The thing about returning to New York from a long trip halfway across the world is, your body does strange things. Like, popping awake all sparkly and chirpy the first moment the sun nudges it.

At 7 a.m., I call the Sis. “Let me guess–Mike’s still asleep and you’re jetlagged and bored.” She is, as we two say, corright. 

I’m not quite sure what to do with myself that early on a Saturday. So I slip out to look for sausages.

I’ve heard of these mythical sausages, you see, at the Brooklyn Heights farmers’ market. I don’t quite recall what exactly was said about them but I do remember the expressions of longing and the memory of deep satisfaction when they’d been brought up at a recent brunch. (Although, this could also have been triggered by the copious amounts of champagne being swigged at said brunch.)

It’s a small market we have in this little neighborhood. If the Union Square farmers’ market is Carrie Bradshaw‘s shoe closet, our Brooklyn Heights version would be her far less-handsomely paid assistant’s.

But, there is enough.

There are New Jersey strawberries which, this morning, look a little too much like they were grown in New Jersey. So, fuhgeddaboudit. The trays of homemade jams, on the other hand, look more enticing. And then there are my favorite jelly donuts and satisfyingly heavy and crunchy seven-grain breads from Not Just Rugelach.

I always like the reminder that fruit and vegetables don’t have to come looking wan and stuffed into plastic baggies.

And that chives, they too can be pretty. 

But the treat this morning is the discovery of a Hallstead, