New York City's Backyard

Yesterday we enjoyed a day that I previously dubbed Becky-style (although that's a bit of a lie, since I like 'em too). The weather gods poured buckets and buckets of rain on us as we sprinted between the car and the various stores we needed to visit. And we hung out at home and relaxed.

Today though...we got to have a previously dubbed Carrie-style day! (Also a misnomer, since Becky had an awesome time too.) It was the first really gorgeous spring day that happened to fall on a weekend, which felt especially lucky after the end-of-the-world storm on Saturday. But first we enjoyed nutella-filled Frenched tortillas.
Then we headed to Central Park, which was swarming with people who obviously had the same train of thought as we did. Sheep's Meadow was filled with little groups of people sunbathing, tossing frisbees, and watching their adorable children toddle around. It's intriguing to me the way that people in cities do so many things in public that suburbanites save for private, but city dwellers do them in parallel, hardly acknowledging the crowds around them.
Tavern on the Green, formerly a fancy iconic New York restaurant, re-opened as a parks gift store and food truck food court. To celebrate the re-envisioning and kick off the season they had sample day today. Each cart offered part of their usual fare for free! Rickshaw dumplings were delicious as always; Pera Turkish tacos left something to be desired (unadvertised pickled beets have no place in my lamb taco, and cheap grocery store tortillas are not alternatively called "lavash bread"). Even standing in line forever for hit-or-miss food felt lovely though, with the live band, warm sun, and cool breeze.
After eating we decided to do something unplanned: we rented a tandem bike! Becky had never ridden one, I had not ridden one since childhood (Itasca State Park, family?), and between us we've logged about 3 hours of bike riding total in the past 10 years. Becky's going to come back and argue that she rode occasionally in college, but I'm not sure you can call the hunk of junk that she rode in college a bike. We managed to survive a full 6 mile loop around the park, including hills! And it was pretty freaking awesome! On several occasions Becky whimpered that I was trying to kill her, but that's all part of the fun, right? Unfortunately while on the bike we were too focused on pedaling and not crashing to try for a decent picture, but here's one of Becky steering it back to its owners:
We then wandered to the east side (a place we typically avoid going!) to attempt to use a Crate and Barrel gift card before a wedding completion discount ends. We couldn't choose though, so ended up just browsing. And then for some inexplicable reason we decided to walk the 2+ miles back to the bus terminal. On the way we happened upon a premiere party for the new movie Water for Elephants. Quintessential New York, right? (It was a fabulous book too, so hopefully the movie is good!) As proof, here is the back of Reese Witherspoon's head:
In other news we did make a decision on the cable issue, but probably not the one Cablevision or Verizon wanted us to make. We canceled the cable, to save us about as much as Fios would have saved us. And this way we don't have to spend an entire day at home, get landlord permission, or otherwise deal with the hassle of changing providers.

I hope all of your weekends were as lovely!

Island Hopping

This weekend we went island hopping! We visited the exotic locales of Manhattan and Staten Island. Manhattan fed us, with a brunch at Good Enough to Eat and world famous cookies-as-big-as-your-head at Levain's Bakery. Staten Island entertained us.

Although Staten Island and its ferry have been on our to-do list since we moved here several years ago, we have never gotten around to it. The closest we've come was several years ago when our friend Kara and I made a date to ride the ferry, but at the last minute completely switched plans and ended up tubing on the Delaware River. But somehow, on Saturday, the time seemed right. So we made another date with our friend Kara and headed for South Ferry. The ferry terminal had scrolling ads that at first we thought were advertising liquor prices. We still aren't entirely sure what exactly they were advertising, but after our adventures we remain fairly certain that despite Manhattan's best efforts Staten Island is in fact not a separate country (and therefore there is no duty free shopping at the ferry terminal). I am happy to report that the ferry did not tip over from tourists crowded on one side to view the Statue of Liberty. And also happy to report that we did get a view of the statue, because it's always fun to see even if you've done it before. It is really very random that France decided to send us a statue of a giant green lady, and somehow she ended up on a tiny island of her own just off of Manhattan.

Once on Staten Island we boarded a city bus for an incredibly long bus ride. Whoever designed the bus route was apparently in a contest to see if s/he could design a route that drove on every single street on the entire island. At the end though, we were rewarded with a glorious view. We tried several times to take a decent hold-out picture of ourselves, but apparently I was in an unphotogenic mood. Plus I neglected to bring sunglasses like those smarties. This is the best we managed to produce. We wandered the boardwalk and admired the view. We also decided that we were not too sad that it was not swimming weather: It may be gorgeous, but it's still Staten Island after all. (Hey, I live in New Jersey...there has to be somebody left to make fun of.)

