arcade bakery - a love letter (and the story of a relationship).

This week I realized that my relationship with Tyler has been defined by croissants. 

A month into us dating and a couple of weeks after we arrived back to the states from studying abroad in Europe,  Tyler showed up at my dorm room with a French breakfast in bed. Croissants he had gotten after walking a mile to his car and then driving to Wilmington to find the best version available to us in Delaware. There was butter and jam.  I think coffee too.   To this day it remains one my favorite memories (and probably the single most romantic thing he’s ever done - we peaked early!). 

When we moved in together, Saturday mornings were reserved for breakfast together.  For over a decade it's been the same breakfast.  Scrambled eggs with cheese and lots of black pepper.  Toast with butter and jam.  Coffee with milk and sugar. In the summer there may be berries or sliced peaches.  In the winter there could be grapefruit or oranges.  After we finish our eggs, we share a  chocolate almond croissant.

I use the term share loosely because he eats the edges and saves me the center.  The piece with more chocolate and more almond.  Love is giving the person the better piece because you know it means more to them. 

Some people may find the consistency and routine of this odd.  I find it comfortable.  I like having something to always look forward to.  It's a standing date.  It's something I can rely on in a world where everything always feels like it's moving.  

Since the first croissant there have been countless others.  There was the croissant we shared the first weekend we spent in our new apartment after the hurricane.  There was the one we ate after we got engaged on a snowy morning in December while we watched Pitch Perfect.  There were croissants eaten in AirBnB's in Seattle, Washington and in cars while driving home from Maine.     

But, for almost 5 years, our relationship has been defined by a very specific chocolate almond croissant from Arcade Bakery. 

Arcade Bakery is perfect. It's a bakery that feels like a hidden secret but not in a pretentious way.  Instead it comes across as a gem you just stumbled across in the middle of NYC.  It's in the lobby of an office building and you would never know it was there unless you were looking for it or actually stopped to smell the scent of fresh baked bread and asked yourself where its coming from.   You can find me there once a week.  Buying baguettes and loaves of bread and cinnamon sugar brioche and chocolate almond croissants for our Saturday morning breakfast dates.    

The first time we ever shared an Arcade Bakery croissant was on the morning of our wedding.  I couldn't imagine breaking our routine on our wedding day.  Marriage is about the things you love.  The person you love.  I love Saturday morning breakfasts with Tyler.  I wanted to start our marriage that way.

Since then, they've been a constant.  You can almost always find one or two of them in our freezer.  I have the tendency to buy them in multiples just in case I can't get there one week.   Is this something an insane person does?  Probably.  (I've never said I wasn't crazy.)   We reheat them in the oven, wrapped in tinfoil, for about 10 minutes.  They emerge as if they have been freshly baked.   They are prefect.  

On Friday August 2nd, Arcade Bakery closes.  The owner, Rodger, has rheumatoid arthritis and it's too painful for him to bake bread.  I keep thinking about how cruel life can be.   I keep thinking about his this feels like the end of an era. 

I'm currently on what I am referring to as a reunion tour with them.  Finding every opportunity to go there before it closes.  I feel such a visceral reaction to this bakery in the lobby of an office building.  It's been such a part of my life.  It was constant.  It was happiness.   In a lot of ways it's defined my marriage.  Should food define a marriage?  Why not.  Food is a way to connect people. 

Can love exist between the flaky layers of a chocolate almond croissant?  I think it can.  For me it has.   I'm currently stockpiling our freezer so we have what I am now referring to as "the croissant" for at least a couple of more weeks.  I will be saving the last one for our 5 year wedding anniversary.  You take your year old cake.  I'll take the my months old croissant.   

Last night Tyler asked me what's next.   I don't know.  Maybe it's time we find something new.  Doughnuts?  Chocolate rugelach?  Regular chocolate croissants?  At this moment, nothing else feels quite right.   Perhaps each week is a grab bag and we constantly try new things until we settle on a favorite.  He suggested that maybe I could turn this into a new blog series - what comes after a perfect chocolate croissant?  

Trying new things with him wouldn't be the worst idea.  Maybe we can start creating a new set of memories.  Something else I can love so deeply that I always want to return to it week after week.  

c+t buy a house in jc - part 2 - the renovations never end.

Since the day we closed (which is unbelievably almost 2 months ago), Tyler and I have spent what feels like every waking moment working on our apartment.   It's been a lot of non-stop work.   

I'm so over it.   

I mentioned in my last post that home renovations don't agree with my personality.  I'm a get it done, wrap it up, make everything look pretty as soon as possible kind of person.   I want things done now and I'm married to a person who is perfectly happy with manana (i.e. tomorrow).   It's been an utter challenge working so closely with something who is equally vested in the project but thinks, acts, and works completely different then me.  Get two people together that both think their way is right and in the words of Tyler's wedding vows, fireworks are bound to fly.  

He wasn't kidding.   

But I like to think for all the challenges our personalities bring to the table, we truly in every sense of the word balance each other out.  I light a fire under his butt, he reminds me it's a marathon not a sprint. It's not always easy, but we make it work.   


As I write this, and look back at pictures, I realize we've accomplished a lot in 2 months.  For two people who have never owned a home and never handled a renovation we are getting things done. Slower then I may like (and a lot of times two steps forward and one step back), but things are happening.   I wont lie that I continue to ask myself why I couldn't be happy just moving in not doing any work.  This would have been the significantly easier (and vastly cheaper) option. But we are not that kind of people.  We like fixing things and making them our own and what's the point of a house if you aren't going to make it your home?   

Which leads me to all that has happened in the past two months.  Brand spanking new floors that match through the whole apartment!  A two-tone painted living room and bedroom.  A lime-washed brick wall and open shelves that Tyler built himself.  Fancy new windows were installed that open with the greatest of ease.  I painted kitchen cabinets and marble counters were installed.   We have brand new lights (including a dreamy long arm sconce) that totally change the look and feel of the place.  I got wallpaper on a wall and my god is it beautiful.   I've spent more time on Craigslist, Etsy, and Ebay then I care to reveal but it's a rabbit hole.   

The list of things to still tackle remains insanely long but we are slowly but surely checking things off and making progress.   Much more to come.   Wish us luck.     

(Also, Jackson, as you can see from these pictures, isn't much help but he does provide an endless number of kisses which is appreciated.)   

c+t buy an apartment - part 1 - demo.

So.  

We bought an apartment.  

We also bought a dining room table immediately after buying the apartment because I found the one I've wanted forever for a steal on Craigslist.  So we closed, we rented a U-Haul and we bought a table.  

It's been a big couple of weeks.  

Other big things that have happened?  We've ripped out the wood floors and smashed the kitchen tile into a million pieces.  I ripped the sheetrock off one of the walls in the kitchen to expose the brick and researched a lot of different ways to paint the brick wall (white wash!  lime!).  We picked out kitchen counters! We also hired a big truck to take away all of the demo stuff which was essentially a free crossfit workout.   

To say this has been a learning experience would be a bit of an understatement.   I feel like I've deep-dived into a world where everything is a new and there are so many things to keep track of.   My head is constantly spinning, my lists grow longer by the day, the options are endless. 

But now that demo is done, we can focus on putting everything back together.  This whole thing feels a little like Humpty-Dumpty and it has me questioning our sanity.  But, I keep visualizing the finished product (and chanting “Kitchen of my Dreams, Kitchen of my Dreams”) and that helps a lot.  

I think the hardest part for both Tyler and I is that it feels as if this will never end and that there isn't a break at all.  The past two-weeks have been go-go-go - it's all we talk about, it's all we think about, we allocate almost all our free time to working on it.  I know at some point things will slow down and that this is temporary, but it's hard because it essentially feels like a second job.  But for all the work, there are moments of fun and there are moments when I realize we are building a home that is us.  And that's a pretty exciting thing.         

drum roll...

I've been making an effort to clean out the kitchen cabinets because we bought a house (OK an apartment)! Not officially (yet) but half our life savings is sitting in an escrow account, we have a loan commitment, and we found a contractor to help us with a little renovation. It's weird, strange, and exciting how everything is coming along.  

Our weekends have evolved.  We've been taking road trips to antique filled towns, paint shops, and Home Depot.  On Sunday I spent a couple of hours Mr. Cleaning the crap out of two vintage Bertoia for Knoll chairs that now look brand new (Mr. Clean magic erasers are actually magically). I've been dreaming on tulip tables and gold wallpaper and tile.   It's overwhelming, fun, and an incredible learning experience.    

I'm fortunate that I have a sister who is an interior designer with the most excellent taste and access to all sorts of wonderful things.  Faucets in brass, cement bathroom tiles, fabrics that look like fluffy sheep, the list goes on. She's been great at helping my hone in on a vision and figure out how to optimize the space so it looks and feels the best.   And I'm hoping Mama Bear will give me two of her paintings (that I LOVE).  I keep dreaming about them on the wall.   I have a vision in my head and it looks so good.     

But the best part of all of this is building a home with Tyler and our pup.  Something that feels adultish with a dash of whimsy.   Tyler is really good at envisioning things, re-purposing things, and figuring out how to maximize what we already have.   He brings balance to the situation and (sometimes) a little balance is good.   

So in addition to food, I'm going to use this space to talk about renovations, the merits of honed vs. polished marble, how to find a good wallpaper installer, and so many other things.  It's going to be fun and probably a little messy, but we're excited.   Let the adventure begin.