Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti

I borrowed a coworker's recipe and baked double chocolate walnut biscotti this month for Have The Cake. I'm bringing them to my mom's house for Christmas tomorrow. Todd is a chocolate addict, and much of our holiday desserts are cocoa-free, so I thought I'd throw him a bone with this one. No one has tasted these yet, but I have sampled them thoroughly, and deem them a success!

I tried to take pictures throughout, but the pile of raw dough really doesn't look appetizing in the photo, so I'm not posting it. Below is a view of the logs, pre-baking.


Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the logs post-baking but before cutting. They basically looked like steaming loaves of chocolate bread. Nothin' wrong with that.

And here are a couple of shots of the biscotti cooling on the cookie sheet right after they came out after the second bake. I could have baked them a minute or two longer the second time around to get a real crunch, but I was afraid to over do it. They are quite good, so I won't complain.




Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup walnut, chopped
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 F and butter and flour a large baking sheet.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl with an electric mixer, beat together butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat until combined well. Stir in flour mixture to form a stiff dough. Stir in walnuts and chocolate chips.

On prepared baking sheet with floured hands form dough into two slightly flattened logs, each 12 inches long and 2 inches wide, and sprinkle with confectioners' sugar. Bake logs 35 minutes, or until slightly firm to the touch. Cool biscotti on baking sheet 5 minutes.

On a cutting board cut biscotti diagonally into 3/4 inch slices. Arrange biscotti, cut sides down, on baking sheet and bake until crisp, about 10 minutes. Cool biscotti on a rack. Biscotti keep in airtight containers 1 week (frozen, 1 month).

Coconut Cake Bleh

I have to admit, I was disappointed with the way my coconut cake came out. This was extra disappointing, since I have been looking forward to trying this for so long.

I made, as advertised, Paula Deen's recipe. I didn't have self rising flour in the house and made a last minute executive decision to use the all purpose I did have. The cakes tasted good but were definitely more dense than Paula intended. I now know that self rising flour really does make a difference!

The bigger problem was with the frosting. I followed the recipe, improvising a double burner that I don't have, and beat the ingredients for exactly seven minutes. By the time those seven minutes had passed, I had something that very nearly resembled frosting. Unfortunately, it was still a little thin and runny. Paula Deen doesn't note what to do in this case — does it thicken upon standing? The concoction is hot at this point, so maybe it gets stiffer as it cools? Who knows? Well, now I do: it does not get thicker upon standing or cooling. In retrospect, I think I probably needed to keep beating it to get more air in it, but I didn't want to over cook the ingredients. This means that despite tasting pretty good, my cake looked a bit like a hot, runny mess.

I love coconut cake, but I don't love this recipe. In addition to the trouble listed above, I thought the filling was a little weird. I would have preferred something a little sweeter. I'm glad I gave this one a shot, but I'll attempt a different coconut cake next time around.

The filling


The troublesome frosting

Assembled but not frosted

Final, ugly cake

Dinner and a Show

Tonight I learned how to roast a lamb (sort of).

A couple friends and I went to How to Roast a Lamb: An Evening of Wine & Food with Michael Psilakis. Psilakis, an extremely successful chef, spent two hours showing us how to make an incredible four course meal. Each course was paired with a Greek wine to complement the flavors.

Of course, when Psilakis did it, everything looked easy. I'm certain I'd struggle to recreate this deliciousness, but I can try. The cost of the evening included a copy of Psilakis's book, so I can do my best to master ricotta dumplings here at home. And that is a skill worth having. So good!

Here's our menu from the evening.

Roasted Octopus with Salami, Apple & Anchovy Vinaigrette

Sheep's Milk Ricotta Dumplings with Spicy Lamb Sausage, Spinach, Sundried Tomatos, Pine Nuts & Feta

Braised Lamb Shank with Orzo & Root Vegetables

Yogurt with Quince Spoon Fruit & Jordan Almonds

Friday Favorites: My Tea Mug

To make 30 posts in 30 days easier, I'm going to post once a week about something that is a favorite of mine. I've posted about my love of Adagio Tea before, so I won't bore you with a rehash of that exactly.

