Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

I got an email from Matt today asking me what the first thing was that I was going to bake in New York. I have given it a little bit of thought, except that the apartment doesn’t have baking ingredients or baking pans although I could probably find a tray to bake cookies on.

However, I did use some baking ingredients the other night to make cheese sauce for Sunday night’s macaroni cheese dinner (should’ve just bought it in a box from the supermarket – there are all kinds of brands and sizes available!). Given the stories and pictures we’ve seen that depict all cheese in America as being orange, our cheese sauce was very white – the butter here is white and the cheddar was white. It was edible enough though.

And speaking of butter, we’re trying our way through tubs of butter substitute, you know, like the Olivio we use at home – the product labelled olivio here is VERY salty, and the other we’ve tried with the name ‘I just can’t believe it’s not butter’ (what a ridiculously long name, “hey honey, do we need any I-just-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter?”) has a strange sort of raisiny taste and is quite slimy after it’s been in a sandwich all morning.

So much to get used to! Anyway Matt, who needs to bake when you can just buy a tube of croissant? Squirt it onto the oven tray and put it in the oven (no, we haven’t tried it!)

Today was our first day in the office in Soho (can’t say much about who we’re sharing with until I find out if they’re OK with it, but sure they will be). Weather was still awful as I tromped in my gumboots, lugging my laptop, cables, handbag and lunch to the subway. Our office buddies are very creative, lots of designers and marketing people and American accents (swoon) and the offices are very ‘Soho loft’ with wooden floors, bags of donuts, funky pictures and various NZ trinkets as some of them are ex-pat. We’ve got desks right in the middle of them all and have inherited stuff from people shifted into offices.

Here’s The Mister smiling opposite me – if we wanted to spend 4 months together we sure are – never at work have I had to look at him all day!!

Wow, what a stormy couple of days we’ve had – there has been non-stop rain and howling wind since Friday. 29 floors up and we’re feeling the swaying – The Mister was convinced I was just imagining it until I pointed out the light-shades swinging from the ceiling!

However, we got out a couple of times, went around the supermarket for a proper look (one we’ve discovered practically in our basement!) and spent a few hours wandering around Bloomingdales – got to see lots of very bored men sitting around in various women’s departments!

Found another good coffee spot (from the New York times list) in Soho a couple of blocks from where the office is – Ground Support.

Again ordered small cappuccino which got us what we wanted, was quite strong but good. And only $3.50!

Very VERY excited to be one of the first to get this new orange Canon camera – 14 megapixel – what a massive leap up from 4 megapixel!

It’s so tiny and so lovely and orange. Generally it’s the same operation as our existing camera so not too much to learn and apparently The Mister will take better photos with it because it has an image stabilizer!

I think it has a design flaw though, because it’s so thin and slightly rounded (to fit comfortably in your pocket one assumes) it isn’t very stable standing by itself with the lens extended, which is very important for the self-timer that we use quite a lot!

Not on the New York times coffee list but have found an excellent espresso bar not too far from where we live, like 6 blocks, called Fika.

Beans are from Sweden and we have to order cappuccinos – excellent temperature and taste, will definitely be going back there and scouting out the other 2 locations. Excellent oat raisin cookies too!

Bit of an orange-themed day today which was very cool. Plus another trip down memory lane – to Ninth Street Espresso in Chelsea Market.

In my mind, better than their cafe at Ninth street although theoretically they should be the same. There was a bit of a buzz at the bar because of a piece in the New York Times this morning about New Yorkers finally taking their coffee seriously – a write up of cafes where coffee is all about the art of espresso, single origin and chemex. We’ve already been to a couple of the places listed and have got the paper to tick a few others off the list.

We got some flowers from the corner store last night, such colorful places – who can believe you can get so many orange roses for $10? Slowly adding a bit more orange to the apartment!

We had lunch at a very orange cafe called Forty Carrots,

then the long-awaited dinner in the restaurant above the Museum of Art & Design that glows orange at night – it does and has spectacular views over Columbus Circle and Central Park.

So it looks like our breakfasts will not be as ‘posh’ as we’re used to – have to get used to drip filter coffee and bagels.

First supermarket trip was to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Union Square. Probably a mistake because both were incredibly crowded (the Trader Joe’s checkout line started at the entrance and snaked right around the back of the store!) and we didn’t know where anything was so had to crawl up and down every aisle. In the pasta aisle when I went to put our stuff in the trolley I realised The Mister had walked off with someone else’s trolley! We’d been walking a while so we had to scratch our heads to remember what the last thing was we put in our own trolley to back track. We found it abandoned by the oil and fell into uncontrollable giggles when we realised some poor person now long gone from there turned to put their oil in the trolley and it had completely vanished. After a quick switercheroo of unwanted items we rushed off and The Mister never let the trolley go again!

Well except for here when you have to take the trolley up the escalator to the rest of the supermarket and checkouts – it rides on it’s own special escalator next to you. Hmmm, I was the only whirly-girl rushing around taking photos of it!

First decent cup of coffee today, walked about 27 blocks to get it – Ninth Street Espresso – was totally worth it and I picked up a little lapel pin to wear on my jacket. Was so excited I forgot to take a photo and now I can’t find the one I took a couple of visits ago when we first discovered it. They’re using a different coffee now, roasted at Intelligentsia Coffee Lab in New York.