Kedai Makan, Malaysian street food, at Montana, the ginger beer bar. So spicy and sweet, the nasi goreng was appropriately caramelized with a runny egg on top. Made me miss Indonesia and Rus, nanny extraordinaire and nasi goreng master. I also had a beet juice cocktail so I’m basically juicing so therefore super healthy. And I also have to say that I tried their famous pickle-back, a shot of whiskey and a shot of pickle juice, and I didn’t barf and maybe even kind of sort of liked it.

I’ve actually been, like, feeding myself, if you can believe it. I have two free afternoons now so I try to have a leisurely lunch and be mellow. Tortilla with broccoli rabe (of which I ate 2 lbs in 2 days) and knock-off eggs in camica because Fat Hen closed for a couple weeks and I was going to die without it. I also just read Wildwood, which is a illustrated young adult book by the Decemberist guy, and yes it is so Portlandia, but also yes, it was so good. I woke up early to read before yoga and that is saying something because yoga is at SIX THIRTY.

And here is my sweet kitchen table in my hobbit/treefort house. It gets nice sun. And now that tree is blooming so there is some extra niceness.

The Fridge. Holds everything good and serves as a family scrapbook. Photobooth strip from Berlin, Dutch clogs, BsAs subway pass, Dad’s souvenir yamaka…. Inside: always leftovers that Mom makes into a kickass lunch. If Dad and I don’t pound it first. She kindly leaves us post-its telling us to keep our paws off.

We’ve adopted the Italian’s Xmas Eve: fish. Or, shellfish. Crab and clams and mussels, and Camie’s keeping cake. (Aka two-bottles-of-sherry-in-this-cake.) A warmup for the real thing: prime rib and scalloped potatoes and pumpkin bourbon cheesecake… it’s a good thing we go for a hike on Christmas.

So here are some bites:

Pate with spicy peppers on toast, dates stuffed with goat cheese, and a pretzel with rarebit at Dinette, sweet little living-room-y Cap Hill place with Amanda. Snacks and freelance-life-whining/rejoicing. Then a second dinner (we are hungry chicks, okay) at Rione XIII: pasta with guinciale and fried (I just typed “fried” as “friend”…) artichokes.

Dim Sum for dear Michelle’s birthday. Read the Chinatown issue of Lucky Peach on the plane to SEA, got picked up by Log & Michelle, ate dim sum. Perfect. Michelle has chopsticks skillz. And Logie Bear ate gluten. I love hum bao. Good times.

A rare virtuous lunch at home.

The Whale Wins, with Madeline. Sardines on toast with fennel (and curried tomatoes which sounds totally odd but I’m pretty sure this whole town is in love with it.) Culatello, which means “little butt” in my translation and is like extra-salty dream prosciutto. Roasted (seriously so roasted. I will now let my vegetables linger in the oven for ages, as they were black and amazing) carrots and fennel with harissa and yogurt. Marrow bones (three is too many for two people though…got mega marrowed out.) Pretty little salad with pistachios and parm. Beautiful braised pork (oh my) with stewed apples and homemade mustard. Yum. New restaurant service issues, but food: good.

Today I fell in love with the 70th street spot even just a little more: they have a special little lonesome table for the “just-one”-ers. Squeezed up against the window with a good view of the line for macarons and kouign amann at the bakery across the street, it’s a perfect non-awkward little spot to sit and read and eat your eggs in peace. I like going out to eat by myself, but unless there’s a bar to sit at, it can be weird. Not at the little onesie table. Scone (buttery and milky in that really proper scone way) and coffee, eggs “in camica”–two eggs baked in marinara with basil and mozz with a baguette for sauce-swiping, same thing I’ve gotten on every FH visit. After the a week of pre-dawn yoga and kids hyped up on Hannukah, oh, you have no idea the joy of a long, quiet, what’s-the-word-for-lonesome-in-a-good-way brunch.

(And I skied yesterday, so no the scone and the baguette annnnd the eggs were not overkill, OK.)