Instead I'll get specific. I bought this mug from them a while ago, and I really love it. I had been using their paper filters for the 70 or so cups of tea I drink at work each day. Those work great, but I knew I could be more environmentally-thoughtful in my tea consumption. So now I use this combo mug/infuser. Upside down, the glass cover serves perfectly as a coaster for my wet infuser. And (bad news for Adagio), I now get two cups of tea out of each serving of leaves. I used to just chuck the paper infusers in the trash since they were messy and gross. This mug will pay for itself soon enough, and in the meantime I like that I'm not throwing so much away. I also feel like I'm more officially a tea drinker with this fancy infuser. :)

In case anyone is looking for new teas to try, I'm currently loving Fujian Baroque, Rooibos Vanilla Chai, Bengal Green Chai, and Black Dragon Pearls. The last are especially fun to watch unfurl in your mug.

November Challenge: Coconut Cake

November is my month to pick what we bake over at Have the Cake. Check out what I'm proposing, and please feel free to bake along with us!

I know November's baking line up is often filled with pumpkins, and I wondered whether you'd all be hoping for something of that nature that you could bring to Thanksgiving dinner. All I can say is: I hope your relatives also like coconuts.

I've been wanting to make coconut cake for a while. My birthday was in September, and I almost baked myself a coconut birthday cake. Instead I got lazy and baked nothing. So this one has been on my to-try list for quite a while.

I first fell head-over-heels for coconut cake at Billy's Bakery in Chelsea. Any of you who are close to NYC should really check it out. While I'm partial to the coconut, you really can't go wrong there. And they are extremely generous with their cake cutting!

Below is the recipe I'm going to try, which is from butter lover extraordinaire, Paula Deen. There is also a really tasty looking recipe in this month's Jamie.

Happy baking!

Cake:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups sifted self-rising flour
• 1 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans. Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream well for 6 to 8 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla and continue to beat until just mixed. Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Level batter in each pan by holding pan 3 or 4 inches above counter, then dropping it flat onto counter. Do this several times to release air bubbles and assure you of a more level cake. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto cooling racks and cool completely.

Filling

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup sour cream
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 cup flaked, sweetened coconut

Stir together sugar, sour cream, milk, and coconut in a bowl until well blended.

Using the wrong end of a wooden spoon, poke holes in the first layer of the cake, approximately 1-inch apart until entire cake has been poked. Spread 1/3 of filling mixture on cake layer. Top with second layer, repeat process. Top with last layer and repeat process again.

Frosting:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 egg whites
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Place sugar, cream of tartar or corn syrup, salt, water, and egg whites in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a handheld electric mixer for 1 minute. Place pan over boiling water, being sure that boiling water does not touch the bottom of the top pan. (If this happens, it could cause your frosting to become grainy). Beat constantly on high speed with electric mixer for 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla.

Frost top and sides of cake. Sprinkle top and sides of cakes with additional coconut.

More Apple Goodness

As of this morning, I still had a dozen apples left over from our afore-mentioned trip to Stuart's Farm, and I knew I couldn't eat them all before they went bad. So, instead of letting them go to waste, I made apple sauce for the first time. It was so easy, and it tastes delicious!

I peeled and thinly sliced 8 apples and threw them into the slow cooker with a half cup of water. After about six and a half hours of cooking on low, they were nothing but mush, just the way apple sauce should be. At that point I added 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar and a sprinkling each of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. I let it cook for another half hour on low, and shazam! Spiced apple sauce!

Mom's Dutch Apple Pie

Right before Laura posted that apple pies would be October's Have the Cake challenge, Todd and I had planned an apple-picking outing. We were headed to Stuart's Farm, a family fruit farm an hour or so outside of NYC with Dylan and Sofia, as well as Dylan's friend and his friend's dad and sister.

