Progress!

This year is just chugging along beautifully. It's getting to the point in the calendar that I love. Fall is my favorite season because the weather chills out a bit, and the epic baking can begin in earnest. I'm sure there will be updates about baking successes and the inevitable new recipe failures as we go through the next couple of months.

We can put a check mark next to vegetarian week for September. I'm also happy to report that we took another day trip to New York! D'Paul and I left yesterday morning around 5:30am and spent the whooooole day in the city. We had a very impressive itinerary, and I wasn't sure we were going to get through it all, but we did, which is why I am completely exhausted today. On the schedule we planned to:


- Visit as many premium espresso spots as possible to fuel D'Paul's very particular coffee needs

- Score rush tickets to a Broadway show, preferably Follies, and then see said show

- Chelsea Market

- Lunch in Chinatown for me

- Lunch somewhere that wasn't Chinatown for D'Paul

- Pastry, pastry, pastry

- Dinner at Buddakan

- Picking up assorted treats to take home

- Meeting with a friend of D'Paul's from the internet to pick up a free fancy coffee grinder

That's a lot to do! AND WE DID ALL OF IT IN 14 HOURS.

Our first stop was Stumptown Coffee Roasters for the first espresso of the day. Now, fair warning, I am not a coffee goddess. I have no nose for the stuff. It tastes and smells like coffee to me. Nothing infuriates D'Paul more than my completely pedestrian understanding of espresso (or scotch, or anything that requires a nuanced tasting - I'm more fixated on texture and where and how much sugar/chocolate is located within the thing I am eating). So I will not be reviewing the coffee. I did have a delightful brioche bun at Stumptown (Where even the hipsters are imported! - D'Paul). It was light and fluffy with a beautiful brown finish, topped sparingly with what looked like puffed sugar (I don't know what it's really called), and filled with a delicate orange scented pastry cream. Wonderous. I will now attempt to recreate this majestic breakfast pastry at home, I'm sure.


Then we headed over to the Marquis to get rush tickets for Follies, which we did successfully acquire. From there we walked over towards Chelsea Market. On the way we passed Billy's Bakery, which a friend had recommended to us. Holy delicious, Batman! The cupcakes there were the freshest I have ever tasted, and so amazing! I've had Magnolia bakery's much lauded cupcakes, and I'm telling you right now that they have NOTHING on Billy's. I'd confidently go so far as to say that their red velvet cupcake is the best cupcake I have ever tasted. The cake is perfect, moist, perfect density, and just slightly airy. And then the frosting (OH, THE FROSTING!) is a thick beautifully hand applied cream cheese that is smooth, tangy and sweet, and just perfect. Towards the end of our day we headed back to buy a box to take home with us, and I have discovered that they can be ordered online. Hot damn.

Then we hit Chelsea market and got D'Paul's next espresso fix at Ninth Street Espresso. He later deemed this his favorite espresso of the day. Then we went up to the High Line for another taste of espresso, this time from Blue Bottle Coffee. It tasted like coffee! Since it was roasted yesterday we got a half pound of beans. Roast dates that recent are hard to come by, and unfortunately usually coffee beans that you can buy most places are past their peak date. Expired? Well, no. As good as they can be? Very rare.

We dropped some dollars on cabs yesterday, because with so much to do it was easier and faster than figuring out the subway system (and potentially wasting time by going to the wrong place). Here's where the sprint starts. Next we hurried over to Chinatown to get my beloved Cantonese pan-fried noodles at Big Wong. They were great, and I inhaled them. Consequently, I had the hiccups on and off for the rest of the day. On the way out of Chinatown we passed a street festival going on in Little Italy, so D'Paul stopped and got a big Italian sausage sandwich with peppers and onions. The whole booth smelled great, and he was thoroughly pleased with his sandwich.

Then it was on to the theater to see Follies! This was D'Paul's first Broadway musical. I'm pretty impressed with his theatrical eye. He picked up on a lot of things that tend to strike me about these shows. He buys no one's cheap, old, and tired jokes - and I love that. He loved Bernadette's voice, and Sondheim's music (except where the show by means of necessity goes to a cheesy place. Perhaps his next Sondheim is something drier like Sunday in the Park with George or Passion?). We both appreciated the look and the technical aspects of the show. The lighting was gorgeous, and the costumes (particularly those of the Weissman girl ghosts) were stunning. I loved the ghosts, and if I thought anyone would get it I'd go as a Weissman Showgirl for Halloween. After seeing the show in person from start to finish, I think I prefer it in a concert setting. It's so high concept in parts that when it comes back down to earth to go through a more conventional scene it's jarring, and not in a particularly effective way. The individual performances were fantastic. Bernadette Peters was just wonderful. Her voice is spectacular, and seeing her live was a treat. I hope I look like that when I'm 63. With all due respect to Ms. Peters, for me, Jan Maxwell stole the show. I've never seen her work before, but I'm going to have to see more. She blew me away. Her Phyllis was a spot on blend of warm/cold, humorous/biting, and smart/dreamy. By the time we got to the Lucy X and Jessie Y number there had been a tension built up completely justifying the need for the song. Where she really won me was Could I Leave You. I've heard the song dozens of times at this point, and I may have even performed it myself, I can't remember. The jokes (although familiar) were funny, and biting and we laughed all the way through while cringing. I don't know how she did it, but the song's big comedic payoff in the last line "Will I leave you? Guess!" landed comedically and then socked you in the stomach. To take that moment and somehow create it so that the comedy remained intact, but while also sucking all of the air and the hope out of the room at the same time was truly masterful.

After Follies we walked back to Chelsea (can I just move into this neighborhood please?) and had some coffee at Cafe Grumpy. Just stop trying to count the amount of coffee consumed on this trip, it's unreal. I like the lattes at Cafe Grumpy, and had a little bit of D'Paul's drink here. Dinner at Buddakan was next on the docket and I'm happy to report that we had a much better experience this time around. No lost credit cards, and all the food was splendid.

We started with lobster egg rolls with a sweet chili sauce, and spare ribs that came with Chinese mustard. Both were excellent. The meat was tender and so flavorful. I think we'll be trying some kind of a lobster cabbage potsticker at home in the near future, and I'm certain a delicate mustard will accompany our sweet barbecue from now on. Those combinations were so good. D'Paul had a very flavorful Shacha Chicken, and I had the Steamed Sole for dinner. Both were great. The sole had a very delicate, subtle flavor and the texture was light. I enjoyed a bite of the chicken too, and it was dripping in it's own savory goodness. We got a side of char-grilled asparagus with a black bean foam (how trendy) and that was garlicky and delicious. Dessert was a weeping molten chocolate cake with jasmine tea infused ice cream. We waddled out of the restaurant, happily sated.

Of course, that was followed by the trip to Billy's for cupcakes to take home, a trip to Rice To Riches for rice pudding to take home, and D'Paul's meeting with the fellow from the internet to get the coffee grinder. It's a Mazzer (very impressive, I'm told) that needs a little love. So he'll be refurbishing that in the next few weeks. We made it back to the Megabus area in time to get in line early enough to sit together on the ride home. Once we were on the bus we slept all the way back to Baltimore. We got in at about 2am and were in bed by 3am - but I am still sleepy. I had to be at work at 10am today, and it's going to be a long day. I think it was worth it. We had a great time together, and reminded ourselves why we're constantly saying "We really should get up to New York more often." and how easy it is to actually do just that.

My daily workout schedule to keep me in top mental and physical shape for I Want To Be A Gay Icon! starts tomorrow. And now that I wrote it down it has to. Wish me luck!