that point you may as well just give us a call at (508) 648-2214. Don’t be alarmed by the message, we share our office with an outdoor lifestyle mag, and they can get kinda crazy. Can’t wait for the next issue? www.thelittlemagazine.comor make it Facebook official: Facebook.com/dinghymagazine

Get your Cape Cod on.

1. Buy local art! Places like the Little Beach Gallery on Main Street in Hyannis are chock full of offbeat, funky local creations.2. Gift shops. Eschew the big chain stores and their bland offerings with something special from one of the many locally owned gift shops. Harvest and Neutral Territory in Barnstable are but two of dozens.

3. The way to anyone’s heart is through their… Stomach! Cookies, cupcakes, lollicakes, candy, pastries – you name it, they’re made right here. Support a local bakery and do something extra sweet for your sweetie.4. The gift that keeps on giving. With many local animal shelters, why not spread the love (literally) and add a furry new friend to the family?5. Caffeine! Help those on your list get their juices flowing

with a bag of locally roasted Joe. We love Beanstock Coffee Roasters in Eastham, but there are others to choose from as well. Which makes a perfect complement to…6. Alcohol! Cape Cod Beer and Truro Vineyards both have delicious, locally made adult beverages to add a little buzz to your holidays.7. DIY. Do It Yourself. Okay, maybe this isn’t shopping, but what

says “I love you” like a handmade something-or-other? If ideas aren’t popping up or you aren’t the creative type, there are countless local artisans crafting unique goodies, the best way to find them is to…8. …Go downtown. Okay, maybe you can’t get this year’s Tickle Me Elmo made here on Cape Cod, but you sure can find a local shop in one of our many downtown business districts that sells it. Instead of cattle calling your way into a shopping mall, get a hot cocoa, save some parking lot rage and stroll the locally owned shops right down the road.

Us Cape Codder’s love our dogs! How could we not? Nothing goes better with a walk on the beach or romp in the woods than a canine companion. Here’s a new, recurring page of our favorite furry encounters from the past two weeks. Send us your pic at hey@thelittlemagazine.com

Storm

Sasha

Sophie

Teddy

Nikolai

photos James Joiner

DogDays

Nothing wraps you in holiday warmth like the smell of baking, and fresh out of the oven home made bread is about as good as it gets. Anadama bread is a New England tradition, with roots in the fishing community back to the mid 1800’s. A sea captain, fed up with his wife Anna’s insistence on serving up cornmeal and molasses every meal allegedly yelled, “dammitanna!” and added flour and yeast to the porridge. The resulting bread was so good, a legend was born. After being served in a variety of North Shore bakeries throughout the 20th century, the hearty bread’s popularity has waned a bit, though it is kept alive in family recipes and small eateries. We find the rich, dark bread to be perfect for meaty sandwiches or even just drenched in butter with morning coffee.

What you need:

2 1/4 Cups warm water3 tbs softened butter2/3 cup molasses1 cup cornmeal7 cups flour1 tsp salt2 packs Fleischman’s rapid rise yeast

Taste

photos James Joiner

Anadama bread.

Combine 3 cups of flour and the other dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix wet ingredients, then add slowly to dry, with mixer on low. Slowly add remaining flour at medium speed until dough forms into a ball around the beaters. Remove bowl from mixer and place in warm spot to rise for one hour. Re-beat in mixer at medium speed for 45 seconds. Divide into 3 loaves, and gently

knead into loaf pan size. Place in greased bread pans, bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. When done, shake free of pans onto cooling rack, wait 10 minutes to slicing and gobbling.

Holmes had Moriarty. Superman had Lex Luthor. And Green Lantern had that giant space chicken-thingy. We all have a nemesis, that we both despise and perhaps, on some level, admire. Like all birders, my nemesis is crystal clear: gulls. I despise gulls with a passion I reserve for things like mayonnaise, telemarketers and Black Eyed Peas songs. My distaste for them arises not from some childhood trauma involving French fry theft, but from a simple fact: gulls are really, really hard to identify.

For the Birdsby Peter Crosson

Yellow-rumped warbler photo James Joiner

They are basically all greyish above and whitish below, except for the juveniles which are brown all over. Trying to sift through thousands of gulls on a crowded beach, looking for the occasional rarity, is an exercise in frustration of Sisyphean dimensions. The problem is that Cape Cod is a great place for finding rare gulls. Because of our relative proximity to Europe and Greenland, rare gulls often find their way to our shores and end up mingling with our normal, everyday beach bum gulls. Consequently we birders spend a lot of time scanning big crowds of white and grey feathered rats, look-ing for the proverbial needle in the avian haystack. Sometimes if we

are very lucky and patient, we’ll come up with something stunning and rare. More often than not, I just end up with eye strain and a splitting headache. Last winter a yellow-legged gull, a mega-rarity comparable to finding a lost Van Gogh, showed up at Kalmus Beach in Hyannis. After initially being mistaken for a slightly more common lesser black-backed gull, it was identified by sev-eral experts as a yellow-legged, something like the second or third ever in Massachusetts. I did get there to see and photograph it, and as you can see from the picture it looks pretty much exactly like every other gull you’ve ever seen. The main difference? This one has yellow legs. I know, try to contain your excitement. But that’s what we do as birders; we try to track down rarities and build our ever expand-ing life lists. Along the way, gulls are just one big feathery speed bump. I recently got very excited over spotting what I thought was a pretty good rarity, a European gull called a little gull. After getting photos and posting them on the Massachusetts rare bird list, I came to the realization that I was wrong, and that this was just an everyday Bonaparte’s gull, pretty common in winter. Alas, it was too late. I had already posted the pictures, and received several emails pointing out my mistake. It was pretty embarrassing, but I think every birder’s blown a gull ID at some point. Hey, they wouldn’t be our nemesis if they didn’t make our life miserable now and then, right?

What’s that? You need a chocolate glittery mustache lollipop? A kit for making balloon animals? Greeting cards that look like vintage Polaroids? How about locally made goods, or amazing and unique paint-ings? Maybe just a hug and some chit chat? Well, we’ve got just the place for you. At least until the end of the year.Yes, it’s true. Cue “harrumph-ing” and pouty looks, Yummy Goods in West Barnstable is closing its doors after this holiday season.

Hungry for Yummy Goods.Local gift shop closing its doors, but not its heart.

photos James Joiner The queen in her castle.

“We opened at a tough time, three and a half years ago,” said owner / artist in residence Me-lissa Averinos. She noted that it isn’t that Cape Codders don’t want easy access to such novel-ties as gum decrying “I blogged your mama” and books on how to outwit squirrels, its more likely that they just want even easier access. “The location doesn’t support the business… If we were in a location with more traffic, I think we would have succeed,” she explained. It all began when Melissa was on vacation in Key West with her husband.

“I went into a store that had an amazing vibe and amazing smell and great music and was arranged in such a way that I literally looked at everything for about two hours, and it just filled my heart up, and a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that I could do this,” she reminisced. The seed had been planted, and when a space became available just doors down from her home, Melissa took the retail plunge. Drawing on her training as an artist, she created an environment

that is warm, fun and funny without feeling forced. Tucked away in the old train depot at the end of Route 149 in West Barnstable, Yummy Goods has provided not only a colorfully lighthearted shopping experience, it has also fostered a vibrant community. While there is a palpable sense of sadness in her voice, Melissa is looking to the future.“I’m going to focus on painting, and think about what my next book will be about (she has published a book of sewing projects), and I’m going to enjoy

having weekends off,” she laughed. “I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in creative work, and just getting back to what fuels me, and I’ll see what comes out of that.” As far as opening another retail space, well, she isn’t ruling out anything.“It’s an option for the future, if the right situation comes along, but for now I just need to recover.”Melissa will continue maintaining her blog, at www.Yummy-Goods.com, for those who wish to remain in touch and follow her adventures. Her takeaway from the last few years?“Support the shops you love, because they need your sup-port. If you don’t make an effort, and go out of your way to support them and tell people about them, they’re not going to succeed.” True that.

A selection of Averinos originals.

Hey! Like what you see? Talk about a great gift idea... Prints and printed goodies are available online: www.TheLittleMagazine.com!

Peter DeBarros gives the gulls a holiday feast.Photo James Joiner

A random pair of wintery macro shots.Photos James Joiner

Ian Ives scouts for ducks in West Barnstable.Photo James Joiner

A foggy December morning in Marstons Mills.Photo James Joiner

A piece of the shell tree at Long Beach.Photo James Joiner

A spooky roadside seat beckons on Route 6A.Photo James Joiner

Taking advantage of a warm December.Photo James Joiner

Sue Blanchette of Cotuit shops for holiday Kettleers gear.Photo James Joiner

An abandoned relic of summer pastPhoto James Joiner

A freshly hatched praying mantis puts up its dukes.Photo James Joiner

The Beach To Rememberby Isabella Joiner, age 9.There I was standing at the top of a sand dune looking over the seashore. My dog was running through the wind with his big brown ears flapping, the sun was starting to go down, and I could hear all the birds flying to their nightly nests. My dog saw a duck in the middle of the frozen swamp. He darted towards it, and the ice broke into freezing cold water. When he came out he was shivering, but quickly he dried off and we continued walking. We came across a crab and my dog was very interested so he went closer and closer until the crab reached out his claw and pinched him on the nose. It took a little while for the blood to stop coming out. After that we kept on walking until we saw the sign that said, "This Way Back". I was shocked, but then thought a minute - back is where we need to go, meaning back to the parking lot. Finally we got back in one piece, but my dog had some openings.

We’d love to have your child submit a story and some illustrations for the back page of our little mag. Please email to hey@thelittlemagazine.com or send to PO Box 414 Centerville, MA 02632.

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