Tuesday, June 10, 2008
First we take Manhattan, and then we take...Seattle, Portland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Luxembourg, England, France, Israel, Japan and the Philippines
OK, so I realize that had I actually gone to all of the places listed above, it might have made my lack of blogging for more than a month (I know! I'm as shocked as you are) a little more credible. But alas, most of the "taking" merely involved taking advantage of the fact that I currently live in a world capital. My visits to Bulgaria, Cyprus and Luxembourg were by way of the annual EU embassy open house (Bulgaria was by far the best of the three, doling out little plastic shot glasses of Bulgarian wine, which you could drink while walking through a pretty awesome photo exhibit), and the England-France-Israel-Philippines-Japan combo was part of a somewhat impromptu Sunday afternoon excursion that included wearing my Topshop-purchased "I [Eiffel Tower] London" T-shirt (which I'm pretty sure is supposed to mean "I Love London," and not "I Penis London," as Jason suggested when he saw it) to a free Regina Spektor concert that was part of Israel's 60th birthday celebration, and stopping on the way there to grab some food at a Filipino street festival, and also wandering through the Japanese World War II Memorial (which I had no idea existed until I found myself wandering through it) on the way back.
Simultaneously celebrating three of the eight countries I just mentioned, plus the U.S. (by virtue of being in front of the Capitol) for good measure
I did, however, actually visit the other places--Manhattan, Seattle and Portland--where I ate a lot of cupcakes. No, seriously. The cupcake was kind of a leitmotif in my life during the month of May. In Manhattan, I even considered making it a double-header, hitting both the Magnolia Bakery (my--and every single other out-of-towner's--old standby) and the Buttercup Bake Shop (which Anne has been trying to convert me to for years) in one day. Sadly, the line at Magnolia proved too daunting, and the frosting too sweet, for a trip all the way to the Upper West Side to compare. But after waiting 30 minutes for my cupcake, which, to be quite honest, was a little bit stale, I think I may have to defect to Buttercup next time. Which probably means that the hordes of tourists will have defected by then, too.
In Portland, the cupcake came courtesy of Saint Cupcake, one of many cupcake joints in the city (see, this is why, although I was quite charmed by it, I could never live in Portland--how would Francesca's and my pastel-colored bakery ever survive in a city so saturated with cute bakeries?), but the only one recommended to Kate and me by our illustrious tour guide, Scott Collins. Saint Cupcake was indeed delicious, but by that time (the next to last night of our journey), we had nearly reached our fill of baked goods, having renamed our trip Kate and Clare's Bakery Tour of the Pacific Northwest and made it our mission to consume as many baked goods in as many cities as possible. There was the orange currant scone (me) and Hungarian coffee cake (Kate) at Macrina Bakery in Seattle, slices of pie at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island (best known to our imaginations as the home of Dr. McDreamy's Airstream trailer), more pie at the Charming Local Eatery that Kate managed to conjure out of thin air (no, really--we're driving into this town around lunchtime on the way to Mt. Ranier, and Kate says, "Maybe there's some sort of charming local eatery here;" we turn the corner, and boom! Charming local eatery), and a donut at Voodoo Donuts, a rock-n-roll donut shop (again: no, really) in Portland.
Evidence of my rampant cupcake consumption
We did eat a few non-bakery meals, including one of the best dinners I've ever had at the Farm Cafe in Portland, and another one of the best dinners I've ever had at my aunt and uncle's house in Olympia. Both were so awesome mainly because the ingredients were so fresh, the latter because we literally plucked the dungeness crabs and steamer clams we ate right out of the ocean. Ordering seafood in a restaurant just doesn't seem as much fun anymore.
Now that the cupcake-filled craziness that was May is behind me and things are starting to settle down, I hope to return to my regularly scheduled blogging. But you never know when the cupcakes might call my name again...
OK, so I realize that had I actually gone to all of the places listed above, it might have made my lack of blogging for more than a month (I know! I'm as shocked as you are) a little more credible. But alas, most of the "taking" merely involved taking advantage of the fact that I currently live in a world capital. My visits to Bulgaria, Cyprus and Luxembourg were by way of the annual EU embassy open house (Bulgaria was by far the best of the three, doling out little plastic shot glasses of Bulgarian wine, which you could drink while walking through a pretty awesome photo exhibit), and the England-France-Israel-Philippines-Japan combo was part of a somewhat impromptu Sunday afternoon excursion that included wearing my Topshop-purchased "I [Eiffel Tower] London" T-shirt (which I'm pretty sure is supposed to mean "I Love London," and not "I Penis London," as Jason suggested when he saw it) to a free Regina Spektor concert that was part of Israel's 60th birthday celebration, and stopping on the way there to grab some food at a Filipino street festival, and also wandering through the Japanese World War II Memorial (which I had no idea existed until I found myself wandering through it) on the way back.
I did, however, actually visit the other places--Manhattan, Seattle and Portland--where I ate a lot of cupcakes. No, seriously. The cupcake was kind of a leitmotif in my life during the month of May. In Manhattan, I even considered making it a double-header, hitting both the Magnolia Bakery (my--and every single other out-of-towner's--old standby) and the Buttercup Bake Shop (which Anne has been trying to convert me to for years) in one day. Sadly, the line at Magnolia proved too daunting, and the frosting too sweet, for a trip all the way to the Upper West Side to compare. But after waiting 30 minutes for my cupcake, which, to be quite honest, was a little bit stale, I think I may have to defect to Buttercup next time. Which probably means that the hordes of tourists will have defected by then, too.
In Portland, the cupcake came courtesy of Saint Cupcake, one of many cupcake joints in the city (see, this is why, although I was quite charmed by it, I could never live in Portland--how would Francesca's and my pastel-colored bakery ever survive in a city so saturated with cute bakeries?), but the only one recommended to Kate and me by our illustrious tour guide, Scott Collins. Saint Cupcake was indeed delicious, but by that time (the next to last night of our journey), we had nearly reached our fill of baked goods, having renamed our trip Kate and Clare's Bakery Tour of the Pacific Northwest and made it our mission to consume as many baked goods in as many cities as possible. There was the orange currant scone (me) and Hungarian coffee cake (Kate) at Macrina Bakery in Seattle, slices of pie at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island (best known to our imaginations as the home of Dr. McDreamy's Airstream trailer), more pie at the Charming Local Eatery that Kate managed to conjure out of thin air (no, really--we're driving into this town around lunchtime on the way to Mt. Ranier, and Kate says, "Maybe there's some sort of charming local eatery here;" we turn the corner, and boom! Charming local eatery), and a donut at Voodoo Donuts, a rock-n-roll donut shop (again: no, really) in Portland.
We did eat a few non-bakery meals, including one of the best dinners I've ever had at the Farm Cafe in Portland, and another one of the best dinners I've ever had at my aunt and uncle's house in Olympia. Both were so awesome mainly because the ingredients were so fresh, the latter because we literally plucked the dungeness crabs and steamer clams we ate right out of the ocean. Ordering seafood in a restaurant just doesn't seem as much fun anymore.
Now that the cupcake-filled craziness that was May is behind me and things are starting to settle down, I hope to return to my regularly scheduled blogging. But you never know when the cupcakes might call my name again...
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