new new york #3: babycakes bakery

Photos found here and here

It's been over a month since I've had a bagel. I haven't tasted a brownie in three weeks. Excepting that one Patron Silver soggy night, no pasta has passed my lips in twenty days. I decided to give up gluten after realizing that it might be aggravating my skin and after noticing that my diet was entirely comprised of baked goods, bread covered in butter, and pasta. I was a vegetarian who ate maybe one vegetable a week and I had the acne of a teenager to prove it.
Giving up wheat hasn't been too difficult (I kind of feel like I did when I stopped eating meat-- a little sad, a little worried, but mostly resolved), but my heart does ache for sweets. I really love baked goods and I don't like to imagine my life without a cookie. So I made my way over to Babycake's-- a gluten-free, vegan bakery on the lower east side.
It's a winner. I got a slice of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and it wasn't cardboard-dry as I imagined most fake flour, fake eggs, fake milk pastries to be. I'm happy.

Babycakes
248 Broome Street
www.babycakesnyc.com

new new york #2: brooklyn bridge and grimaldi's

Pizza! Brooklyn Bridge! $5 beer! Full, stuffed, gorged, now I'm longer curious to know what it feels like to be nine months pregnant belly! Smiling at tourists! Cannolis! Peach blueberry sangria on the waterfront!

My cousin Georgie and I spent the day walking across the bridge (which I had done once before) and eating at Grimaldi's (never done before). It was really a fun day. We laughed, ate too much, walked through Brooklyn Heights pointing out our future residences, and laughed some more. My cheeks hurt by the time I got on the train to come home. 

 

no more takeout. please. please. please.

I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really need to start cooking. It's shameful-- I eat every single meal out at a restaurant or a bar or an overpriced deli or a pizza shop or a (this hurts) Chipotle. It's not totally my fault. I moved in with my bachelor musician father when I was ten years old and he never cooked. We ordered Chinese or Domino's or hamburgers from Hooper's Burgers every night of the week. It's something I've carried with me into adulthood, and as much as I say I like homemade steamed kale, I really like a Smoke Joint fried catfish sandwich covered in tartar sauce, coleslaw, and pickles much more.

Eating out usually means I eat more garbage. Not to cast aspersions on the value of my Chipotle burritos. They are tasty and delicious, but I'm not sure eating them four times a week is the best approach to nutrition. Not cooking is making me fat, it's making me spend more money, and it's making me Salieri-jealous of those Brooklyn girls who frequent the farmer's markets with their totes and ponytails and braise, steam, chop, and julienne vegetables instead of letting them rot in the fridge.

Also, and not to get too annoying, but I feel like our relationships to food can be good indicators of how we operate in other areas of our lives. My contact with food always feels fun in the moment (please find me a person who wouldn't love a breakfast of coconut cream doughnuts from Donut Plant), but open closer inspection, it's kind of drab and boring. I just grab whatever's close and cheap and hope it fills me up. That sounds a little like the relationship between a john and a prostitute. Or like dating someone you only see when you're drunk. There's the initial rush of excitement and the mad dash to tear some clothes off, but afterwards, you can feel a little empty and a lot hungover.

So I'm going to try my hand at cooking. I'll take baby steps. A few meals a week to get me going. But seeing as how I'm working with this,

and this,

anything will be a major improvement.