fancy cafe visit

 

i've been wanting to show janet cafe lysée on 21st street; so today we walked over and had coffee and matcha and shared two pastries . . 

my "signature" lysée latte (made with their toasted brown rice milk) and their classic pastry: korean toasted brown rice mousse with pecans, hazelnuts and caramel. 

on the bottom right is their matcha white chocolate chip cookie with strawberry jam, and on the top left is their summer "floating island" - matcha espresso with yuzu sorbet. the cafe is the creation of chef eunji lee who combines korean ingredients with a french touch. she explains her inspiration on the cafe's website which you can read here.

we walked home through washington square . . when we first left the cafe, the breeze out on the street felt so cool that i waved my arms in the air and exclaimed that i had goose bumps. a person in new york city can go through three months of summer and never feel cold - not once! there have been times in the past when i have packed to visit my sister or for a trip upstate or to the berkshires in massachusetts that i did not even consider bringing a sweat shirt or sweater or a long sleeved shirt only to face a cool day or cold night and have to borrow something or actually buy something. so now i know fall is definitely on the way because i was actually cold for a moment when leaving the cafe. of course we warmed up quickly after turning left onto broadway and walking in the sunshine.

i also stopped at the union square green market and found prune plums! they were quite expensive . . but i bought two pounds worth and hope to make a delicious plum cake.

running errands on a hot summer day

i met sacha at peace food today. reina was supposed to join us but she is still dealing with a frustrating rash on her face. we're hoping it goes completely away soon!

peace food has the best tumeric ginger latte . . made with oat milk. they're supposed to be closing by the end of july. since we're leaving soon for the wedding, i wanted to get in another visit. if they do close this downtown location, i'll have to visit the uptown one.

i did a lot of errands today and walking around (returning library books, stopping at the health food store in the east village, printing out two knitting patterns i'm supposed to be working on, purchasing packing tape for packaging up a pair of loafers i'm returning to the quince company . . etc. i was supposed to print out a letter that i always tape to the kitchen cabinet for our cat sitter, but somehow i missed sending it from my computer at home. i'll have to return tomorrow! so much for errand consolidation.) anyway . . i was too hot and tired to make dinner so we went to chelsea market for tacos. chanda and i were hoping for chicken tacos, but the line is always too long! we had fish tacos instead (which are just as good).

greg loves taking this "secret" passage to the fish taco place.

morning poem and sunday afternoon

 

daughter

i ask her to remember, 

not because i want to hear the story again,

but because i want to watch her face relive

the moment. that moment, her eyes sparkle with longing,

i can see how she flies from the tent

to a time when she leapt

through our farm in every direction with eyes closed,

only stopping at the fence, where our orange trees

embrace our neighbors' olive trees.

some fallen oranges would tell her to open her eyes,

to pick them up and put them in a plate on our doorstep,

where children returning from school

would stop to gulp some.

i love the smell of oranges best

when she remembers.

by mosab abu toha (born 1992)

from page 37, forest of noise, published 2024 

----

i walked to the vintage pop up store chanda and i had visited friday to pick up the striped pants i liked that were on sale. i'm glad i did. they're very comfortable and they're something other than blue jeans, which i tend to wear every day. i met greg by cooper union/astor place and we popped into the muji store to see how much their suitcases were - chanda needs one. i don't know why she doesn't have one. i guess she was using an old one of morgana's all these years . . or morgana took her's back to london. anyway, they were a little pricey so she'll probably go to tj maxx. greg had never been in muji before and was excited about their pens and notebooks; now he's a big fan. afterwards, we walked to chobani in soho for one of their yogurt specialities, but they've changed their menu so we had an iced chocolate at burdick instead . . not such a bad trade off . . then we stopped at pet bar for a large bag of kitty litter which greg had to put in the basket of a citibike to pedal it home . .

now, hopefully i'll get to sleep a little earlier than last night . . 

