There are things better than butter, if you can imagine

I have really been a bit of foodie lately, and because that’s not normally me (hello, plain scrambled eggs) I’m going to blame it all on one brunch I had a week and a half ago. I don’t know if was because I was traveling, but we all know food is better then, right?  I mean, come on, I don’t really care for turkey sandwiches at home but put me in some far-off place where there are pretty things to see and wonderful people and excitement and that sandwich goes from meat on bread to oh be still my heart, I now live for this meal.

My trip to New York (this is the last look-at-my-vacation-slide-show-y’all post, I promise) was planned in all of about one hour and thought up merely an hour before that. The trip itself was also quick, and for that I’m the most sorry because there are things I would have liked to have done, and people I would have liked to have met (like you and you) and talked men or running with, but I was there something like forty-five hours. No where near enough.

I did get to one blogger meet-up, though, and I’m so very grateful for it!  You see, of all the people I’ve met from the internet (gee, that sounds interesting doesn’t it? Stories for other days, I tell you!) I have never met someone from this little corner. I’ve become very close with a lot of you, discussing break-ups and weddings and colonoscopy procedures, and yet, we’ve never looked each other in the eye.  While I realize this is more common than I’m probably giving it credit for, it’s still a really amazing phenomenon to me.

I’m not really sure how long ago it was, or what sparked my interest but sometime in the last year or so, I started reading a blog called As I Was Saying written by Dingo. She talked about running, yes, and this very well might have been what sparked my interest, but to be honest there are a thousand million blogs that talk about running now, so for me to have stuck around, there was obviously more to it.  First, Dingo is hilarious.  I strive to one day have that kind of wit, I tell you. Not to mention the Photoshop skills.  (By the way, Dingo, we need to have a conversation about that.  I have some people I need to frame coerce kindly ask to do what I want.)

It worked out that Dingo and I emailed one another at just the right time and we were able to schedule a Sunday brunch. I felt so uptown already. (We don’t do a lot of brunching around these parts, which is a damn shame.)

We met at a place on the Upper West Side called Good Enough to Eat, and oh, daddy, was it. Or at least it was to me, and judging by the never-ending line outside, I’ve been brainwashed with the best of ‘em.

We had waffles:

Pancakes:

And, hold me, pumpkin french toast:

And as you might notice on all the plates, there was a little cup of butter. Except instead of ordinary butter, or even whipped butter, it was strawberry butter. I don’t know why I was so enthralled by this, or why I apparently still am, but my gosh, people, strawberry butter on pumpkin french toast, topped with a pear compote and maple syrup is a very perfect meal.  If there was only one brunch left in my lifetime, I’m glad it was that one.

But more than that, it was such a cool experience meeting Dingo. She’s even more interesting and funny and outgoing than I’d imagined and even laughed it off when I complained about my flat, flat humidity-laden hair. (Yes, I know it was just March and it gets so much more humid than that in New York, but I live in a desert, my hair is used to conducting electricity on a daily basis!) I feel like I should return again soon just so we have more time to talk. It’s fun to make a connection with someone in person after a year of reading their blog and then find out that hey, you really do get along with them. I’d even venture to say, and this is pretty huge, that it’s better than strawberry butter.