Washington DC and New York

I have just spent a very enjoyable week in Washington DC and New York. I started off the week visiting a friend in DC, going to the Museum of American History and walking round the monuments as well as visiting the Museum of Medican History and the Zoo and all of it was free! They also took me grocery shopping to Safeway and Wegmans, which was enormous! I happily found and bought three different sorts of mint chocolate chips something which is impossible to find in Manhattan!
 

We also went to Pete's New Haven Style Pizza restaurant in Silver Springs, north of DC where they live. I had a metro north pizza with white sauce, pork, pancetta and caramelised onions. It was delicious, I was also surprised but also pleased to note that they served up a gluten free pizza crust to one of our party without any problems. Not something that would ever happen in England!

 

As we were walking through a Union Station to catch my train we passed a Crumbs Bakery outlet with a huge range of enormous cupcakes including a cannoli cupcake! At $4 they weren't cheap but it was probably one of the best cupcakes I've ever eaten. 

I returned to New York on Monday and commenced a week of eating a lot of cake and going to the theatre. 

 

This started with a not very healthy serving of curly fries which I just couldn't resist. I went to see Mockingjay at the cinema and there they were, I love curly fries it's something to do with eating them as a treat as a child that means I can't resist them now! The film was ok, given that it's the first half of the book it was well done.

On Tuesday we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to an exhibition about mourning dress which was fascinating. The picture is of Queen Alexandra's half mourning dress, it was beautiful with lots of fantastic sequins, the whole exhibition was fascinating. We also went to an exhibition about Kimono, which was also really good and explained the history of the kimono and how patterns changed through the centuries right up to present day.

For lunch we went to Lady M, where we had sandwiches and then we got some cakes to take home as my father wanted one as well. When we opened the box at home instead of the three cakes we paid for we had four! I was having trouble deciding between the gateau nuage and the crepe cake and she slipped in a piece of crepe cake for me to try!

How fantastically lovely of them. I had read about Lady M in a book called the Travelling Tea Shop by Belinda Jones and explained this to the waitress. So we had those two cakes as well as an Apple Flan and Strawberry Mille Feuille. All were delicious but I didn't think that the gateau nuage was as good as the cheesecake I had a the Two Little Red Hens bakery in April. The crepe cake however was really good. In the evening we went to see The Good Ship, Stings musical about the shipyards in Tyne side. There were some very interesting Geordie accents and I'm not sure that it would work in the West End especially with hardy ship workers dancing in formation!

 

On Wednesday we walked down to the Rockefeller Centre to see the huge Christmas tree and ice skating rink and then down to Grand Central Station to look at the Christmas market there. In fact we went to four Christmas markets! We had lunch in Juniors at Grand Central Station. I had a delicious banana milkshake and a brisket melt.

 

 

The milkshake was delicious but the sandwich was a bit dry and there wasn't enough Au jus for the whole sandwich. In the afternoon we went to see Weisental, which was about the Jewish Nazi hunter after the Second World War. In the evening we went to see A Christmas Memory, all about memories of Alabama Christmas', it was a very sweet tale, even if some of the singing was a bit dodgy.

 

 

On Wednesday we went to the Strand Book Store which I love, and I bought a grains cookbook as well as some foodie fiction. Then we went to the Christmas Market at Untion Square where we ate Cannoli! Pictures above are mud pie, chocolate, original, apple pie, pistachio and pumpkin pie from Artisanal Cannoli. The best were the mud pie and the original flavours. We then walked up to the cook shop Fishes Eddy where I bought a couple of ice cream flutes, a small palate knife and a deep dish apple pie dish. In the afternoon I went to two exhibitions at FIT, one on fashion and dance and the other on counterfeiting and fakes both were excellent.

 

 

For lunch I finally had fish tacos with red cabbage, pico di gallo and spicy mango sauce on wholemeal wraps. They were really good. Then on Thursday afternoon I went grocery shopping again and bought the final few things to bring back. 

 

I also got some of the famed Banana pudding from the magnolia bakery which was fully of banana and so so good. In the evening I went to see Matilda at the theatre which was superb, a proper Broadway musical.

Finally on Friday, the last day and always a bit of a dead day we made our way to the Christmas market at the bottom of Central Park and had lunch. I had Cajun chicken gumbo and finally got my first taste of andouille sausage. It was lovely and spicy but not so spicy I couldn't eat it. 

 

I tried a caramel Cronut filled with cream which was lovely but not as good as the salted caramel Cronut I had from Selfridges a little while ago. We also had a wander around William Sonoma and Whole Food Market just to look at the variety of food on offer. Then we travelled to the airport.

I think the only thing I missed out on doing that I wanted to do was to go to the Waldorf Astoria and try the original proper red velvet cake made from beetroot but there's always next time!

This is the booty I brought back: