To Dye, To Weep, Perchance to Eat

A-type female guilt and self-flagellation has set in as I look at the date of my last post and realise an entire month has passed since I massacred the English language with the overuse of adjectives, alliterations and puns.

But no apologies! Just promises of bonus updates, more photographs than a Kardashian Instagram feed and of course, unnecessary side thoughts in brackets.

In unsurprising recent news, the Australian accent has apparently been derived from the drunken slurs of our forefathers. That’s about a surprising as some bloke named Sasha winning The Bachelorette. Or so I’ve heard. I firmly live in the realm of Good Morning America now.  But it does go some way to explaining why I now use ‘Mary’ as my coffee-order name. To date, Nelly, Nylee & Adalee have accompanied my flat whites – so when travelling with mum I discovered that ‘Mary’ is infallible – both eponymously and literally.

Before delving into the Mumhattan adventures of the last fortnight (because let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to hear stories about my poor mother witnessing hippies smoke joints in front of the SFPD), a Baking Learnings Soliloquy (NB: The Shakespeare will make sense after Broadway recap later).

To Dye… Why did I not heed the warnings of fellow American bakers who warned that much like the wide array of nutrient-void ‘breakfast’ cereal (I’m looking at you, Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs), there is an equally confusing variety of flours, baking additives and ‘all natural’ food dyes for those who wish to make virtuous baked goods. Screw virtuosity, when your failsafe plump red velvets emulate the zombie Halloween spirit a month too early.

Behold, the day the cupcakes oozed their all-natural-innards across my baking tray and dyed. (See what I did there? Get used to puns. Our local bike shop is called Citizen Chain. I’m just assimilating.)

https://instagram.com/p/8mMckNjVKy/?taken-by=unfitnimproper

And for those who don’t understand the enormity of this photograph, it’s the baking equivalent of a make-up free selfie – exposed, unfiltered and less than attractive… but also hopeful it will inspire bakers worldwide to chronicle their baking fails, free from judgment. #JustDoughIt

To Weep… At Costco – an evil but glorious place where your true desires are revealed (I never knew I needed 6kg of pecans before that fateful day in October). And although we escaped relatively unscathed & victoriously wrestling a 25lb bag of baking flour, a line was drawn at the X-Large Turkey Deep Fryer.

But let’s be honest, there’s a good chance we’ll return for the Beer Advent Calendar…

https://instagram.com/p/8q4pAYDVK2/?taken-by=unfitnimproper

Perchance to Eat! There wasn’t any ‘perchance’ about it. We would definitely be eating our way through Manhattan. If you’ve ever followed any of our previous travel blogs, my travel style can best be described as follows:

And then when you add the wonderful ‘foodie, frolicker, funtrepreneur’ Sarah Holloway & her mother, Elizabeth into the Mumhattan equation, there were many food comas to be had. (Including successfully defeating an entire slice of Ma Peche’s Crack Pie)

By way of context, Mum’s Around the World in 22 Days adventure saw Mary ‘The Mother Currently Known as Maz’ reunite with Tammy in London, take a Parisian jaunt for T-Dev’s birthday, before floating across the Atlantic (Yes, I Google-Mapped which ocean it was) to meet me in New York City for teary reunions and Mumhattan.

At this point, I should publicly acknowledge the torture I inflicted on my mother during her first 24 hours in New York. We ended up walking over 23km (23.62 to be exact) on our first day because I got too excited – which is SO uncharacteristic –  and wanted her to experience Manhattan. In short, I plainly neglected to utilise the little-known public transport system known as the Subway.

Traversing the Flatiron District, Times Square, Broadway, Wall Street, the Staten Island Ferry in one day proved too much for our poor feet. It was a sight to behold the next morning when Maz, being the trooper she is, had to give the balls of her feet a pep-talk before she dared place them on the floor of our hotel room.

That’s how you know you’ve broken your mother.

Fun Fact about the Staten Island Ferry: In the fleet of ferries that commuters take between New Jersey & Manhattan, there’s one ferry, the ‘Andrew J Barbieri’, that is entirely enclosed. No outdoor sections conducive to magical photographs of the Statue & the NYC Skyline.

And Murphy’s Law dictates that this will be the ferry you catch when you wish to take photographs of said Statue and skyline. Thankfully, with Sarah & Elizabeth for company this entirely unInstagrammable debacle was taken in our stride as we awaited the next ferry to return to Manhattan. A ferry with outdoor seating for photographs! #Instawin

As an aside, I apologise if the remainder of this post becomes even more unintelligible. A fellow blogger who has opted to save water in drought-stricken California by bathing in cologne rather than water, has seated himself next to me. If The Lynx Effect is to make women nauseous with blurry vision then you’ve nailed it, mate.

Maz thought I was indulging in obnoxious stereotypes when I told her that on our 2nd day of Mumhattan we would be venturing into the Upper East Side – to behold Russian girlfriends of aging millionaires and Hispanic nannies pushing prams down Park Avenue. God bless Manhattan for immediately providing both spectacles as we exited the Subway, strolled through Central Park (#squirrelsforever) and nourished ourselves with breakfast at The Plaza. Once joined by the Ladies S & E Holloway, we got our fancy on.

Perusings About The Plaza

(I said puns were in, but I’m not abandoning alliterations. I’m not a literary ingrate.)

TIP: Don’t immediately say ‘yes’ to coffee & orange juice before you’ve perused the menu. It will be the first and last time The Ladies Devitsakis consume a $12 glass of orange juice and $11 cup of caffeine.

Cocaine & a Vitamin C tablet would’ve been more economical.

Fortunately, the food was delicious as we took our satiated bellies up 5th Avenue to Tiffany & Co, braved the crisp but clear views from Rockefeller Centre’s Top Of The Rock and enjoying the stunning art of The Frick Collection. Just a casual Tuesday in Manhattan…

Quotable Quote from Mum

(In Central Park, upon seeing a woman walking her beautiful Dalmatian) Well, there’s 1… Now let’s find the other 100. #disney4eva

I managed to indoctrinate mum into 3 nights on Broadway starting with ‘Something’s Rotten’ – 2 playwrights in Shakespeare’s era, attempting to write the first ever musical, when some entanglements with a soothsayer result in them writing ‘Omelette: The Musical’. (And now the Shakespeare and puns should make sense…)

The subsequent evening at the first preview of Al Pacino’s one-man play China Doll was a disappointing train wreck. You know you’ve witnessed Broadway history when people leave during intermission and demand their money back at the Box Office… so to soothe our broken musical hearts, Matilda: The Musical rounded out our theatre-going. When Tim Minchin’s musical adaptation of the best Roald Dahl book of all time makes its way Down Under in 2016, don’t think. Just go.

At the risk of further boring you to tears (well, for those that have made it this far down the blog post I commend you. A zombie-cupcake of gratitude shall arrive in your mailbox within 7 – 9 business days), here’s a photographic chronicle of our Mumhattan escapades…

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SPOILER ALERT: In next week’s episode we answer the age-old question ‘Just how many times can Mary witness bongs, crack pipes and dubious-looking-cigarettes during one week in San Francisco?’

To Be Continued….