a mast brothers chocolate tour

one of the real big upsides of being a grandma on the inside is that when tema is looking high and low for someone to wake up before 10am on a saturday to go on a tour of the mast brothers chocolate factory she stops at me. it's because last friday night in new york city, i was full on homemade thank-you-for-letting-me-sleep-on-your-sofa-bed scotch eggs and in that sofa bed by 9 with netflix and a cookbook.

so not that waking up "early" and getting on the g train was at all a chore for me, but if it had been, it would have been completely worth it.  

in a heavily tattooed, bearded willy wonka way... (side note about tattoos: marian gave me a temporary one with a blue and purple pony on it and i feel almost cool enough to consider getting a real one and it's making me scared.)

like i have always felt ooooook paying a small fortune for a mast brothers bar if it's a special occasion like eggboy is playing a show in the west village, because pretty packaging and a high percentage of cocoa are my jams (!!) but now that i've learnt things about their process that go deeper than that--for example, taking very very very good care of their farmers and aging their chocolate for months upon months--i get all warm and fuzzy. and it makes me want to be bffs with michael and rick.

anywho, if you're in brooklyn and have eaten so much that you need a thing to do that doesn't require eating too much but you still want to be around food, take this tour, it is fun.

-yeh!

WEEKEND WARRIORS

over the weekend, eggboy and i had the loveliest little adventure to brighton beach for garth's birthday. we donned our hats and took my favorite train, the q train, nearly to the end of the line. when we got off we couldn't read any of the signs because they were in russian but we somehow sought out the sea. ok, the ocean. i just wanted to say sea because of the alliteration.

it felt so nice to dip our toes in some sand and nibble on truffles and jam cookies with the loveliest of lovely people. we met a few crabs, discussed israel and sleep no more, ​and then huddle in scarves when it got chilly! by mid-afternoon, eggboy and were back home in our sweats, eating lentil soup.

perfect? oh, yes, definitely.​

-yeh!!​

p.s. did you see?? eggboy won the theme song contest!! i promise, i asserted no nepotism. now you can hear his theme song over on the sidebar!

p.p.s. i am really loving the new iron & wine album.​

MEET THE MOLLY MOBILE, 2.0

meet the molly mobile, 2.0. i got her this morning and she is the perfect amount of cute-- cute enough for me to already love her to bits, but beat up enough so that if she's out alone at night she won't get bike-napped by the meanie pants that stole the seat off of the original molly mobile. (by the way, i still have the original molly mobile, or what's left of her. i wouldn't dare give her to the trash man... i'm looking to donate her parts so that she may save the life of a broken bike. )

to celebrate the adoption, eggboy and i took her out for a spin to williamsburg where i took some pictures of doors for a photo assignment. being on a bike again was the most fantastical thing i've experienced since my game of thrones ​addiction began. seriously, outrageously amazing.

on the way back from williamsburg, we stopped at this restaurant that has been on my fungenda for months now under the title "bunny restaurant."​ the only explanation i can think of for why i would have called it that when writing it on my fungenda is that it sort of resembles the clubhouse of a mini golf course in illinois called bunny hutch. it made it onto my fungenda because it is just so painfully intriguing: it's in an itsy bitsy house that's in terrible disrepair on the outside and it sits on the corner of bedford avenue and pretty much the b.q.e... save for a sign that says "restaurant" it is totally unmarked. when we arrived around lunch time, the only people going in and out of the entrance were hasidic men, going in to eat by themselves. judging by the outside i was expecting some cute greasy diner on the inside. it ended up being a kosher dairy restaurant, and there only seemed to be menus in hebrew... so when the man behind the counter said "hi. falafel?" i just said yes. and i think it was good but i really can't completely recall because i was experiencing more culture shock than i ever could have imagined would be possible 20 minutes from my apartment. eggboy and i were the only non-hasidic people there and the room was practically silent. it felt like being in another country. 

from my receipt i learned that it's called klein's restaurant. and from my extensive google efforts, this was the only information i could find on it. like, am i the only one that's fascinated by an unmarked restaurant in a house on the b.q.e.?

we made it back to my hood in time for second lunch. all of that before second lunch!​ ​it was basically the most awesome morning ever. i floated through the rest of my day because i think riding my bike gets me on some kind of high... it's so jolly and delightful!!!! i am going to take m.m. 2.0 on so many adventures. we're going to go to costco and to the beach and to the dumbo merry-go-round. boy oh boy i simply can't wait.

-yeh!​