Once upon a time, after visiting Ba Xuyen, my favorite banh mi spot in all of New York City, several times, I told my then roommate back in 2009-2010 that Sunset Park would be a good neighborhood to live in. It had a huge park nearby. It was in the heart of an area that has both a large Mexican/Latin community (like Little Mexico) AND a Chinese/Asian community (known as one of many Chinatowns in New York). The neighborhood had a really pleasant family friendly feel, which is basically code for “safe.” At that time, the rents were still quite cheap.

I still think Sunset Park would be a great place to live if you choose to live in New York. Since 2009, more fun, trendy restaurants, cafes, and bakeries have opened. I notice more White people frequenting the businesses we enjoy, especially Ba Xuyen. But every time we come back here for food, I am reminded of how I always want to eat literally everything here, but it would be pretty much impossible to do it given that we don’t live even remotely close by, and we come here maybe once or twice every YEAR.

In one afternoon’s visit, we had a black sesame iced latte from a trendy Malaysian owned cafe called Parlay; banh mi thit nguoi and jackfruit shake from Ba Xuyen; Hainese and roast chicken rice and laksa from Hainan Chicken House; picked up 40 pork and shrimp dumplings (frozen) and a hot sweetened soy milk from Kai Feng Dumpling House; got duck dumpling takeout from Orchid Dim Sum Cafe; snagged a guava/cheese flaky pastry and a vanilla concha from La Flor de Izucar Bakery; and split a beef tongue taco and horchata from Tacos El Bronco, the taco truck. That’s a pretty darn large variety of food right there.

So much good food in Sunset Park, but so little time! And that doesn’t even cover all the other places that I would have wanted to check out, both old and new for us!

Once Halloween comes and goes, all the stores in sight will have their Christmas / holiday decorations up. And I always get excited when Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s get decked out for the holidays. I love seeing all the seasonal edible specials that pop up and what may be new and interesting to try.

One of my fondest memories growing up was always seeing the endless amount of chocolate, popcorn, and other treats my family was gifted during the holiday season. Although I was never a huge fan of the big popcorn tin, I always did enjoy having it in my presence and occasionally picking at it. And although I never verbalized it, the one candy I always loved were the tiny English toffee bricks coated in chocolate and covered in ground almonds. I think the brand was Almond Roca, always easily recognizable by its signature pink tin, and for whatever reason, we always, always had it. I still remember my grandma, who was a sweets fanatic (and obviously so since at the end of her life, she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes), was obsessed with the Almond Roca. I used to sneak one or two pieces whenever she wasn’t looking.

Well, Trader Joe’s has their version of this English-style toffee on their shelves every holiday season, and I’m no longer hiding the fact that I absolutely love this stuff. I never buy candy for myself pretty much ever unless I am traveling and see an interesting chocolate or something related. It will be my new personal tradition to purchase this one candy for myself at this time of year, every year as long as it’s available. It’s part nostalgia, but it’s also because this stuff is so freakin’ good. The indulgence is worth it. And Trader Joe’s makes it a relatively inexpensive indulgence!

Well, we have gone through yet another Daylight Savings Time period ending with a young Pookster in tow. She seems to have adjusted fairly well. While she is, expectedly, waking up “earlier,” it’s all been pretty good and hasn’t had much of an effect on her mood in a negative way. She actually seems more chipper and happy than usual.

The real test of this generally is during her one afternoon nap, and she also managed to go through that well, too, having napped an hour and fifteen minutes mid-afternoon today. I was able to get my step count in by pushing her around Hell’s Kitchen in the stroller, while also exploring all the new interesting restaurants that have popped up just south of us: Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao Express, a Sichuanese pickled stewed fish restaurant, and two fried chicken fast casual spots, one Japanese and one Taiwanese! More food to eat, and more places to push the stroller while Pooks naps!

In the last month or so, Chris and I have been watching season 1 of Julia, an HBO TV series about Julia Child. It focuses primarily on her life once she and her husband Paul moved to Cambridge, after she has published her first cookbook, and is starting her television series. I always thought Julia Child was an interesting, quirky person, and clearly she is a role model for so many. But I never really got into her until we started watching this show. French cooking has never really fascinated me at all; it’s always come across as a bit stuffy, too complicated, and something I’d rather eat out than make at home. I guess I am sort of her target audience because her goal was to make French food attainable in the American kitchen. I still feel that way, not necessarily because I think it’s too complicated, but because it’s just not a cuisine I’m fascinated enough by to want to make at home. And when I think about it even more, outside of our time traveling in France, we rarely even eat French food. It’s quite expensive in restaurants, and it’s not really something we crave.

But there is one place that we do enjoy, and it’s Cafe Triskell in Astoria, Queens. Chris stumbled upon this cute little restaurant in Astoria while researching places for us to eat at during our Saturday city excursions, and it really does remind us of those cute quaint cafes in France. The food is simple and unassuming, and the prices are right. While we were sitting there today eating mussels and crepes while fending Pookster off from eating too much butter and sugar crepe, I kept wondering why we couldn’t have a cute little spot like this in our own neighborhood. Either way, I’m so into Julia Child now that I’ve even checked out a virtual copy of her memoir, My Life in France, from Libby, and am currently reading it. I think the thing I love about her the most, other than her enthusiasm for cooking and her optimism, is that she saw the beauty in the tiniest things, the things that most people wouldn’t even notice. And I really appreciate that about her because I try to do the same.

