From Market to Table: Social Sunday

During the years that I worked on my book, and before that my graduate thesis, I logged a lot of sunny days in front of the computer, with R. in the next room doing the same. ("Are you typing an email?" I'd call out hopefully, hearing his keyboard suddenly clicking away at length, and loathing my own plodding, one-painful-word-at-a-time style.) Writing is a time-inefficient craft at which one must slog and slog away, and it's too easy to feel endlessly behind — behind one's peers, behind one's goals for oneself — and so offer to the writing gods whole weekends and the few hours during which we're not each obligated to write the sorts of things that pay the bills but smother the soul.

Life, however, ticks away in the background. The more time we spend facing computers, the less time we spend enjoying friends, enjoying life, and so a better balance was in order and a New Year's resolution was made: more time dedicated to friends. And so Social Sundays were born.

Today's took the form of a brunch, as its catalyst was an espresso taste-off. (The two might seems a natural fit, but you'd be surprised... The last time we tried this was at 8 p.m. on a Sunday. I was the only one who slept that night.) In addition to old and new friends, today's Social Sunday featured French toast made with eggs and milk from yesterday's market, a frittata from greenmarket eggs, tomatoes and basil, and a watermelon that when sliced open revealed itself to be yellow.*

Viva la Social Sunday!







































































































* The second big surprise of the day was that our winner — beating out beans from Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Four Barrel, and El Beit (which was delicious and placed second) — was the tiny Rojo's Roastery from Hopewell, N.J. Which makes a gal newly proud to hail from the Garden State.