The farm has nine varieties of apples, three or four of which can be seen in this picture. I mixed and matched them for my pie, trying for a nice combo of sweetness and tartness.



I 've been eating and loving my mom's dutch apple pie my whole life, and despite getting into baking the last few years, I had never tried to make it on my own. This seemed like the perfect time! My mom sent me the recipe for the filling and the crust that both she and my Nana used whenever they were making one from scratch. I like the family history aspect of being at least the third generation to use a recipe. :)

Mom's found over the years that the pie gets too soggy if you don't let the apples sit in their sugary goodness for a while before loading into the crust. After sitting for a while, just enough of the apple juice comes out to save you from a soggy bottom. So I started there. Here's the first of my slied apples in the sugar mix.


I moved on to the crust next. I struggled a little bit rolling it out, as it crumbled a little around the edges. Mom warned me that the trick with this crust was to put all the ingredients in the freezer before using them. Apparently making them ice-cold saves the crumbling. I did that with everything but the milk. Our freezer was just too full for me to find a way to get it all in there. I think if I'd really followed Mom's directions, instead of just 3/4 of them, it would have been even easier. I had to work a little harder my way, but in the end the crust was rolled out well enough and tasted good to boot, so I'll take it.

So here is the final product, complete with hand-picked apples, homemade crust, and yummy sugary/buttery crumbles on top. We ate it that night with whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream. Both Todd and Dylan went for seconds, so it's safe to say that it was a hit!

Lovely Weekend

I'm just coming off a really nice weekend, and I wish I had one more day before the week started up again. Friday night after work I met Todd and Dylan for dinner around Union Square. We ate fully healthy vegetarian fare, and then counteracted every bite with a trip to Veneiro's. So good! If we lived closer, I'd have cannolis everyday.

Treats in tow, we made our way to the movies to watch Nine. I hadn't expected the movie to be as dark as it was. Afterward, Todd and I talked about the ending and how we both thought it was heading someplace different — and better. It had the feeling of an ending-by-committee. I think our ideas would have made for a more original movie that left viewers with much more to think about after the credits rolled. Also, did you ever have a writing teacher tell you that if your story includes a shotgun mounted on the wall, the gun has to go off at some point in the story? The idea, of course, is that if you give a detail like that, it should be there for a reason. Well, Nine had a shotgun on the wall and it never went off. Again, I think the detail had a purpose in an earlier version and got workshopped out to make people happy. I liked the movie, but I think anyone interested is just as well served waiting for the DVD.

Saturday the three of us went to a newly found brunch place in Harlem. It was really good and has a nice vibe. It's the kind of place where you could bring a book or laptop and settle in for a few hours, I think. Dylan went off to a friend's birthday shortly after brunch, and I requested that Todd and I spend the afternoon with a bottle of wine and a viewing of the latest Project Runway. He indulged me, and it was just what I needed. I've been feeling pretty stressed out lately, and the laziness and relaxation of our afternoon was perfect. We tried to go shoe shopping after PR, but we got sidelined by the new Whole Foods in our neighborhood and did grocery shopping instead. The evening ended with sushi in bed while we watched District 9. It was good, but very different and less political than I expected.

And yesterday started out with hours of homework (boo) followed by brunch downtown with Ben and Lorraina. Apologies in advance to Ben if you read this: I sometimes get a little negative about all the time I have to devote to school and the way it limits the fun things I can do. I know that going to school is an enormous opportunity, but it's still hard not to feel disappointed about all the social things I miss. Ben got his MBA a year ago and now has a job that would make me want to jump out a window. I can't believe the hours he works, the travel he has to do, and the way his employers expect him to be available at their whim. On the subway I had a moment of schedenfreude and said to Todd, "If anything can make me feel better about my situation, it's brunch with Ben!" Brunch was wonderful, and not because someone else's schedule sucks harder than mine. Instead, it was just a treat to catch up with friends I don't see often enough.

