Life in the Big City

Today I'm starting a new feature that I hope you'll enjoy.  I always try to take you behind the scenes of how our recipes and cocktails were inspired and you've seen plenty of cameos by our furry sous chef.  But, as I'm going about my days, I always have my camera and always have the urge to bring you all along with me.  The big city, for us, is New York, specifically Manhattan.  It's a small island that's also the financial and cultural capital of the world.  The most visited, most filmed, most crowded, most populated, most crazy place on earth.  I was raised here. I hope you'll like sharing a bit more of our lives.  Weekly?  Monthly?  Don't know yet.  Life happens...  Enjoy!

We're really enjoying spring and every day, when I take Hadley for a walk, I admire the flowers and trees.  Even in the city, New Yorkers do what they can to bring a little nature into our lives.  Sometimes the beds of tulips are so stunning that it's so tempting to pick them and put them in a vase at home.  I would never do that, of course.  Last Sunday, Brian and I were coming back from the park with the dog and we saw a couple of teenaged girls holding tulips they'd obviously picked.  It made us both so mad to see that.

My recent chocolate chip obsession doesn't seem to be letting up.  Even though I just made chocolate chip bread, I saw this chocolate chip crumb cake and those chips starting calling to me again.  Not to mention that I have a complete love affair with crumb toppings.  Oh, boy...

I also seem to be attracted to lemon desserts lately and I keep pinning all kinds of lemon breads.  For some reason, this one keeps drawing my eye but I want to experiment with lemon breads that have ricotta in the dough or cornmeal in the dough.  And I'll probably throw some blueberries in there because blueberries and lemon just belong together.  So little time, so many lemon breads...

Speaking of recent food obsessions (I'm on a roll lately), I've recently discovered a deep love of spaghetti squash.  I don't really think it looks or tastes anything at all like spaghetti but it does taste really good.  I've been eating a LOT of spaghetti squash lately.

Sunday trips to the park have included a few too many of these lately.  We share it but, even so...

One more week until Memorial Day weekend!  That's our official kick off to summer weekends out on Long Island.  We need to stock up at Cosco, drag out the patio furniture, clean the grill and fire up the blender for frozen cocktails.  MD weekend is the start of my happy time!

Mr. Hungry Couple and the furry sous chef are...um...busy?  So long till next time!