Oh My Land, Chelsea is Being Invaded by Frenchies!

And by that, I do not mean those lovely people from the land of croissants. Or from the land of poutine for that matter. By that, I mean that almost every gay man in Chelsea was sporting a very cute accessories today in the form of a French Bulldog. Man are they cute -- the dogs I mean though of Dorothy's friends were very handsomely dressed today. There were Frenchies in studded collars and Frenchies in varsity sweaters, even the Frenchies without adornments were too cute for words. Sigh, if only it weren't a mortal sin to have a dog in a tiny apartment. And for those of you who have threatened terrible things if I get a dog while here, once again I say, I just think they are cute. I am NOT getting a dog.

While it was meant to be merely a cloudy day in New York today, it turned out to be yet another day of sporadic downpours. One minute I was buying Tiffany blue rain boots and the next minute I needed them out of the box and on my feet. We tried to not let the rain stop us though, making stops around the city at Trader Joe's wine store (in a word, alcoholic heaven) and at the hideously busy Whole Foods in Union Square. While it was just retarded to try and enjoy shopping there today, I was delighted that the store had an escalator for shopping carts. You just let the mechanism grab your cart and while you ride up to the second floor of Whole Foods, your cart follows you. It's great! Plus, it makes shopping on a two-floored store actually rather enjoyable because you don't have to carry three baskets around with you to try and pick out all the food stuffs you need.

In the evening, after practicing cornet making, which I do believe to have almost mastered, and also after doing a little practice-piping, we went to a place that I'm not even sure I want to tell my 14 or so readers about. More heavenly than even the Trader Joe's Wine Store is a tiny, and I do mean miniature, dessert bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The restaurant is called Chikalicious and it is run by a lady, named Chika, and her husband. For a mere $14 you get to delight in three courses of desserts -- an amuse (or a little taste to begin your meal), your main dessert (an ever-changing selection) and then three delightfully petite petit fours. I first read about the place last year in a book that my friend, the Queen, bought for me in New York. If you like dessert and are headed this way, it is a must-have. By the way, the book is called "New York's 50 Best Places to Eat Dessert". Anyway, so I read about Chikalicious in this book and when we were here last May, we ate there three times. Three times in about 36 hours. It's really that good. This evening we were lucky and didn't even have to wait in line to get in, there are no reservations here, and were seated right at the bar to watch all the action un-fold. The amuse was a jasmine tea gelee with coconut sorbet and for the main Collin had what he always has, fromage blanc cheesecake (fromage blanc is sort of like ricotta but without the little granules, it is a little sour but that's just how he likes it) and I had a warm almond cake with toasted almond ice cream and a salad of apricots and amaretto gelee. Sigh. My mouth is watering just remembering it. We finished out dessert with a trio of petit fours; a square inched coconut marshmallow, a piece of lemon poppy seed pound cake (it was about an inch long and about a half an inch wide)and a Hershey kiss-shaped dollop of chocolate mousse on a nickel-sized piece of chocolate wafer topped with a cocoa nib. It was a wonderful meal.


Outside Chikalicious looking in -- it's not the kind of place you take pictures in, sorry!

After our dessert we walked across the street to the Chikalicious Dessert Club (the sister-restaurant to Chikalicious which has places to sit but is mostly a to-go kind of bakery) and purchased a cupcake, cheesecake to go and two macaroons, one rose flavoured, the other one a salted caramel. Needless to says, after our actual dinner tonight, we greatly enjoyed our Second desserts of the evening.


Rose-flavoured macaroon


Collin's cheesecake to -- because he just can't get enough NY Cheesecake...

Since someone mentioned the soy blue cheese to me, I thought I would make and effort to capture the wretched stuff; though hopefully I am not arrested the next time we go to West Side Market for taking So many photos in the store but I really wanted y'all to see the fantastic cheese selection at the regular old grocery store, and also see the Tiffany blue soy cheese that I will never, Ever taste no matter how much you pay me.


Soy Blue Cheese...


The amazing cheese selection at West Side Market on the corner of West 15th Street and 7th Avenue. There were a lot more views I could have taken to show you all just how big the selection is but I was being closely watched. And followed.

Stay tuned tomorrow, when doing my reading today for tomorrow's class, I noticed we are going to be working with caramel...and making...decorations?!