The internet informed us that a common Staten Island beach conversation involves the phrase "meet me at the Dolphin Statue." On our approach to the statue we split up and pretended to meet at the statue. Yes, this is what we do for fun on the weekends. And we wonder why we don't have more friends. :) Kara and Becky practiced meeting while I took their picture.After that we headed back towards the ferry terminal. We attempted to get a drink at a random Russian/Greek restaurant, but they didn't seem to want us. So eventually we ended up at a decent little pub and enjoyed a drink, then tried to get on the return ferry. Due to an issue with the ferry we had a little extra time to kill and wound up wandering in to a high school baseball game at the minor league stadium. The stadium is right on the water and has a really nice view behind the field; we're considering attempting a Staten Island Yankees game this summer.

We enjoyed another drink on the return ferry, because apparently drinking beer on the ferry is "a thing" and that's just the sort of thing we do. We waved to Lady Liberty and returned safely to the island from whence we came. And that concludes another chapter of Weekend Adventures!

Delicious Adventures

Last weekend was another relatively low-key weekend at home and/or enjoying the lovely city we happen to live quite near.

On Friday evening the weather was lovely, and thus (the quickly approaching expiration date had nothing to do with it...nope...nothing at all) Becky decided to talk a meandering walk to the Lower East Side to spend a Livingsocial coupon we had purchased nearly a year ago. For the unfamiliar, Livingsocial is a lot like Groupon, where they have one really good deal a day. You pay the coupon site, and I assume they pay the company that offered the product. And then eventually (if you remember, and have the energy to, say, walk to the Lower East Side) you take the coupon to the store and redeem it for your merchandise. So our coupon was for a dozen mini cannolis from Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Yum. Birthday cake was the most delicious to me, but Becky said it was too sweet. Cinnabun tasted like a giant stick of Big Red gum. Most predictable of all, Becky loved peanut butter cup.

Sunday we decided to play NYC tourists. We met up with our friend Stephanie and her adorable 2-year-old daughter for lunch at Ollie's Noodle Shop. Watching a little person slurp udon noodles is pretty freaking adorable. After Chinese food we strolled down 9th Avenue and ended up at Chelsea Market. It's an awesome urbany warehouse space that used to be a big industrial bakery and then some industrial railroad thing and has now been reborn as an upscale collection of bakeries, restaurants, and a few stores. A few delicious bakeries, including Sarabeth's and Amy's Bread, have both storefronts and giant glass-enclosed kitchens where pastry chefs are held captive like zoo animals.

After enjoying ice cream and the children's section of a book store (at which our 2-year-old friend "read" stories to us...aww...) we left our friends at a subway stop and continued the wander down 9th Ave. We picked up ground coffee from an awesome old-school coffee shop that is crazy expensive but we don't care because we buy so little coffee and it's just so damn cool, bought camera lens cleaner from Orthodox Jews, and ended up over at the High Line. Verdict for old elevated rail platform turned urban garden: pretty cool. I think we'll have to return when it's not so frigid out, as it was by this time of the evening.

Bad picture of me, and bad picture of us, but I wouldn't want you to forget our smiling faces. Or worse yet, disbelieve our adventures!

All in all it did not turn out to be as epic as we had hoped, but much fun was had. I would definitely still classify it as an adventure!

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

On the far western side of Manhattan, far north of where many white New Yorkers ever venture, there is a little enclave of deliciousness. Its name is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. You may remember it for its extremely long wait times. I'm happy to report that if you arrive before your movie, rather than after it, the wait is much more bearable. Yes, last Friday night we decided to make a second attempt. Because we like to declare dinners out for a reason we declared that it was in honor of the Valentine's we didn't really celebrate and the anniversary that is not our anniversary anymore. It would probably be just as accurate to say that we really wanted BBQ ribs and cornbread. Dinosaur has also been on our infamous NYC to-do list for several years and we are perpetually [talking about] making efforts to accomplish these things.