Ever since the pandemic, “curbside pickup” seems to be a very popular option for people who just want to order online and pick up in-store without doing any shopping. As someone who really does not enjoy going to malls and browsing, and absolutely hates trying on clothes, this would generally appeal to me. However, it doesn’t always work out when you designate what you want, choose the location of the store for in-store pickup, and then you get an email hours later stating that said-item, which was supposed to be in stock at the store, is no longer there. Sephora has a sale until November 6, so I thought I would take advantage of it… And while I did, I only was able to successfully get 1 out of three desired items. What’s the point of doing in-store pickup and shopping online then? At that rate, I might as well just shop in the store, ensure they actually have what I want, and then buy! It felt like a total waste of time even going on the site. I got a cancelled order message twice in the last two days for two different items, so I am not a fan of the current state of Sephora online ordering/in-store pickup.

Every year since we’ve moved into this building, Chris and I have embraced paying it forward and passing out candy to trick-or-treaters in our building. We usually buy our massive bag of candy in August or September from Costco. We also are usually pretty generous about how much candy we give. While many apartments or houses may just give one or two pieces of candy, we’ve given handfuls of candy to kids who stop by. Part of the reason for that is that we have SO much candy, and I definitely don’t need more candy lying around this apartment to tempt me. The other reason is that the candy assortments are rarely all types of candy we enjoy.

Well, apparently this year, our building management screwed up. The building manager was out on vacation the last week and a half, and it slipped her mind that Halloween was on the day after she came back from vacation. Nothing was socialized about which units would like to sign up to pass out candy to hopeful trick-or-treaters, so no one even had the ability to sign up until yesterday, which is such short notice to have a sign up sheet set up… and then to actually SHARE that sheet with all parents who have kids participating. So when Chris stopped by the lobby to see the list of apartment units participating, it looked like there were barely even ten units signed up. And at this rate, it’s unlikely that many units with hopeful children even knew that our building was even participating in trick or treating at all!!

I guess yet again, we’re going to have a ton of leftover candy this year…

In the last several years, we’ve battled a couple of small “infestations” in our apartment. Twice, we’ve experienced the teeny tiny cigarette beetles, which likely came in through a pantry item that was purchased. Twice, we’ve experienced a mini fruit fly infestation. Once, it was in our old apartment, and in the last couple weeks, I’ve noticed we’ve had fruit flies that just would not go away, even after I was killing at least one a day by squashing them. So I had to bring out the weapon of choice: apple cider vinegar. I used the same method in our previous apartment, adding a few tablespoonfuls of ACV to water, then adding a few drops of liquid dish soap to break up the water tension. These little traps in bowls laid out in areas where they like to fly are a sure-fire way to eliminate these pests. In the first week, we had already killed about eight of them. And after I replenished my last small bowl on the dining table, it already has six dead ones floating on top. In the last three days, I’ve seen zero fruit flies anywhere in the entire apartment.

“You’re committing genocide in this apartment!” Chris exclaimed, as he saw me peer over the bowl to see how many dead fruit flies were in it.

As far as I am concerned, this is not genocide; this is keeping our apartment pest free without using anything toxic. I am winning, and those pesky fruit flies are losing. That’s the circle of life.

In the last two years as we’ve really felt the impact of inflation, not just through our grocery bills, but also our restaurant bills, every time I go out to eat, I wonder whether what I’ve paid for, whether it’s food or drink, is really “worth it.” It seems like the more we go out, especially when we’re socializing with friends, it’s more and more impossible to see main dishes cost less than the high 20s. In many cases, main dishes seem to be up in the 30s and 40s, and that’s even during lunch/brunch times when people generally will assume that the cost of a meal will be lower than at dinner time. Today, we went to Park Slope to meet friends and dine at Masalawala & Sons for brunch. Masalawala is owned by Unapologetic Foods, a food company also responsible for one of our favorite Indian places in Long Island City called Adda. They like to market themselves as being “unapologetic,” authentic to the regions of India they represent, and also at reasonable, “not” expensive price points. But I couldn’t help but blink a few times when I saw that their main (“large”) format dishes were in the high 20s, 30s, and even 40s. The portions were decent, but even some of the appetizers, which were quite small (meaning, among four of us, we’d probably have a bite each at most), were around $20. Without even really thinking about it or over ordering in the least bit, when we split the bill, it ended up evening out to about $65 each. This wasn’t even supposed to be a fancy or “special occasion” meal. It was just meant to be a casual brunch catch-up with friends on a typical Saturday.

The food was definitely good and different than the average Indian restaurant. The decor was beautiful on the inside, complete with flowers, endless brightly colored wall paintings and interesting decorations adorning the walls and ceilings. I also really appreciated the super clean and muraled bathrooms, both of which had a changing table (which, of course, I was excited by, and Kaia was even more excited by because she knows what the changing tables look like before they are pulled down, and she insisted upon a diaper change before beginning lunch because she had had a heavy pee diaper. She kept yelling over and over, “Change diaper! Change diaper!”). The service was really friendly and attentive. It’s not that I could really critique anything about the restaurant at all. The price points just felt very steep. As I told Chris after, as he had commented about how steep the prices were, I told him that unfortunately, a place like this could not be a reliable everyday “neighborhood restaurant” where you’d stop by without thinking… because it would just hurt the wallet too much. But it seems like almost every restaurant that isn’t a total hole-in-the-wall is like this now in New York City. Once upon a time, we used to spend $8-15 on lunch. Then it became $20 for a weekday work lunch. Now, you’d be lucky to get out spending $25-30, and that’s before tax and… of course, tip. It almost just makes you want to eat even more of your meals at home now.