summer in madison. a beautiful thing.

Spending last summer on Madison's isthmus, I feel I struck a perfect balance between productivity and relaxation. Though I'm here in New York, which most consider the cultural capital of the US, I've been feeling intense pangs of longing for Madison. I'm not missing school whatsoever, but I keep thinking about the things I did last summer and all the things I'm excited for upon my return.

Why I'm missing Madison and pining for last summer:

• Paul's Books: my co-workers/second family there, the smell of old books, finding neat miscellaneous things in old books, working in the cozy store while it rains outside
  
• Med Cafe. It's always perfect - no Mediterranean food I've had here has come close to the lamb and beef shawarma plate, avgo soup and pita
  
• Lake Mendota - watching boats, birds and people
  
• The Dane County Farmers' Market on the Square and its wonderful produce/baked goods
  
• Proximity to friends and family
• Nick
  
• My little Henry, the funniest cat in the world
• The Badger Herald - making it, reading it, loving it
• Walking to the Capitol on beautiful and bright days
  
• Madison publications: WSJ, CapTimes/77 Square, Isthmus, The Onion, the Herald and...the Cardinal (I guess)
  
• Taking the kids I babysat to the pool
  
• Cookouts at the park with D-White's burgers and Sarah Scallon's bars
• Breakfast at Sunroom Cafe, Sophia's and Mickey's with friends
  
• Lazy evenings with movies and takeout from Kipps, Asian Kitchen and Insomnia
  
• Picnics at Picnic Point
• Watching the sun set at Monona Terrace
  
• Mallards games - especially while wearing my FEAR THE DUCK shirt
  
• The Terrace and its music, events and pitchers
  
• State Street, Monroe Street, Willy Street and all they have to offer
• Fair Trade coffee, scones and vegan peanut butter bars
• Playing volleyball in Klief Park at dusk and making fun of D-White
  
• Losing at intramural volleyball
  
• The typical college party scene (at least every once in a while) followed by a wonderful Jin's chicken sandwich
  
• Art at the MMOCA and Chazen
• Cheese curds. Squeaky, fried, fresh.
• Wine and cheese nights with best friends
• Trying new recipes with Sarah and Nicole
  
• Bratfest, Jazz Fest, fireworks for the fourth of July and the countless other gatherings and festivals Madison hosts
• Concerts on the Square
• Hippy Christmas and the wonderful fruit it bears
• Fluxx, Scrabble and MarioKart 64 with the usual suspects (Dallas and Nicole)
  
• Running around the city and jumping into the lake to cool off
• Vilas Zoo
  
• Biking on cool, breezy summer nights

mission: cupcake

Two girls. Three days. Twenty-five cupcakes.

In lieu of spending Valentine's Day alone, six states away from my boyfriend, I embarked on a glorious three-day vacation to our nation's capital. I stayed in D.C. with Ashley, who had one last weekend of freedom before beginning a cushy new waitressing job in which she will make $500/night in tips (lucky lady).

I'd been to D.C. once before, mostly making the essential tourist stops. This time was different. This time, there were cupcakes. And what better way to really tour a city than through a cupcake crawl?

Our goal: to visit each major cupcakery in D.C., eating many varieties of cupcakes and rating each one based on an ever-changing, unofficial criterion. From a handful of shops, we hoped a victor would emerge; the best cupcake purveyor in the District.

Disclaimer - Ashley and I are both major sweet tooths; we each crave sugar breakfast, noon and night. This was the perfect activity to occupy our time together. However, a cupcake crawl of such magnitude should not be attempted by the average cupcake fan. As you will read, we each felt quite ill after our journey (SEE: cupcake fatigue, cupcake death) - and this with nearly 43 collective years of champion-level-dessert-consumption to our names. Proceed with caution.

Shops listed in order of our visit

Red Velvet Cupcakery (Penn Quarter) 4 cupcakes, $3.25 apiece


Peanut butter: Chocolate cake with chocolate chips and peanut butter frosting. Cake was too dry, frosting was very peanut-y. Sea salt on top was an interesting addition. BC
Summertime: Lemon cake with coconut frosting. Frosting was overpowered by the cake, which was extremely lemony. Refreshing taste, a little dry. BC
Southern Belle: Red velvet cake, whipped cream cheese frosting. Cake was too crunchy and dry. Frosting was rich but boring. C
Devil's Food: Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Cake was relatively moist, a ganache frosting was rich and mousse-like. Nothing we couldn't make ourselves. BC

Average: BC. Sadly, none of the cupcakes were particularly inspired and most were too dry.

Presidential Cupcakes (Smithsonian American Art Museum) 8 cupcakes (4 each), free of charge

Created by Zillycakes, 5,900 mini vanilla cupcakes of different colors combined to form an image of Presidents Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. We arrived just in time for the disassembly, which consisted of the artist's volunteers running around with the mini-cupcakes piled high on trays, free to the public.

Obama/Lincoln cupcakes: Vanilla cupcake with fondant topping. These cupcakes were in no way delicious, but 1) were free, and 2) were edible. We each ate at least four.
Average: D for tastiness, A for amazing presentation.

Baked & Wired (Georgetown) 3 cupcakes, $3.50 apiece

Cupcakes aren't Baked & Wired's main attraction (it's a coffee shop and bakery in one), but they were darn good.


Coconut: Vanilla cake with coconut frosting. Cake was dense and tasty. Frosting was thick, creamy and sweet. Coconut is excellent. AB
Red Velvet: Red velvet cake with vanilla frosting. Cake is moist and bright red; nice flavor. The frosting is excellent - creamy and sweet. A/AB
Peanut butter: Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Drier than other cupcakes, icing is thick but not too sweet; strong and yummy peanut flavor. AB
Average: A/AB - despite its simple flavors, this was my favorite place for cupcakes. The presentation was gorgeous - parchment wrappers, beautiful icing, cute candy hearts. Bonus points for the cafe's calming ambiance and addicting "hippy crack" granola mix.

Georgetown Cupcake (Georgetown) 4 cupcakes, $2.75 apiece

The winner of the Washington Post's Cupcake Wars, Georgetown Cupcake is an extremely popular cupcake destination - we waited in a ridiculously slow-moving line for 45 minutes before entering the store.

Key Lime: Lime cake with lime frosting. Top of the cake a little dry. Pieces of lime in the cake a nice touch. Frosting could use more lime flavor. A/AB
Carrot Cake: Carrot cake with whipped cream cheese frosting. Cake is flavorful and moist, but not overly sweet. Frosting is sweet and heavy. Kind of plain. B
Vanilla with Chocolate: Vanilla cake with chocolate ganache frosting. Frosting is heavy and mouthwatering. Cake is light, balancing out the frosting. AB
Chocolate³: Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting/chocolate sprinkles. We expected more - cake is not very sweet, not quite enough frosting for our liking. Too bland for the name "chocolate cubed" but still a solid cupcake. B

Average: AB/B. We wanted to like these cupcakes more (especially with the wait), but overall they were too bland and frosting wasn't sweet enough.

Love Cafe (U-Street) 2 cupcakes, $3.25 apiece

Strangely, Love Cafe's cupcakes are refrigerated and must be set out for 15 minutes in order to reach room temperature.


Vanilla/vanilla: Vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. A cupcake you could easily re-create yourself. Cake is crumbly and dry and they skimped on frosting. A vanilla cupcake needs to have something more than this. C
Strawberry/chocolate: Chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. Cake crunchy on top, crumbly, strawberry frosting not flavorful enough. Light and forgettable. C

Average: C. The actual cafe was a great place to sit down, order a sandwich and play Bananagrams, but the cupcakes are entirely unremarkable.

Hello Cupcake (Dupont Circle) 4 cupcakes, $3 apiece


Velvet Elvis: Banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting. The peanut butter and banana flavors work so well together. The frosting is piled insanely high and is absolutely delicious. Banana cake is tasty. I loved this cupcake. A/AB
You Tart!: Lemon cake with lemon frosting. A good cupcake, but a tiny bit dry. Lemon sugar on top made it very sweet. Light and refreshing taste. AB
Peanut Butter Blossom: Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. Chocolate cake dry and crunchy near the top. Generous dollop of frosting again, but the flavor combination is not as unique as others. B/BC
Heart of Darkness: Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting/chocolate sprinkles. Cake is crumbly, dry and not chocolatey enough. Ganache icing is rich, but almost too much. "The obligatory chocolate cupcake." BC

Average: B. Scores were across the board, chocolate cakes were too dry and left something to be desired. They opened recently, so maybe they're still honing their trade? Hello Cupcake did have the most fun flavors and a really cute shop.

RESULTS: Overall, our favorites were: Velvet Elvis (Hello Cupcake), Red Velvet (Baked and Wired) and Key Lime (Georgetown Cupcake), but no one place stood out as better than the others with every single offering.

