pumpkin + oatmeal + chocolate chips = most amazing cookies ever

And they’re practically health food: whole wheat flour, Splenda, and applesauce!

Our Halloween weekend was pretty low-key. We kept it quiet Friday night by getting pizza at Fornino and watching Blood Diamond, the Netflix movie that had been sitting on our coffee table for a while.

Saturday was weirdly warm, so we wandered around outside for a while. We had an indulgent lunch at Brasserie les Halles featuring the best French onion soup that has ever existed, and we got some 50% off Halloween costumes at K-Mart. (I was a “gothic princess” and Marc was an “evil jester.” They were definitely high quality, let me tell you.) We lined up along Sixth Ave. to watch the Village Halloween Parade, which was amazing. I love Halloween and I love parades, so I might be biased, but, seriously, it was neat. There were these huge puppet-type things that swooped and soared over the crowd, and there were really creative costumes on display. Unfortunately, it started to rain, and we got drenched not only from the rain proper but from the rain cascading off other people’s umbrellas. We cut out just before the parade was over to head home, dry out, order in some sub-par Vietnamese food, and watch the Yankees.

On Sunday, we watched the New York Marathon in the morning and the Yankees in the evening. I am completely blown away by elite marathon runners. It is one of my life goals to run a marathon — I had signed up for the 2009 Chicago Marathon, but I quickly realized that my knees would need much more training time than I had allotted — and I can barely imagine finishing a marathon, let alone what it would be like to run it in 2 and a half hours.

I really wanted a baked potato for dinner tonight, and I realized that I don’t really know how to bake a potato. I mean, I have the general idea: wash potato, poke potato with fork, put potato in oven. But how hot should the oven be? How long should the potato remain in the oven? I googled “how to bake a potato,” and, lo and behold, there is actually a website called howtobakeapotato.com. Who knew?

I used to dread flying Southwest. I really, really hated the open seating policy. The gate was always a madhouse, and I resented having to stand in line. (Lines really raise my anxiety level.) Plus, I would rather have to sit next to a random stranger than a stranger who thought, hmm, I’d like to sit next to HER — that’s how you end up sitting next to strangers who use the in-flight time to try to bring you to Jesus. Accordingly, I avoided Southwest as much as possible.

Now that airlines charge for checked bags, you pretty much have to queue up with any airline to make sure that you can claim some overhead space. Interestingly, Southwest is one of the few airlines that you don’t run into the huge cluster at the gate these days: not only has Southwest introduced a numbering system that makes the open seating policy infinitely more orderly, Southwest doesn’t charge for checked bags. In an added perk, Southwest will give you a snack!

I flew from LaGuardia (my least favorite place on earth) to Midway last night, and Southwest offered the cheapest last minute flight. As luck would have it, there was a small family seated behind me that had not one, but two screaming children. Having been on more flights with noisy babies than not lately, I wish babies were prohibited from flying. I realize babies have to get places too, but there is nothing worse than paying a couple hundred dollars to be trapped in a small environment with a shrill banshee for a few hours.

I wasn’t planning on having a drink on the flight but, by the time the guy came around to take orders and the baby had been wailing non-stop and the older child had been emitting periodic, piercing shrieks, I changed my mind. I ordered the merlot, and he passed me a filled-to-the-brim cup. When I tried to pay him for it, he gave me an apologetic shrug in the children’s direction and told me it was on them. So thumbs up, Southwest. Thanks for recognizing that a little wine can be all the difference when there’s a baby on board.

We had a lazy weekend … but, despite that, I still somehow didn’t find the time to update the blog. Here are the highlights:

Friday: We decided to try our luck at Cafe Condesa, a restaurant that we have been trying to eat at for months. The place is so tiny — honestly, it might be the size of our studio, and that includes the kitchen — that it’s virtually impossible to get a table unless you’re there incredibly early or ready to wait for a long time. As we are usually neither, we had always sought out alternatives. On Friday, however, the hostess told us we were the first on the wait list and that it would be 20-30 minutes. We gave her our phone number and headed down the street to Panca for Peruvian drinks. (I skipped the Peruvian drinks in favor of the classic martini.¹) At least forty-five minutes later, when we still hadn’t received a phone call, we headed back to the restaurant. Apparently, there were some “lingerers,” and we waited outside for probably another thirty minutes. We finally got to eat … and it was definitely worth the wait.² We closed out our night at Johnny’s Bar, which is a much more satisfying dive bar than the Mars Bar.

Saturday: Saturday morning got off to a rough start. I was heading to a writers’ group meeting down on Wall Street, and it started raining after I left without an umbrella. I stopped into my neighborhood bagel place to get a bagel and coffee, and they wrapped up the coffee and put it in the bag with the bagel. I took great care to carry the coffee upright, but it was all in vain because there was a hole in the cup. I didn’t realize, of course, until I was on the A and the girl across from me kept staring at my bag. I looked over and saw that it was filling with coffee. I managed to rescue my bagel, but the coffee was a loss. The rest of the day was pretty lazy, and included dual Asian meals: Hong Kong Station for lunch and An Nhau, this new Vietnamese place in Brooklyn, for dinner.

Sunday: We started Sunday on a domestic note: we made buttermilk pancakes from scratch. Despite the sugar and butter in the recipe, they were deceptively healthy-tasting because we used whole wheat flour.³ We then spent the afternoon wandering around Manhattan with Marc’s new camera, starting in our neighborhood and making our way up to Times Square. My favorite part was getting hot apple cider at the Mad. Sq. Mark’t — it was the perfect fall activity on a beautiful fall day.

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¹ I had been thinking about a martini earlier in the afternoon, and, while we have the gin, the vermouth, the martini shaker, and the martini glasses, we lack the ice. We do have an ice tray — but I currently have it filled with tablespoons of tomato paste.
² I linked to my Yelp review. FYI.
³ At least we used white whole wheat. I don’t have all-purpose flour in the cupboard, but I do have both white whole wheat and whole wheat.