My little spot:

I have to say, I did learn one useful lesson on le cleanse: food will still be there. If you don’t follow the delicious buttery scent and walk across the street into that heavenly smelling bakery and devour a chocolate croissant RIGHT THIS INSTANT, the world will not end, and there will (most likely, you never know) be more chocolate croissants to be had. Maybe tomorrow, when you didn’t already start the day off with toaster waffles. Self-control, I think they call this.

But sometimes, it is so good to give in, to have zero will power and go ahead and get a scone caked in sugar with your coffee. To have grilled cheese sandwiches. To eat what you want.

For example: eat a ton of sushi (and two bowls of miso soup and three gallons of tea) for lunch.

Or find a good friend, grab a baguette and a half pound of prosciutto and combine all the lingering picked things and little cheese bits from your two fridges, add red wine, and devour as you plot your lives.

Or perch on the curb at the farmers market and eat a gigantic slice of just-wood-fired pizza (veggie pizza though, not the one loaded with delicious Italian meats…hello healthy eater over here.)

First, I woke up at 6:30 in order to be first (or second) in line a Crumble & Flake, the bakery that got a James Beard nod before it opened, that sells out before the clock strikes ten. It’s tiny and seat-less, perched up high on a hilly corner in Capitol Hill. I met my partner in pastry addiction Amanda and her energetic, adorable pup Hadrian there and we got: a cinnamon roll, an apricot blue cheese scone, a kouign amann, a macaron, a cream puff, and a huckleberry financier. Though the cinnamon rolls were touted as some of the best in the city, we had to disagree. Made of croissant-y, flaky dough. Yummy and buttery, but not warm and soft and comforting, like Wonderbread sprinkled with spice and twisted into a knot, as a cinnamon roll should really be. Scone; tiny and understandably so, as it was purely butter and sugar with maybe a tablespoon of flour to hold it together. Macaron tasted like a Pez. Financier was dreamy, the sweetness countered by the tart berries. (Plus I already love financiers and huckleberries.) A filled-to-order with banana-caramel-cream cream puff, which neither of us coulg really gag down more than a lick of, so creamy and intense. (Good, but lordy…. intense.) Kouign amann, who couldn’t love what’s basically a croissant with sugar caramelized around the outside? And coffee, at a hip little place you may have heard of.

Then lunch. Obviously I have to rid my house of anything worth eating (there are boatloats of beets and gallons of green smoothies in my future) and how else wold one do that other than eat it, really. Not too hard of a job, seeing as all there is in my fridge is ten pounds of apples, a thousand condiments, bubbly water, and a ton of fancy cheese. And then bread and tomatoes. So: blue cheese and tomato grilled cheese dipped in Sriracha ketchup.
And then just more blue–Cambazola, my love–on crackers, with honey. I am allowed to have honey on this frickin thing, thank god.

Ok, now dinner. Remember, I’m about to live on ruffage and mung beans for a couple weeks here. Randomly, Madison Park Conservatory–whose name makes you imagine white tablecloths and stodginess and is truly like a cozy delightful friend’s house, a friend who can cook–was doing 50% off everything. Say the code word and shazam, bill cut in half. So Madeline, Jessica and I toodled down to Madison Park (in the gawd awful downpour) for dinner. Bread and divine butter, the best deviled eggs ever made ever (with crab and everything good), beef tongue (as good as taco truck lengua and that is saying something) with pickled veg and awesome mustard, salads peppered with herbs and pears and giant hunks of creamy blue cheese, tagliatelle with octopus ragu (fo’ real, with aioli and cilantro, an odd and perfect counterpart), and risotto bolognese with a fried egg. Yes. Okay, yes. Bitterbitterbittersweet farewell. On cleanse I could have eaten… the greens in the salad. That is seriously it. Wah. AND. Dessert, of course. Panna cotta, OF course. With sour cherry compote. Bay leaf panna cotta, just ever so savory. And a cheese plate, a beautiful melty cow cheese, that same salty blue, a boring goat cheese, and come jams. Yum. Ran into two of my favorite fellow yoga trainees at the restaurant, which was beyond delightful. Coming from a cozy town, I miss knowing folks, and running into people in this big ol’ city is my favorite thing in the entire world.