For appetizers we ordered the sampler (spicy shrimp, chicken wings, fried green tomatoes, and deviled eggs) and a brisket slider. When the sampler arrived Becky stared at it for a good long time. Because the shrimp had legs. Can I just say...ew? It turned out that she wasn't actually as disturbed by this as I was, but she wasn't quite sure what to do with them. She muscled through and reports that they were tasty. The bodies, not the legs.
For dinner we shared the Sweetheart Deal for Two, which consisted of a full rack of ribs and four sides. We went with French fries, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and salted potatoes. It was all delicious, both at dinner and at home as leftovers the next day. If you're in New York and not a vegetarian I highly recommend taking the trip uptown. (And for the record, there's actually a lot of Manhattan past 125th street!) If you are a vegetarian...well, maybe you should stay downtown.

Eating Sum Dim Sum

I am happy to report that Hop Shing Restaurant, or as it is affectionately known on Yelp, 9 Chatham Square, is in fact not closed. I know this because we enjoyed dim sum* there this Saturday. The restaurant came highly recommended from Becky's coworker, who billed it as the best pork buns in Chinatown. With that kind of praise it is no wonder that we went quickly; I have been in love with the pork bun since the day I found out what dim sum was.
After triple checking that it was not Chinese New Year (we had a bad experience with a several hour wait at dim sum on Chinese New Year a few years ago) we headed out. Along for the ride was our friend Kara, of Superbowl live blogging fame. We were seated within minutes of arrival. Kara started in with stories of her recent shenanigans while Becky watched the carts emerging from the kitchen like a hawk. Apparently she had been warned that pork buns often go quickly and may sell out in early afternoon. We loaded up on all sorts of dumplings with an assortment of delicious doughy outsides. A few even had the pillowy soft dough of the much sought after pork buns, but still no pork buns came. Fear filled us. Finally we realized that several delicious items seemed to be emerging from a bakery counter at the front of the restaurant, while Becky's eyes were peeled on the kitchen. Although we were already stuffed to the brim we inquired and learned that yes, our heart's desire was in fact available by request from the bakery. Aah, pure delicious holy grail of dim sum.
You're probably wondering why it took us so long to ask. Partially that would be because we are all polite and introverted and therefore assume that it would be best to just wait. But partially that would be because this apparently is a relatively authentic dim sum experience, and therefore few of the patrons or staff spoke much English. In fact, when we finally took the leap and asked, we had to be passed through several wait staff before someone understood our inquiry well enough to get us pork buns. Throughout the meal we were stared at by our fellow diners, most prominently an elderly Chinese woman. For lack of a better explanation we assumed this was due to our white American-ness. Until we got the camera out that is. All further staring we attributed to our strange habit of photographing our food.

The most interesting food that we purchased (and photographed) was what seemed to be a dim sum breakfast sandwich. The outside was the aforementioned pillowy soft dough, and the inside was some combination of eggs and sausage. Good try, but not really my cup of tea.
The best part though? Somehow the mountains of food that we ate came out to only $15. No, not per person, total. I have a feeling that this may be due to a miscalculation of the bill. But since the prices are a Chinese mystery we figured that we had caused enough trouble, paid our bill, and went on our merry way. Yum!

*Becky reminded me that some readers may not be famililar with dim sum. For reference, the kind people at about.com offer a wordy but informative summary.

A low key weekend in the Jerz

We went into this weekend with basically nothing planned, which was a welcome change.

Last Thursday night Becky mentioned off hand that she turned down an invitation to a coworker's boyfriend's birthday party on Friday night. It wasn't starting until late and the location was not the most convenient for us. One of the unfortunate things about living in New Jersey is that it's really annoying to come home and then go back in to the city again. Which means that we almost always opt to stay in and wait if there's something else we want to do. After some joking back and forth about being old ladies and coming home to our cats we decided that Becky should rescind our refusal and accept the invitation.

And so, on Friday night, we had date night and then joined her coworker at a bar. For date night we first went to a movie on opening night. Oooh, exciting, right? What movie? Gnomeo and Juliet. Yep, for realz. We apparently have a strange thing for children's movies, judging by our date night and our DVD shelves. My verdict on Gnomeo and Juliet is that it would have made a really funny and cute Pixar short, but there was not nearly enough material for a feature length film. We then attempted to walk in to Dinosaur BBQ at 8pm on a Friday night. Bad idea. The wait was an hour and forty five minutes. Having nothing to do in that two hours and not wanting to be ridiculously late to the birthday party that inspired this madness, we left. Instead we traveled downtown and dined at another famous New York City restaurant, the 2nd Avenue Deli. It was decent, but not nearly as good as Dinosaur smelled. We're plotting a BBQ return in the near future, this time earlier and with more time to kill. We then meandered our way to the birthday party where we enjoyed not yet being old ladies! For one night anyways. The rest of the weekend was back to our usual ways.

