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!!