This experience also taught us of the dangers of cupcake binging. Halfway through the contenders at Hello Cupcake, cupcake fatigue set in. Our brains worked slower. Our stomachs didn't like us anymore. We had to pause between cupcakes to drink water and take a breather. After we declared our mission complete, we realized that cupcake fatigue is followed by cupcake death. Both of us felt sick and unable to function for a couple of hours. Apparently, there is a thing as too much sugar, my friends. And it's tragic.

More cupcake pictures? OKAY!

The end!

D.C. with AJ

THE NEWSEUM (aka Mecca)

I could spend days at the Newseum. It's the best museum I've ever been to, by far.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

National Museum of the American Indian


The museum hosted a chocolate festival and there were supposed to be "scissor dancers" - instead, they had a cooking demonstration. Boo.

Miscellaneous
People who eat free at Ben's Chili Bowl: Barack Obama and Bill Cosby

Flowers at the Eastern Market

Ashley's cute little sublet (& neighbors)

westminster dog show

Here are some of the photos I took at the Westminster Dog Show today at Madison Square Garden. It was a total riot! I saw breeds of dogs I never knew existed and learned facts about dogs that I will never remember.

In addition to watching the dogs being judged in the main rings, Caryl and I went backstage. We saw dogs being groomed (hairspray, blow dryers, straightening irons...these dogs are much more meticulously styled than most people I know), dogs being cooled off by fans in their cages and dogs being spoken to - and argued with - as if they were human beings. The coolest part is that we were able to talk with handlers and could pet some of the dogs. One licked my face. The dog handlers and owners are an interesting study themselves; I overheard one woman confiding in another, "I HATE her dog and she HATES mine..." Alliances in the dog show circuit must be wild. I also saw a dog running on a treadmill at the hotel across the street where all the participants stay - hilarious!

The dog Caryl's petting is the one that licked my face. It was a VERY friendly Corgi (I think).

This was a Shiba Inu, my favorite! I also really liked the Rhodesian Ridgebacks.

g-way weekend update

As per tradition, I went out on Friday night with Bassey and Joe. We went to/crashed Joe's friend's private birthday party at Bowery Electric in NoHo. Luckily we arrived just in time to catch the last of an open bar hour. Once drinks bounced back to full price, however, there wasn't much to entice us to stay (obnoxiously loud music, people we didn't know). We walked to a bar I'd heard about called Kettles of Fish in the West Village. THIS WAS A WISCONSIN THEMED BAR. They had Packer/Badger football memorabilia all over - it was just like being at home, minus the mulleted Wisconsin residents donning camo.

I had a headache on and off for most of Saturday, so I laid low that morning. In the afternoon I decided to venture out to activate my library card (finally) and walk around Park Slope. There are neat little shops, restaurants and bars all over - it's basically like State Street, but exploded. I caught a glimpse of a shopping center farther out, so I went to check it out. I went into the most intense Target I'd ever encountered: two stories, no daylight, tons of people, only one way exit/checkout area...nuts, just nuts. Anyway, I guess I didn't realize quite how far out I had walked, because it took me an insanely long time to get home. Later I figured out I'd walked over five miles in total. On a whim, you know. The usual.

My headache came back in full force after a while, so I took a nap. I also watched Milk, which I fully enjoyed. I'm one of those people who likes knowing the ending before it happens, so at one point when the suspense was building, I paused the movie and looked up Harvey Milk on wikipedia. It's terrible, but it made me feel better. I'm trying to watch all the Oscar-nominated films for this season, but I've had Frost/Nixon sitting around in my room for over a week and still haven't gotten to it...and Benjamin Button is like three hours long, so I'm putting that one off too.

Today was beautiful (an unseasonable high of 59), so I couldn't just sit in the house. My roommate Jeremy had mentioned he was thinking about taking the Staten Island Ferry. I decided to go with him and we made an extremely touristy day out of it.

We took the subway to the ferry, which is free (!!!) ... the wind was out of control, so it was rather cold, but the day was gorgeous and bright. We had a great view of Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey and Staten Island, along with an abundance of seagulls, ships and tugboats. It reminded me a lot of taking the ferry in Seattle...which isn't that surprising, I guess all ferries are created equal.

Post-ferry, we walked along the shore, trying to figure out how to get onto the Brooklyn Bridge. We had to backtrack into Manhattan a ways, but it was definitely worth it - walking the bridge is incredible! It's funny (but also understandable) how aggressive the bikers are...they bark really angrily at the pedestrians to get the hell out of their way. I saw a guy who almost crashed into another biker give an unmistakable death stare to the couple who caused his dilemma. They were completely oblivious. (Did I mention I love to people-watch?)


After trekking over the bridge and into Dumbo (my work neighborhood), Jeremy and I went in search of Jacques Torres Chocolate - a chocolate shop renowned for its amazing cookies and hot chocolate, among other things. First though, we accidentally ran into a really cool indoor flea market - I'll have to go back next weekend, because I could have spent a lot of time there.

Jacques Torres was PACKED (a good sign). After waiting in line for 10-15 minutes, I bought a hot chocolate and a chocolate chip cookie. It. Was. Delicious. I should probably give up baking, because there is absolutely no way I will ever make a cookie that can compare to Jacques'. And the hot chocolate? Without a doubt, this was the thickest, richest hot chocolate I've ever consumed. It was only 8 oz, but I couldn't have possibly have had any more. I went into a diabetic coma. The most magical diabetic coma ever. I was Augustus Gloop and I had just fallen into Willy Wonka's chocolate river. It was a religious experience: Jacques Torres is the god of my personal heaven. As this heaven is only a few blocks from where I work, it's a very dangerous heaven indeed.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Westminster Dog Show with Caryl, my boss from the bookstore I work at back home. She comes up to New York for the show every year; I'm really looking forward to seeing her (and the dogs too - I'm not much of a dog person, but I'm sure it will be quite interesting).

workin' nine to pie

I've been sooooo incredibly lazy today...but to appease certain parties, I suppose I should write an update about the last 168 hours of my life.

My internship is pretty great. I had to sign a confidentiality agreement so I can't give too many details, but I'm doing a little of everything: getting groceries, ordering lunch, reading scripts and outlines and giving notes, researching for upcoming projects, building shelves and breaking down cardboard. Just being in a production office and observing the process is very educational - I learn a lot just by sitting at my desk and listening! It's also definitely fun to get insider information about actors, directors, movies, etc.

There are only four paid employees and one other intern at the company, so I'm feeling relatively comfortable with everyone already. Supposedly they're going to set up one-on-one lunches between the interns and employees so we can discuss our goals, get advice and just get to know them better. There's also talk of bowling and bar outings!

Actually, one of the guys I work for edited a humor anthology, and there was a live show (essentially a promotional event where a few contributing authors read their pieces) for it in Manhattan the other night. I got to go with one of the production assistants - I had a great time and was glad to get out into the city.

Despite liking my job, after my first full week of there (working 40+ hours a week at one job for the first time ever), I wonder how people stand putting in this much time at jobs they hate. I mean, the day starts to drag on after 7, 8, 9 hours.

I went out to a couple of bars again on Friday night - I brought my new roommate Jeremy (he's Canadian and has the stereotypical accent, especially when he's talking to his friends/family on the phone) along to meet up with Bassey and his friend Joe, who we went out with last week. Our destination of the evening was Union Hall, a bar in Park Slope with bookcases, leather couches and bocce ball courts inside! As we hoped, it was a decidedly wonderful bar (and Jeremy and I took a legit, yellow cab home, so all was well there).

There are a couple of ideas for projects running around inside my head, so I may start working on something - that is, if I can break this trend toward laziness. I've been watching a lot of movies though (Slumdog Millionaire, Tropic Thunder, Waitress, Father of the Bride, The Visitor)...and thanks to a certain friend from back home, I may now be addicted to The Real World: Brooklyn. Evidently, the TV/movie watching I neglected while in school has come on full force in an environment unfettered by homework obligations.

Okay, so instead of watching the Super Bowl tonight, I made a giant batch of chicken noodle soup and two peanut butter pies (inspired by watching Waitress). After tasting them, I'm certain that I made the right decision. Sooooo good.

Miscellaneous notes:
- Send me mail. Please?
- Still no library card. I have a change of address form from my bank so I technically could get it now, but the freakin' library is closed on Sundays. UGHHH.
- I went running again yesterday, so I'm averaging once a week. Oh yeah. The plan is to wake up at 7:30 and go tomorrow morning. It remains to be seen if this actually happens.
- I have no money; I spent all of my discretionary income in Europe. I'm trying to save, but damn! I want to shop.
- Running counter to my goal of saving money, I may go visit my friend Ashley in D.C. next weekend...buses are easily available and relatively cheap from NYC to D.C. and I'm dying to see her, so I hope it works out!
- I decided I don't want to babysit anymore - I'd never have time to be lazy or have people visit! This is also not helping my un-moneyed-state.
- Sarah, WE SHOULD MAKE LOBSTER!!!! We can boil them alive and listen to their death shrieks. On second thought...let's make salad.