New York, Birthdays, and Inspiration.

My mom is a pretty extraordinary lady. She is kind beyond words, and strong beyond measure, and I am undeniably a total Mama’s girl. So it wasn’t much of a debate when I learnt she was flying to New York to visit my sister for her 60^th, that Jordan and I were going to hop on a plane too.

Oh New York.

I hadn’t been since junior high. Junior high! It was time.

Lately I seem to have many many jobs. I do the pastries at a couple restaurants, I make wedding cakes, I’m an assistant editor at a local magazine, I write this little blog that I love so very much, and to piece it all together I serve a couple nights a week at a restaurant. I love almost everything about this, I love that I never get bored because I’m always doing something different and I love that I mostly work from home. I like working from home, I do. I watched a great tedtalk recently on why introverts are important, and I agreed with it, all of the values that come with working by/for yourself. It’s just that sometimes you need to have people around to bounce ideas off of. Sometimes you need to be submerged in something, that you can’t be if your on your own.

Being in New York is like being inside a bouncy castle, there are so many ideas and inspirations flying around all the time. It is a city that supports an astonishing amount of restaurants, and not just restaurants, but farmers markets, (in the middle of downtown, almost every day there are farmers stands), it supports bakeries, and pickle makers, and bean to bar chocolatiers. There is a reason so many artists live in New York.

We ate the most unbelievable soft serve ice cream, a swirl of ritz crackers and peanut butter, with a dollop of concord grape jelly at the bottom at Momofuko.

I decided I wanted to live in Brooklyn for many reasons, but mostly so I can be closer to Mast Brothers Chocolates, the most wonderful place I perhaps have ever been. 

A close second would be eataly where we picked up the most gorgeous salamis and cheeses and we ate it in the park and felt very please with ourselves. 

Which is all a way of saying I’m feeling pretty inspired right now. I’m still floating on a Mast Brothers Chocolates high, I’m still savouring the burrata I had at Arthurs on Smith, I’m still imagining my life in a room full of Bemelman’s drawings. I can still feel the electricity of that city in me, and it’s making me feel wonderful.