NYC

This past weekend I was invited to go with some girlfriends to New York City.  We stayed in a friend’s plush pad while her parents were away.  The place was crazy!  A huge apartment in the West Village….

….with a great roof-top you can get to through a skylight.

Looking across the Hudson to Hoboken at night.

The girl whose place we were staying at is involved in various community organizing activities around NYC.  She helped put together this farmer’s market right below the projects which employs local kids and accepts food stamps.  It was started with the hope of providing healthy options for the low-income folks from the projects as well as employment/ training for the kids who run it.  At this point all the produce comes from upstate New York, but soon they’d like to start an urban garden so the kids can see the project through from start to finish, get their hands dirty, and become even more invested in what they’re doing.

 In the Meatpacking District there’s this cool warehouse called Chelsea Market just chocked full of artsy little shops and bakeries.

Years ago when was really into experimenting with bread baking I came upon this book in our little library in Sunnyside called Amy’s bread.  For the first time in my life I discovered the secret to making a baguette– the really good kind with a thick crust and chewy crumb.  I learned about sponges and autolyse and everything else that goes into artisan bread-baking.  So enthralled was I with this book that I asked for it for my birthday and mom managed to find beautiful copy of it even though it was out of print.  That was probably 12 years ago.  Imagine my surprise on stumbling upon the Amy’s Bread shop that led to this book!

Very close to the Chelsea Market is a “park” called High Line– its actually more like a walking area elevated above the city with plants and trees growing on it.  It’s a re-use of the space from the old train tracks in the Meatpacking District that used to carry carcasses from the factories.  These sun chairs are built onto the old tracks with wheels on the bottom so you can shove them together to form a wide bench or move them apart into single lounges.

Washington Park

For our final night, Sarah made us reservations at The Spice Market, a restaurant that serves all kinds of Asian “street food” (although admittedly, everything I tried was a lot more gourmet than anything I saw on the streets in Asia).  For some reason we were given a private room with with couches lining the walls.  The food is served on little plates that you share around so you get to try everything!  It was top notch!

Sunday we took the subway up town and went to Redeemer Presbyterian, a wonderful, faithful church in NYC and heard a sermon preached by Tim Keller on David and Bathsheba.  I’d listened to several sermons by him on tape and had always wanted to visit, so it was the perfect end to a really great trip.