Which means, we relaxed at home, watched some movies (Juno, which we own and I love! and Sex and the City 2, from Netflix, which was ridiculous and well, ridiculous.) , did laundry and dishes and cleaning, and did errands. We have been avoiding moving the car much since the snow is taking up several of the parking spots on our street, but we finally decided we needed to just go for it. Unfortunately we made this decision on Sunday, which meant that we had to go to a Target that we don't like as much. Yes, we've staked out all of the Targets within driving distance and have clear favorites. Our favorite Target is located in a county near us that has declared that stores in the entire county shall be forbidden to open on Sunday.

And now Becky is in the process of baking some bread pudding with brown sugar sauce for an end-of-weekend dessert. I bet you're jealous.

Smith & Wollensky

As I hinted at yesterday, Becky and I both took the day off work today. Call it a one day "staycation." We did this in honor of New York's Restaurant Week, which has become a bit of a tradition for us. During Restaurant Week a large selection of participating restaurants offer three course meals, with lunch for $24.07 and dinner for $35.00. They offer a limited menu and if possible pack the tables a little closer together. But at the nicer restaurants that price is a steal for that much food. So, you might think that our tradition would be to try out a selection of different restaurants that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. That was actually our original intention. But then the first time we tried it (in 2008) we abandoned thoughts of going elsewhere. Our restaurant? Smith and Wollensky.

For appetizers, Becky enjoyed fried calamari (which she proclaimed to be the best she's ever had) and I ate split pea soup (not exactly my favorite, but theirs is good and I didn't love the other options). Mostly though, during this course we enjoy the bread basket. It is piled high with four different types of bread, plus some crispy chip-like deliciousness. I'm a sucker for a good bread basket. As best I can describe, the options are pretzel bread, sourdough bread, crunchy delicious oatmeal bread, and strange fruity bread.

For main dishes, we pick the obvious. Do I even need to tell you that it is the 10 oz. filet mignon? Well, I probably do because I haven't actually linked you to the menu yet. But nonetheless, obvious. Since becoming my significant other, and being influenced by the uncooked steak love that runs rampant in my family, Becky has been on a slippery slope towards ordering rare steak. Today she took the plunge and, for the first time, ordered a rare steak in a restaurant. When she did this the waiter questioned, "would you like a warm center or a cool center?" It turns out there is a super secret "extra rare" option, which of course Becky passed on (she's still on the slippery slope after all) and I of course gleefully accepted. Steak verdict? Delicious. We also enjoyed adding some hash browned potatoes and some white wine on the side.

For dessert we again selected the same option. Chocolate mousse cake. Rich, creamy, chocolaty deliciousness for the win.

One of the things I like about this restaurant (and other similar restaurants) is that all of their stuff is personalized with the restaurant name. As in, the plates say "Smith and Wollensky" and the silver is engraved with "Smith and Wollensky" and the napkins have a woven likeness of the restaurant facade and even the mints have "Smith and Wollensky" candied right in.
To justify the price (even with the deal this is a lot more than we would usually pay for a lunch, once you consider wine and side dishes and taxes and tips!) we called it a late joint birthday celebration, despite the fact that they were both about a month ago. A very happy birthday to us! Long live the Smith & Wollensky tradition!

Snow Day!

Apparently this January has been the snowiest January on record in New York City. I honestly never imagined we'd see this much snow here. It is the snow of our childhoods in the Midwest, which even they haven't had for many years. I'm definitely one of the first ones to jump on making fun of New York for considering itself a cold place, or a place capable of handling snow. But, especially considering they have no where to put the snow here, this is pretty crazy.

We woke up this morning to Becky's phone ringing with an automated message letting her/us/the neighborhood know that her work was closed. This noise was followed by the siren alerting us that local schools were closed. Now seriously people, the siren? That is supposed to go off when meteorologists have spotted a giant spinning funnel cloud. It tells you loud and clear to grab your battery powered radio in one hand and your cat in the other hand and run to your basement. It does not tell you to go out and play in the snow! I don't even know how to describe the siren or the noise without describing it as a tornado siren. In the absence of much tornado risk, I wouldn't have even guessed that northeastern cities would have them. But our town does, and apparently they use it to announce school closings. I knew my work would be open, so I didn't even bother getting up, despite the fact that my annoyance kept me from falling back asleep.

But then, at the normal time, I did get up, and found that our busses were not running. Which of course makes it less than easy for me to get to my annoyingly open work. After much conferring with the appropriate powers-that-be I determined that I could in fact use some leave time and reschedule my appointments. And hence, a snow day was born.

That's each of us with snow piled up over our heads! Unfortunately, my poor car is also piled up well over its head.

Yep, there's a car under there. And it belongs to me/us. If we ever find it again that is. I joked about it before, but I'm now a little bit concerned that we might actually not be able to move it again for a while. Especially because we're supposed to get more snow this weekend!

We decided we needed some delicious snow day dinner. So, we pulled out the awesome cookbook that we received as a wedding shower gift and selected a Cheddar Ham Soup. The cookbook was a project headed up by my sister (and Matron of Honor). She sent out blank recipe cards to all of the women who were invited to the wedding and asked them to submit a recipe (and a memory too, if they chose) to include in a cookbook for us. So at the shower we received a cookbook full of the favorite recipes of a whole bunch of our friends and family members! We thought it was a really neat way to include all of our long distance friends and family who weren't able to attend the shower, and now it's a fun keepsake. I can happily report that Becky's aunt's soup is delicious! So we'll be eating soup and enjoying this lovely view out of the windows, possibly for months to come.

On home ownership and New York

Well, I had Becky all lined up to blog for you tonight, but then she got busy with other things and couldn't do it.  So I guess you're stuck with unprepared me!

A few weeks ago Becky apparently decided that she was sick of feeling impoverished and decided to take a whole pile of personal finance books out of the library.   She has since been methodically making her way through them, while I occasionally pick one up and page through in a sign of support.  I certainly got a few laughs out of Suze Orman of 2005 waxing on about the wonders of investing in home ownership.  But despite the change in circumstances since 2005 I hear it's still a pretty decent investment.  And it's something we aspire to do someday.  But not here.  Gothamist illustrates plainly and easily why not.  Why is New York so strange?  It is at the same time a cultural capital of the United States and not in the slightest bit quintessentially American.  And apparently it's become the city I love to hate (okay, and just plain old love too, despite its crazyness and insane cost of living).

While I was browsing over at Gothamist I also came upon this Walk of Shame, which has a similarly favorable outlook on the great New York experience.  Woo-hoo longest commute in the nation!  Of course I'm not sure if they calculate this based on where you live or where you work, so I don't know whose commuting average we're driving up...either way I think we're clearly hurting someone's average.  Does that make me a New Yorker yet?

So I hope that wee bit of mappy goodness can tide you over until tomorrow night!

Tis the Season to be Jolly

Another weekend recap, oh joy for you! And this one is not even a week delayed! I fear that successful blogs should probably have more content than a typical weekend at our house, but I guess one of the magical things about having your own blog (or sharing one with your wife) is that you get to dictate the content.

Friday we made a third attempt at the Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson lottery. And apparently we are unlucky, so for the third time we did not win. This time (unlike at the second attempt) we were armed with enough cash to buy lottery loser tickets. There's only an hour in between the lottery at the show so our dinner options were limited. We picked Shake Shack, largely because they're offering peanut butter hot chocolate. As a bonus the flavor of the day turned out to be candy cane crunch.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson was a good time and definitely worth seeing, but a little more... emo? random? something? than I expected. Pretty much I thought I was going to adore it, since it's one of those liberal-message-rock-musical-cult-following kinds of shows. The theater was totally decorated in red Christmas lights and chandeliers and stuffed animal heads - more than I've seen before (and we've seen a fair amount of Broadway in the last 4 years!) The songs were fun, but nothing I'm still humming now, although I'll probably listen on iTunes and consider buying a few. I was actually surprised that it seemed to be commenting just as much on Barack Obama as on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, but I guess that's the liberal mood right now too.

We then headed uptown to join four somewhat inebriated high school teachers at a holiday party. Cocktail franks, a few drinks, and leftover birthday cake from Billy's bakery were enjoyed by all.

On Saturday our friend Stephanie and her adorable two-year-old daughter joined us in New Jersey. We cooked stuffed shells and hung out and introduced our toddler friend to the joys of decorating cut out cookies. The specimens photodocumented here are my creations, not hers!
Our cat, Cricket, took advantage of our focus on cookies, and decided that the stroller was a great place to take an afternoon nap. Our other cat, Piccadilly, was busy cowering in the bedroom. Gaining a little human sibling someday in the future is going to be rough on her, I think! Cricket may adapt better:

We helped Stephanie navigate the bus back to the city and ended up visiting the Rockefeller Center tree with them, since I missed it last weekend. Apparently we were not the only ones who had this thought - the crowd was crushing. Becky and I played bouncers for the stroller (although of course the biggest risk was probably one of us getting run over by someone else's renegade stroller).

When we'd had our fill of crowd we got some dinner at Five Guys. Yum. And now this blogging effort is making me realize we need to eat out less and eat some real food! Becky and I split off from Stephanie and daughter and revisited Columbus Circle. Still just as magical as previously advertised!

Sunday we stuck around home, cooking, cleaning, and watching movies. Thanks for making homemade rolls, Becky. I'm counting down the days to Christmas vacation! (And yes, Sean, I still need homemade rolls then even though I got some today!) We're now settled in with the ridiculously cheesy yet eternally beloved Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Happy Weekend to All, and to All a Good Night.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Last weekend was filled with all kinds of holiday festivities. Becky's mom came to visit us from Wisconsin to enjoy New Yorky Christmas goodness! Sometimes New York can be really obnoxious, but it really is a magical place to be at Christmas time. On Saturday Becky and her mom hit up Christmas markets at Bryant Park and Grand Central, viewed the Macy's windows and the Rockefeller Center tree, and visited the Bronx Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show. Becky and I also went last year, and learned that we probably would have gone much sooner if we had realized it was in fact not really about trains at all. There's an electric train that runs through it all, but the main attraction is all sorts of New York buildings rendered in natural materials.

Unfortunately I missed all of this (and therefore am going to make Becky re-do much of it), but fortunately it was for a good cause. Every year my work has a holiday party on a Saturday in December for all of the families we work with. We work really hard to decorate the gym, and then we have food and music and raffle prizes and of course Santa! It's a lot of work, but it's also fun to see the families in a more relaxed atmosphere and just have fun. I can't post pictures of the families since I don't want to get fired for not protecting people's privacy or anything, but here's a view of the gym before any of the clients arrived.
Afterwords we met up at Columbus Circle to shop the market (although I was running a little late and missed most of this) and view the magic. A few years ago Becky declared that walking through the Shops at Columbus Circle at Christmastime made her feel like she's in a movie, and even though I laughed at her at the time I actually have to totally agree. It's the quintessential mall-at-Christmas, with colorful flashing lights and a cheery holiday soundtrack, and sometimes even a sprinkling of fake snow.
We then enjoyed dinner at Acqua, an Italian restaurant we'd never tried before, and headed home to collapse.

Sunday morning dreary and early we geared ourselves up for a 9 am performance of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Apparently it is so popular that on peak weekends they pack six performances into a day. On principle we pretty much refuse to pay full price for theater and we could only find a good coupon for early morning or late evening, so 9am won out. The weather gods decided to pour rain. As a Midwesterner, rain in winter causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. But here on the East Coast, rain is known as a normal, if unpleasant, wintertime hazard. Standing on the street in New Jersey waiting for a bus while sheets of rain pour from the sky and 40 mph gusts of wind whip your umbrella around is a distinctly un-Christmasy way to start a day of holiday goodness. By the time we got to Radio City we were more than ready for some hot chocolate. Thankfully, they anticipated our needs and had a stand all set up. I asked Becky if she wanted some, and she jokingly asked if we could buy it and then take it to the bar and spike it. Why yes, in fact the hot chocolate bar will do that for you! Hot chocolate, caramel liquor shots, and fresh whipped cream quickly erased any memory of the out of doors. Our orchestra seats absolutely rocked and the show was full of Christmas wonder.

Next we braved the still-wet out-of-doors for much too long, in order to experience all the deliciousness that Sarabeth's has to offer. Sadly by the time we got seated they were no longer serving the Big Bad Wolf Porridge (or any of the other lesser porridges), but crisp potato waffles with chicken apple breakfast sausages can make up for pretty much anything. Seriously, those things are delicious. And I recently learned that they are not on the menu at Sarabeth's Central Park South location. Isn't that disappointing and odd?

By this time we were a wet and generally exhausted, so we returned to the Jerz for relaxing and Christmas cookie baking. This is Becky's yearly obsession, so perhaps she will regale you with tales from the kitchen. Let's just say, in one afternoon I think she finished off five varieties. Yum.