Pastry

I have a deep and abiding love for pastry, well pretty much desserts of every kind. I may or may not have devoured a large cream puff and a small cannoli on the short drive to my house from Dolce and Biscotti, a new bakery I tried today. (Hey, at least I saved the jumbo coconut cupcake for later... not much later, but still. Some restraint was exercised in however small a manner.) The cannoli and cream puff were so-so but the cupcake... well, it was moist and creamy and coconutty. Spell check doesn't like that last word but I don't care. That's just how it was.

Pastry, as a general term, has a special place in my heart. I'm positive my obsession began in August of 2001. I was in Windsor, England with my hubby and we were trying to find breakfast. It was my first trip out of the United States not counting a couple scary visits to Tijuana, Mexico. (You don't get a passport stamp for those so they don't count.) Our first breakfast in England had included intensely sweet Belgian waffles that were like a ultra-rich cookie/cake combo, and some thick and wicked salty bacon. I even tried marmalade. Meh. I wasn't sure what to expect the next day and I was a little jet-lagged still. I sent the more-adventurous Jason into a little shop to get breakfast while I sat outside. He came back with some breakfast pastries and we sat outside by a river and a bridge and ate something truly wonderful. My pastry had peaches on it if I remember correctly and it was divine. The fruit was incidental to the light, airy, flaky pastry supporting it. It simply melted in my mouth without being gooey. And nothing I have eaten before or since has rivaled it. Now I am sure I have built this experience up in my mind to the point where I remember it as being far better than it was. Maybe I was just exceptionally hungry that day and whatever I ate would have been pure manna. Or maybe not. I was in a new country, having a new adventure with lots to see and do, and we were in a beautiful setting eating something meant for gods. The moment was perfection.

Since then, I have tried to recreate the sensation of that instance. Jason and I found a lovely bakery in Niskayuna, NY that had delightful treats, Villa Italia, but they moved their shop and we lost them. I was down in Schenectady today where they moved and was unable to locate them on my GPS, hence the reason for my trip to try out Dolce and Biscotti. Tonight I googled Villa Italia and discovered I was heart-breakingly close to the place today. Curse you GPS! I would chuck you into the nearest body of water if I didn't so desperately need you my friend. Both of these bakeries along with visits to countless other pastry shops, and I still haven't been able to recapture that elusive, ultimate pastry perfection. I am beginning to think that summer morning in Windsor was just a happy chance, a magical aligning of the pastry stars and my circumstances, never to occur again. I still enjoy pastry, always with just a touch a hope for magic again, but also always with a touch of disappointment. Sometimes I think of giving up, of leaving my memory of pastry in the sun untouched but I haven't even been to Paris, France yet. Shouldn't there yet be treats and delights hitherto unimagined waiting for me there? I will let you know when I get there someday. Till then I must stop waxing ridiculously poetic about confections and go exercise or something.