Community Food and Juice, 2893 Broadway, Manhattan

It has been a while since we saw our friends Anne and Eric and their son Julian, but Pat and I joined them for an enjoyable brunch in Morningside, at Community Food and Juice, whose sister restaurant (in the East Village?) apparently always has lines out the door. We were seated right away at CFJ, and Pat and I both enjoyed pancakes (banana walnut and blueberry, respectively) with the most divine maple butter syrup. It was like peace and love in syrup form (or is all my recent yoga having an effect on me?).

Eric and Anne had told us at our last get-together that they knew of a bakery with cookies that would change our lives, and I insisted I was not leaving the Upper West Side without one today. And thus it was that we found ourselves at Levain Bakery, 167 W. 74th St. Pat and I got three of the hulking, $4 cookies and shared them at home. They are browned and slightly crispy on the outside, and the mounded innards are barely cooked and gooey. My life has been changed; what can I say?

2 West Restaurant, 2 West St., Manhattan

Pat has dinner occasionally with a consultant with whom he works, Dan, and Dan was kind enough to invite me to join them this week. 2 West is in the Ritz-Carlton where Dan stays in Battery Park City. I have run and walked past this Ritz-Carlton a million times, and never realized it was a hotel. This struck me as interesting at the time, although as I think about it now, it seems sort of irrelevant, since who do I know who can afford to stay in the Ritz, even when they're traveling on their company's dime? Maybe someday I'll run in those circles!

I had a good lobster bisque, but was less pleased by my entree, which was salmon with caramelized red onions and roasted fingerling potatoes. The salmon needed something to cut its richness, but the onions and potatoes weren't really appealing. I put the leftover salmon and onions in wrap the next day with spinach and cream cheese, however, and it was nice.

Cookshop, 156 10th Ave., Manhattan

I think this blog has exactly one reader, my husband Pat (thanks for your loyal following, sweetie!). So I'm not really worried that anyone who should hear this sort of thing from me in person will find out from the blog that I am 14 weeks pregnant.

It really needed to be said on the blog, because it is a big reason that the writer of a blog that is primarily about restaurants has visited so few restaurants lately. Food and I have developed a new, frequently contentious relationship since early August. I have to think about food all day long, because an empty stomach is a trigger to throw up. Planning and eating food all day is very tiresome. And while it's starting to get better with the end of the first trimester, a lot of foods are/were no longer appealing. For a while I was subsisting on starches, desserts, and some seafood, and hoping my embryo/fetus was getting by on the vitamins I've been taking to compensate.

All this to say, eating became a chore, and hence the lack of posts in the last couple months (additionally, I have traveled a lot, which I also don't recommend doing while under the influence of a fetus).

Anyway, I still manage to throw on the one pair of jeans that still zips up and get out every now and then, and so Pat and I went to Cookshop in Chelsea with our friends Stephanie and Graham one night a week or so ago. We had a mushroom pizza appetizer that was remarkably good, and I had a steak (flank? I can't remember) that was not so good - too many unchewable strings that are awkward to deal with in public (I enjoyed the leftovers better the next day, when no one was around to watch me wrestling with them).

Num Pang Sandwich Shop, 140 East 41st St., Manhattan

I have started taking yoga classes for the first time ever. I got a Groupon for $39 for unlimited classes 7 days a week, and for an unemployed person, this is a hell of a bargain. In the first five days I have been to four classes! I like it. I have always liked stretching and it is very stretching-focused. Probably if I was doing it right, it would be more strength-focused, too. And it is more spiritual than anything I have attempted since religion. There are several minutes at the end of every class where you're just supposed to lie there in the dark (they dim the lights) and think about your connectedness to the earth and the energy in your body and whatnot. Even better, the instructor goes around with lavender-scented oil on her hands and gives your temples and forehead a micro-massage during this quiet time...that is ecstasy. Anyway I am sure the rest of the 60 minutes I look like an idiot because I am swiveling my head around to see how everyone else does the poses, and then I am probably doing the poses wrong. But who cares?

The yoga studio is in east midtown, close to the East River. I get off the subway at Grand Central and between there and the studio I spotted Num Pang Sandwich Shop, with a promising line of customers. It is a to-go place. I went after class last night, and ordered the coconut shrimp sandwich. It was wonderful! It was similar to what I got from Bao Noodles a while back, albeit more expensive ($7.75). I think this is Vietnamese food, yes? I want more of these sandwiches.

Four Seasons Thai Restaurant, 612 Amsterdam Ave., Manhattan

I spent so much time away from New York in the latter half of the summer that it seems like a million years between popping into Four Seasons, on the Upper West Side, and whatever my last new restaurant experience was (I don't even remember, although of course you can just scroll down!). It is nice to be back. Pat's and my honeymoon in California and Hawaii was wonderful, and I loved seeing all my old friends in Washington, but my day-to-day life since coming to New York is like most people's idea of a vacation, so no regrets about returning to "ordinary."

I was in the UWS for a doctor's appointment and was super-hungry, and Four Seasons was right there, and next thing you know I was ordering the lunch special (soup, salad, and an entree) for $6.95, and next thing you know after THAT, I was deliriously shoveling forkful after forkful of red curry into my mouth. It didn't even look good, when it arrived on my table. But it WAS good, really really good, and a big portion to boot. For $7! That is what I'm talkin' about, yaknowwhatumsane?