You should go here 🥙

The green truck on Pacific Street and 4th Ave.

I have been pretty busy these last two weeks. Busy doing things like baking and frosting a red velvet cake shaped like a Christmas tree for a holiday party that was attended by more people than me and my small apartment have ever hosted in our many years together.

Perfect Cake in a Perfect City.

I also flew to London with my best friend. We ran around the sparkling light-lined streets and decorated department stores and cracked up over flaky vegetable pies and creamy banoffee ones.

Pie is from Cafe Deco. I will write about it at some point.

When I got home from that trip, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Christmas pudding we ate for dessert one night at Scott’s. Traditionally a dense, steamed, incredibly boozy pudding studded with bits of dried fruit and citrus peel, the one we ate was instead fluffy and lightly spiced, with chunks of tart dried fruit but also pools of molten chocolate. It reminded me of a thick chocolate chip cookie, straight from the oven, still slightly raw in the center. This inspired one of the cookies in the Christmas cookie boxes I’m selling this weekend, another thing that’s occupying a lot of my time.

Christmas pudding at Scott's, the cookie box it inspired.

On my way home from the Nets game the other night (which, just so we’re clear, I went to so I could see the unbelievably dominant Cavs play with my own eyes), I stopped on the corner of Pacific Street and 4th Avenue at what I’ve always called “the green truck,” but is actually named Halal Paradise. For $8 cash, but technically $7.99, you’ll walk away with a soft, squishy pita wrapped around freshly fried falafel and piles of cold shredded lettuce and pickled vegetables. You can also opt into a handful of black olives and raw red onions if they’re more appealing to you than they are to me. I’d say a zig zag of the creamy, tangy white sauce is mandatory, but the hot sauce, while very delicious, is also very spicy. The whole ordeal of ordering, customizing, building and paying takes under four minutes, and what’s inside the thin, warm foil you’re handed is far superior to anything you’ll find inside Barlcays Center. I’d go as far as declaring this falafel, with its supremely crunchy and golden brown crust and creamy, almost mashed, heavily spiced and almost earthy insides, some of the best I’ve had in Brooklyn. You should go.

The sandwich was so good that I truly thought this photo of it was beautiful when I took it.

Talk soon, because now I’m busy answering this for you: