Home for the Holidays

We ran away from New York for a couple of weeks over Christmas. I've only been back in Brooklyn for a few days, but this peaceful time at home already feels like many moons ago. After a few days in London (photos of that time to come!), we split our time between my family and B's, with a day spent in Cambridge in the middle. It was restful, peaceful, easy, and I feel like a huge part of me has been left behind, in the place that will always be home.

Grey clouds were interspersed with dashes of sunlight. Soup and D's breakfast juice balanced out all the cheese and sweet treats. We ran and walked and read and slept. The pets got excessive amounts of love, and we decided Cambridge would be a wonderful place to live.

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The City Bakery's Hot Chocolate

As soon as the temperature drops in NYC, the line at City Bakery grows. All for one very good reason: the hot chocolate. Often voted the best in the city (I haven't tried enough other places to confirm this), on a cold, snowy December day, the queue snakes round the counter, and the man whizzing up the hot chocolate to order is getting messier and more hectic as the bundled up customers continue to stream in.

Never order anything bigger than a small — you really won't be able to finish it. And always pay the extra dollars for the marshmallow. It may seem excessive to pay that much for some spongey sugar to sit on top of your liquid chocolate, but it's totally not. The chocolate is rich, sweet, thick, and luxuriously smooth. The icing sugar coated marshmallow floats like the lightest, fluffiest snowball on the dense drink. It melts slowly, quickly covering you in a light dusting of sugar, and testing your hot chocolate drinking abilities as you try to eat it and drink the molten chocolate on the New York streets. On a cold East Coast winter day, this hot chocolate really is the best medicine.

The City Bakery, 3 W 18th Street, New York, NY 10011

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