{"id":1738,"date":"2005-06-30T00:12:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-30T00:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2005\/06\/30\/10-days-tightly-packed"},"modified":"2015-09-24T03:54:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T03:54:22","slug":"10-days-tightly-packed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/06\/10-days-tightly-packed\/","title":{"rendered":"10 days, tightly packed"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, the cat\u2019s out of the bag. While you weren\u2019t looking, I snuck off to New York with homemade muffins<\/a>, the requisite amount of love-struck giddiness, and, in a remarkable display of restraint, only six pairs of shoes. My ten-day whirlwind visit included a wedding (no, not mine); a piano recital; a Little League game; a kindergarten performance of Maurice Sendak\u2019s \u201cChicken Soup with Rice\u201d; three trips to New Jersey; a road-trip to Baltimore; a visit with my favorite meatball maker, Doron<\/a>; a lot of sweaty days sans air conditioning; and a handsome man; but along the way, I did<\/em> find time to eat. And lucky for you, a girl cannot live on muffins alone\u2014or at least, in New York, she\u2019d be foolish to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In such matters, there\u2019s no better place to begin than breakfast. In late morning, and with an oscillating fan as musical accompaniment, we tore into a fresh <\/strong>Balthazar<\/strong><\/a> baguette<\/strong> and smeared hunks of it with cool Double Devon cream butter<\/a>, layering on paper-thin slices of crisp radish<\/a> from the Union Square Greenmarket, sprinkling each bite with French gray salt, and washing it down with purply-red blood orange juice. Each mouthful was salty and soothing, crunchy and yielding, peppery and cooling, delicious. And so it began.<\/p>\n

A day and a half later, with a wedding reception, a falafel<\/a>, and two trips to Jersey behind me, I had the pleasure of meeting fellow-blogger Amy<\/a>, in town from Sweden to visit family and friends, for a warm evening of drinks, dinner, and the sort of conversation that keeps two girls firmly planted in their seats until well past midnight<\/strong>. We met at The Dove<\/a>, a red brocade-lined bar near Washington Square Park, and after a gin and tonic for me and red wine for Amy, we moved on to Otto<\/a>, where we shared a bottle of wine, two pizzas, and a side of cauliflower \u201calla Siciliana.\u201d Though the place felt more cavernous and less intimate than I\u2019d expected (and, as Amy noted, the bathrooms could use immediate attention), the pizza was fine and the cauliflower appealingly roughed up with lemon and capers. It was the company, however, that made the meal. I may have come to New York on official Brandon<\/a>-related business, but I plan to always time future trips to coincide with Amy\u2019s visits from across the Atlantic. Especially if it means getting to attend another barbeque at her family\u2019s home in New Jersey, as we did the following afternoon. Her friend<\/a>s were more than welcoming to this West-Coast outsider; her father was an excellent partner for a porch chat; and her mother makes a mean oatmeal cookie<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And speaking of family, I managed to sneak out to Long Island for a few days with my own\u2014my half-sister Lisa, her husband, and their five children. Between Little League games, school plays, and loads of laundry, Lisa introduced me to her favorite haunts, from her plot in the nearby community garden to Azure Chocolat*, a little light-blue shop on a quiet street in Centerport. And there I discovered the Azure s\u2019more, surely the loveliest specimen of the genre retro-goes-ritzy, homey-goes-haute<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A palm-sized cube layered with homemade rosewater marshmallow, maple rose truffle, and thick homemade graham crackers, the s\u2019mores are generously dipped in dark chocolate and topped with chopped walnuts. They are blessedly subtle in their sweetness, with a complex, hard-to-pinpoint floral quality, and but more importantly, they are blessedly easy on the tongue. Lisa and I took one home, sliced it thickly with a paring knife, and hovered over it, chewing thoughtfully and dabbing at the cutting board with our fingertips to catch every stray shard of chocolate<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And though I bought three more Azure s\u2019mores for the road, that didn\u2019t stop me from seeking out more sweets\u2014also of the nostalgia variety\u2014back in Manhattan. Brandon, ever food-savvy and already keenly aware of my sweet tooth, had studiously compared cupcakes around town and suggested a visit to sugar Sweet sunshine<\/strong><\/a> on the Lower East Side, where we, after only minor negotiating, decided to share an \u201cOoey Gooey\u201d (a chocolate cupcake with chocolate-almond buttercream) and a pistachio cupcake with \u201cthe Moose\u201d (a shiny, satiny buttercream). <\/p>\n

We sat down at a table by the window with our napkins and chosen cupcakes, as well as a free bonus: part of a pumpkin cupcake with lemon buttercream, a baker\u2019s \u201cmistake\u201d<\/strong> offered to us by one of the girls at the counter. We made fast work of the soft, creamy little cakes, \"\"<\/a>
and as we were discussing the merits of sugar-laced kitchen errors, I noticed a strangely familiar-looking couple standing near the counter: it was Clotilde, of <\/strong>Chocolate & Zucchini<\/strong><\/a>, and her boyfriend Maxence<\/strong>! I had known that they were visiting New York from Paris, but, as Clotilde noted in her sweet description<\/a> of our fortuitous meeting, the odds were razor-thin that we\u2019d find ourselves in the same colorful little cupcake bakery at the same time on the same Saturday afternoon. But we shook off our disbelief, swapped notes on the city, and chatted a bit<\/strong>, and then we parted ways as surreally as we\u2019d come together. Unfortunately, I missed her get-together<\/a> at Otto the following evening, since I was on my way to JFK and back to Seattle. With any luck, though, we\u2019ll find another time to meet\u2014this time, maybe even with prior planning!\u2014in New York or Paris, or on sait jamais<\/em>, Seattle.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, I made my way home with a bag full of New York: three little vats of ultra-creamy Sabra<\/a>-brand hummus; a dark and sour Balthazar pain de seigle; three cheeses from Cato Corner Farm<\/a>; Jacques Torres chocolates from Brooklyn\u2019s Blue Apron Foods<\/a>; and fruity, not-too-sweet liquid loot from the greenmarket, strawberry-rhubarb and apricot wines<\/strong> from Ch\u00e2teau Renaissance<\/a>. And as a parting gift, I also got to bring home a wonderfully food-obsessed New Yorker, at least for a few weeks. It should be enough to keep me busy\u2014and well-fed\u2014until next time.<\/p>\n

*Azure Chocolat\u2019s website is still in the works, but you can find them at 90C Washington Drive in Centerport, New York; telephone: 631.425.1885.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, the cat\u2019s out of the bag. While you weren\u2019t looking, I snuck off to New York with homemade muffins, the requisite amount of love-struck giddiness, and, in a remarkable display of restraint, only six pairs of shoes. My ten-day whirlwind visit included a wedding (no, not mine); a piano recital; a Little League game; a kindergarten performance of Maurice Sendak\u2019s \u201cChicken Soup with Rice\u201d; three trips to New Jersey; a road-trip to Baltimore; a visit with my favorite meatball maker, Doron; a lot of sweaty days sans air conditioning; and a handsome man; but along the way, I did find time to eat. And lucky for you, a girl cannot live on muffins alone\u2014or at least, in New York,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n10 days, tightly packed | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2005\/06\/10-days-tightly-packed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"10 days, tightly packed | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So, the cat\u2019s out of the bag. While you weren\u2019t looking, I snuck off to New York with homemade muffins, the requisite amount of love-struck giddiness, and, in a remarkable display of restraint, only six pairs of shoes. My ten-day whirlwind visit included a wedding (no, not mine); a piano recital; a Little League game; a kindergarten performance of Maurice Sendak\u2019s \u201cChicken Soup with Rice\u201d; three trips to New Jersey; a road-trip to Baltimore; a visit with my favorite meatball maker, Doron; a lot of sweaty days sans air conditioning; and a handsome man; but along the way, I did find time to eat. 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