Todd and I did shoe shopping along 8th Street after we ate, and I came home with two new pairs of boots. Hooray! Poor Todd got no shoes and instead luggeed my boxes. He's the sweetest.

Bread Pudding Success

I tried out my super simple bread pudding recipe tonight, and it was a hit! It was so quick and easy to put together, and Todd and I both really liked it. Todd especially loved it, which is surprising given that there isn't a lick of chocolate in it.

Below is the recipe as it stands. I think it'd be an easy one to change up, and I can imagine a cheesy savory version making a good breakfast.

INGREDIENTS

• 6 slices day-old bread (I used potato bread)
  
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups milk
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Break bread into small pieces into an 8 inch square baking pan. Drizzle melted butter or margarine over bread. If desired, sprinkle with raisins.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. Beat until well mixed. Pour over bread, and lightly push down with a fork until bread is covered and soaking up the egg mixture.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly tapped.

Bread Pudding

Any big bread pudding fans out there? I just read a recipe that sounded stupidly simple to make, and I’m thinking of trying it out this weekend. I really need to stop with the baking if I ever want to lose weight. The problem is that the baking and eating is so much more fun than trying to fit into skinny jeans.

I think that next week we'll find out what Dorrie has in store for us on Have the Cake, and I'm pretty sure it's not bread pudding. I could wait and get my baking fix with whatever she's planning, but there are no guarantees that I'll take that moderate approach.

I think I ate a bug

How gross is that? Last night I was reading while Todd was getting ready for bed. I did what I often do and drifted off with the book next to me, waking up again when Todd came into the room. We were chatting about how he was feeling achy, when all of a sudden I made the whole night revolve around me. Nice right? He’s sore and uncomfortable and I talk about myself. :)

Seriously, though, my top lip was feeling all tingly and swelling up; I could feel it getting bigger and bigger as we were talking. I thought at first it could be a food allergy, but I hadn’t eaten anything in hours, and it was really isolated to just the left side of my top lip. I wouldn’t expect a food allergy to be that localized.

After some research, all signs pointed to an insect bite or sting. Which means that some creepy crawly was creeping and crawling across my face. Gross! And bit or stung my lip. GROSS! The swelling/tingling has pretty much gone away, but now I’m paranoid and itchy, thinking that any slight breeze is really another bug on me.

Peanut Buttery Goodness

In just a few hours mom will be picking me up and together we’ll make the drive to Veronica and Mike’s house in Massachusetts. Naturally, I didn’t want to arrive empty handed, so I used this as another baking excuse. Yes, I still remember the sugar overload that Sofia’s birthday cake brought on, and yes, I still have half a carrot cake in the fridge. None of that stopped me, though, and how could it when I found a recipe for peanut butter cup–engulfing peanut butter cookies? Seriously: yum.

More Pics

As promised, here are more photos documenting the fun Todd and I had at Rena's. She was such a good host, and I can't wait to go back again next time!

Plums! As soon as we arrived Rena whisked us to this orchard. Here we're standing amongst the blueberries holding up our supply of just-picked plums.

Adventures in pasta making begin! Todd did all the hard work, and I didn't envy him. We made him knead the pasta dough for ages.

Noodles! It was so satisfying to see these come together.

Loving life, about to enjoy our feast of fresh pasta, corn on the cob, and swiss chard.

Have the Cake: Carrot Cake

You've heard the story from Rena already, but I'm here to tell you that August's Have the Cake carrot cake was pretty easy to make and tasted great! The most challenging part from my perspective was mixing the date paste and melted butter. I thought I was going to smoosh and stir forever. It took ages before I even saw progress and had my doubts about the ability to get these two ingredients combined. Obviously in the end those, and all the other ingredients, came together.

The cake baked for a little longer than we originally put it in for. We weren't quite sure how long it would take, so we underestimated and then checked it every ten minutes or so. In the end, I think it was about 55 minutes before our toothpick came out clean.

It smelled so good when it came out that we teased that we'd have to put it up out of reach of Austin, otherwise she wouldn't be able to resist it while we were out getting lunch. In the end it was Todd, Rena, and me who couldn't resist. Even after a big burrito lunch, we each held out about five minutes before having a slice.

The first Have the Cake month was a roaring success!

Reasons to Celebrate

Reasons to celebrate are there, if we only look for them. Todd and I treated ourselves to a really wonderful, delicious, indulgent dinner at Morimoto on Friday night. We made the reservation several weeks ago when I had just finished my summer class and used it as an excuse for the date. When Friday came, I dressed up, spent the day looking forward to our evening together, and generally had a more giddy energy than I typically do.

Throughout the night we raised our glasses of sake and toasted many things: the successful completion of my summer course, Todd's new job, an achievement at work, anything and everything. The lesson for me is that there are reasons to celebrate if you're looking for them. It was so much fun to be so positive, spend the evening with Todd, and enjoy some really, really, really good food together.

Visiting & Eating...

... eating and visiting. That's what Todd and I did in the Berkshires this weekend. We arrived in Rena's neck of the woods around 10:00 a.m. on Saturday and instantly brought on the food by going for some anti-climactic berry picking. I had envisioned picking of epic proportions. Instead, we picked two bags of plums in about seven minutes, looked at the blueberries and decided they were over priced, and high-tailed it out of there. If we were at the orchard for half an hour, it was a lot. And thus began two days of non-stop cooking and consumption, including all of us popping our pasta-making cherries together, making blueberry pancakes, and baking the first Have the Cake cake. Photo documentation of much of this excitement will follow after I snag the photos from Todd's computer.

Generally speaking, Rena completely indulged my romanticized vision of life outside NYC. Great Barrington is a great town and has so many adorable shops and homes that Todd suggested I put a moratorium on the word "cute." We fell in love with the area so quickly and so completely that while Rena and I caught up over a scoop of SoCo Creamery dirty chocolate ice cream (side note: YUM), Todd took his cup across the street to a local real estate agent, made a connection, and found us a house to consider buying. Ultimately, the house wasn't for us for so many reasons, but we were so happy in the Berkshires that we were seriously day dreaming about a home there!

The best thing, which probably goes without saying, was getting two full days to catch up with Rena. And that's high praise given how good everything was!

Perspective

Just to give you all a better sense where I was coming from in terms of my cake decorating expectations, here are a few of the birthday cakes my mom made for my sisters and me as we were growing up. I think one must have been for my dad, too... I don't remember getting a playboy bunny cake in elementary school! Anyway, you can now see that my attempts paled in comparison.

Bake-A-Rella

You could say that yesterday was spent in rehearsal mode for Have the Cake. Today is Sofia’s birthday, and with Todd’s help I whipped up about 50 cupcakes and a cake. The experience was not quite as smooth as I would have hoped:

The first six vanilla cupcakes look like exactly what they are because I forgot to add the food coloring to make them pink. After adding the coloring for the rest, the batter looked pinkalicious, but when the finished products came out of the oven they were back to their original vanilla appearance again. I didn’t break one open to see if it was pink inside, so I’m just hoping they are.

I had grand plans for all the fancy-pants ways I was going to decorate everything, but hit a couple of roadblocks. I made homemade icing using a recipe I’ve never worked with before and learned rather quickly that there was a small window of opportunity where the icing was soft enough to actually squeeze out of the piping bag but not so soft that it instantly became an ugly, messy blob. Also, in a perfect you-get-what-you-pay-for life lesson, it turns out my Target-purchased, four-dollar cake decorating kit was a nightmare. The bags that came with the kit were impossible to use, and Todd had to make an emergency run to the corner store for some gallon ziplock bags so we could get all Martha Stewart on its ass and improvise a work around.

In the midst of this I decided that five year olds don’t care about how lovely a cupcake is to behold as long as there is plenty of sugar involved. So many of the camp-bound cupcakes are simply slathered with icing and topped with sprinkles. I suspect this will go over just fine.

Sofia and Dylan were at our place when it came time to decorate the cake, and Sofia joined in to help. I knew it would be more fun with her involved, and in some ways it took the pressure off. On my own, I’d have tried to create a beautiful, sassy yet sophisticated cake, and I probably would never have been satisfied with what I created. Once she began art directing, though, my vision went out the window, and the final product has, well, let’s call it a five-year-old sensibility. There’s a lot happening, and Sofia was creative enough to think of a way to use just about every last drop of icing. I was ready to quit several elements before we did, but she felt that as long as there was icing in the piping bag we had an obligation to find a place for it on the cake. You won’t find this design in any bakeries, but she seemed happy and that’s what it’s all about.

Growing up, my Mom made some of the most amazing birthday cakes I’ve ever seen. Working at Ben & Jerry’s in high school I became a pretty good cake decorator in my own right. I went into this thinking that I’d do great: it was in my genes, and I have experience, after all. I learned quickly that I’m missing some key tools that would make it much easier, and I’m quite out of practice.

One of the prettier cupcakes

Cupcakes as far as the eye can see

Sofia's birthday cake

My apprentice with her creation

Bake One, Bake All

Hello, fellow cake lovers. My friend Rena has started a monthly baking club titled “Have the Cake.” I’ve joined, and you should, too.

Each month, one person from the group picks a recipe (something they’ve never tried before) for a cake, cookie, cracker, pie, bar, biscuit, brownie, etc. for the group to try. Individual bakers are encouraged to make it their own and put their own spin on it however they’d like. Since I’d prefer to not blow up like Violet Beauregarde, my spin will be trying all those low-fat tricks like using apple sauce instead of oil. To that end, if anyone knows other low-fat tricks, please send them my way. :)

Each person has the entire month to try the recipe. Once done, bakers should post photos and thoughts on their baking experience on their blog and cross post them on Have the Cake. If you don’t have your own blog, posting only on Have the Cake is fine, too.

I know a lot of you are bakers in your own right, and it’d be fun to share this experience. Leave a comment here or email me directly if you’d like to join in the pastry fun.

Loving Seeing Shannon

Shannon had a performance this past weekend at a show up in Connecticut, and since NYC is just a hop, skip, and a jump away, I was lucky enough to get some time with her, too. We had a fabulous dinner at Tartine in the village with Todd and a friend, and then the four of us visited Fat Cat, a bar downtown that I love. Todd discovered it a while ago, but this was my first time there. The subterranean bar is large and filled with all manner of games. Booths at the front have chess and scrabble; further back are pool tables, ping pong tables, a table version of bocce ball, and more. We staked out a spot at an open foosball table, where Shannon and I quickly proved that enthusiasm for the game is not synonymous with talent. Luckily we were mostly in it for the fun and not the competition. Oh, and this bar also has live jazz. I loved it.

The next day Shannon and I indulged in a bagel breakfast at Absolute (Virginia apparently only offers Dunkin’ Donuts bagels and the like, which is not the same as a proper New York bagel), did a Wii workout, lunched with Todd, and then wandered the city looking at bric-a-brac, beautiful dresses we couldn’t afford, and books we had no time to read (my currently to-be-read pile hovers around 80 books).

We feasted on home made vegetarian chili that night while watching Man Vs. Food, a show all about a normal guy who tries to eat a LOT and which instantly made me feel better about my big bowl of chili. After that, Shannon, Dylan, and I were off to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’ll post a full write-up of my thoughts on the movie soon, but will say now that I’d like to reread the latter half of the series. Books one through four I’ve read multiple times each and know very well. Five, six, and seven are less embedded in my memory, though, and deserve a reread. Of course, see above for the size of my to-be-read pile, and you can imagine how soon that will happen!

Shannon was off early on Saturday morning for Connecticut, but I did get a few more hours with her last night when she passed through NYC again before heading back below the Mason-Dixon line.