Cheery Observations

This past Saturday, after New York’s snowstorm, Prospect Park was the scene of numerous snowmen and snow creatures, many half created and then abandoned.

Here are two of my favorites:

Yesterday, we took advantage of the refreshing sunny weather to wander through Central Park. Franz West’s ‘The Ego and the Id’ looked especially vibrant in the sun’s reflection.

This sculpture has been on display since July and will be dismantled in March.  Composed of 20 foot high pieces of aluminum, the colors are quite shocking when contrasted to the gray winter starkness of Central Park and Manhattan.

As with any effective piece of outdoor art, different perspectives are easily achieved from wandering through and around the sculpture.  I found myself looking at Central Park and Midtown in a slightly different way.  According to the Austrian artist, the sculpture is only truly complete when the viewer interacts with the work.

As seen at City Bakery’s Hot Chocolate Festival

City Bakery is a New York City gem and one of the first places we went when we moved to the city.  Owner Maury Rubin, a Greenmarket supporter way before eating locally was ‘in’, opened The City Bakery in 1990, as a gourmet cafeteria.  When you enter the restaurant, you’re confronted with overwhelming crowds (not unlike your typical school or work cafeteria experience), a bakery,  salad bar, and hot bar.  Seems pretty standard, no?  If you look a bit closer, the hot and cold bars are much more inspiring than my college’s pizza or cold cuts!  The salad bar is full of delicious creations from the Greenmarket’s freshest produce (curried cauliflower, beet salad, etc).  The hot bar always has an eager line waiting for sinfully rich macaroni and cheese, as well as paninis and a variety of creative and soups.  Of course, the star of City Bakery’s show are their baked goods, fresh out of the oven and thus melting and moist:  chocolate chip cookies, pretzel-croissants, chocolate zucchini bread.

If you need an immediate jolt of chocolate, look no further than City Bakery’s hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows.  This month, during their annual Hot Chocolate Festival, City Bakery is featuring a different hot chocolate each day.  Today, I sampled a Vietnamese Cinnamon Hot Chocolate.  You can see the rest of the festival’s schedule here.  Maury Rubin also runs two additional offshoots, the Birdbath Bakeries in Soho and the East Village.