(dinner this evening . . fresh tuna sauteed with olive oil, cumin, paprika, sea salt and pepper - picked up from the lobster place as our fish vendor no longer sells on saturdays at the green market. we really miss them!)

many places on a saturday

 
taking care of minerva this morning . . 

minerva likes to come say hello, but she doesn't like to be coddled.

this morning i woke and said that i'd like to visit cafe habibti (which i first went to with morgan and ellen in january) and greg woke and said he'd like to visit the met museum . . so we combined the two.

on our way to the bus on lafayette . . 

the museum was very, very busy today!

figuring out which way to go for the special raphael exhibit . .

through the new oceania wing . . 

two canoes from west papua, new guinea . . one is a spirit canoe used for initiation rites:

and the other is a fifty foot long canoe carved from a single tree trunk by chief chinasapitch of asmat, per village in 1961:

the raphael exhibit was so crowded! it was also quite extensive, comprising six or seven rooms with paintings, sketches and tapestries. above is: the virgin and child with the infant saint john the baptist in a landscape, 1509-11, oil on canvas, transferred from wood.

greg admiring the tapestries from madrid . . 

head of an apostle by raphael, 1519-20, black chalk on paper, drawn freehand over pounce marks  -spolvero underdrawing (and i have no idea what that means). 

we then wandered into the asian wing. this is the head of a bodhisattva, northern wei dynasty (386-534) late 5th century, sandstone with traces of pigment. the card states: "this head is reportedly from yungang in the northern shanxi province of china, where caves with colossal buddhist sculptures were constructed under the patronage of turkic-speaking tuoba rulers."

(can you imagine visiting those caves?)

the astor court which we've visited often with the girls . . 

this is the first time i noticed that you can see the clouds through the skylight . . actually, when i first looked up i saw two seagulls flying by.

now we're in nepal, kathmandu valley, with a yaksha relief, made of stone, 8th or 9th century. the yakshas are nature dieties and in buddhism they serve as guardians of the underworld treasures. this piece may have been a caryatid supporting a religious structure such as a shrine or pavilion.

one last figure which was very tall:

from cambodia, pre-angkor period, late 7th - early 8th century, stone, female diety - according to the explanation - probably a representation of the goddess durga in her role as the slayer of the buffalo demon. 

finally . . lunch and dinner rolled into one . . we walked to a diner on madison avenue . . 

and then took the bus home along fifth avenue (stopping in one last time to feed minerva).

walking milly and a slice of cheesecake

 

milly's ear blowing in the wind . . 

before i walked milly today i rode a citibike downtown to visit the mah ze dahr cafe at brookfield place. i had seen on their instagram story that they were closing their counter at the food court and today was their last day. they used to have a storefront on greenwich avenue but they left that space a few years ago. (i had visited there many times with marisa, and also with korrina, morgana and chanda.) so today i thought i would go and have one last treat and cup of tea. a worker behind the counter mentioned that they might open a new space near hudson yards in september.

a rally, a gift shop and lilacs

there were several rallies and marches today. i attended the one by the courthouses at 1:00.

i was able to hear two speeches, one from an aclu member and another from a lawyer's association. 

afterwards, i walked downtown to the national museum of the american indian. i wanted to visit the cafe which i had missed the last time i was there. unfortunately, the guard informed me that they had closed it several months ago. 

i wandered around the gift shop instead and found something nice for janet. her birthday was in late january, but she's been away since the first week of january and just returned on tuesday. i found a lovely book titled earth medicines by felicia cocotzin ruiz of xicana and tewa ancestry, which i felt sure she would really like (along with a package of wild rice from the chippewa nation).

these dishes are so beautiful!

i thought these cats would make cute christmas gifts . .

i walked home along the promenade of little west street . . 

and when i got to albany street i received a photo of lilacs from morgan; they were just starting to bloom in london. the funny thing is that i was also walking by lilac bushes at the same moment! however, i didn't see the bushes, i smelled them - that wonderful lilac aroma was coming from a small garden along the walkway. 

and this is the garden.

so pretty!

i was hungry and so stopped at brookfield place for quiche and coffee. afterwards, i hopped on a bicycle to make it back in time to see my friend jeanette who was going to be in the neighborhood for a dance performance at westbeth. we were supposed to meet at 5 pm and it was a quarter to.