Okay then. Goodby sweet world. I will be back in two weeks, with a revived digestive track and a hunger for bread and coffee the likes of which this world has never known.

Anna Cotta needs more people pictures:

My order: Rice, shredded carrots, zucchini, and lettuce, a big bunch of bean sprouts, some seaweed, “spicy” sauce, kim chi, bulgogi. Extra kim chi for moi (I am my father the kim chi master’s daughter, after all.) There’s one guy in there (Michael?) taking orders and whipping up b-bops for the growing line. Got mine after a few minutes and was going to take it home and eat it at a table like a civilized human, but that just seemed totally inappropriate. Instead, I plopped down on the curb and mixed it all up, as per instructions, and chowed down. Pretty good. Not nearly spicy enough. (Although I’m pretty sure I’ve demolished my spice sensors because I was at Homegrown getting my usual avocado-egg-post-horrifically-early-morning-yoga-sandwich, and realized that the habanero sauce I once daintily spread an incredibly thin little layer of, I now dunk my sandwich in like ketchup. So that’s good.) And the kim chi was very zing-less. And I wished I had chop sticks so I would feel all Korean and legit/wouldn’t eat so fast. But warm and good. After a few years of self-imposed brown rice and quinoa law, man, I forgot how freakin’ good a big ol’ scoop of sticky white rice is. And how fun it is to eat perched on a parking barrier.

Obviously I had to celebrate/refuel mid-move with a gigantic sandwich from Dot’s Delicatessen. Clearly. One of those times when you think, “Oh perfect, that’s a ginormous portion, I’ll have the other half later and that will be so great. Because I am a healthy person who certainly could not eat an entire baguette and 9 meatballs.” Then, voila, sandwich is gone. I was hungry. And then happy. And I’m pretty sure I’m about to become a Dot’s regular. And also fat.

Yoga and food have been my two true loves for a while, but Yoga and I just made it official. Come May, I’ll be a real-live yoga girl, certified to teach downward doggies the world over. After a false start this January (mistakenly signed myself up for semi-hot yoga training…there’s a reason I moved away from constantly-90-degrees-Florida…) I’ve embarked upon a nine-month training adventure with my beyond-beloved studio, Yogalife. And it is great. And big. And… big! Life is full. Life is good! Life is Sundays.

Other goods at the Queen Anne Farmers Market: a blueberry biscuit (saved for an addition to a picnic for an outdoor concert tonight), three pounds of apples (the apple addiction lives on), four yellow tomatoes (best color of tomato, fer sure), a bunch of teeny carrots, and multiple samples from anyone who’d give them to me and/or didn’t noticed I’d come by to sample peaches fourteen times. Then dinner on the lawn: naan with apricot-y chicken and rice, shrimp and grits, and ginger beer. Yum. And I’m at “work” during all of this, mind you.

Then, real dinner. Finally: Paseo. Mega-beloved Seattle Carribean/Cuban sandwich joint, which I’ve somehow never been to. I’ve stood in line and bailed many times, but never actually eaten a stinkin’ sandwich at the place. So finally. Paseo. I was doubtful that these West Coasters could beat the Florida Cuban sandwich, that flat, weird, mustardy, ham-packed delicious thing, but… maybe so. Very different: a delicious baguette filled with giant hunks of roasted pork shoulder, lettuce, cilantro, jalapeno, and mayo. Very messy, very good. Pros: the bread and pork were stellar. Cons: too much mayo (but I’ve never been a fan) and not enough jalapenos (but I am on the hot sauce crack rock.) Genia and I scored a table, which made it all the better; our sandwiches were definitely improved by the hungry, jealous stares of the dozens of people queuing up outside.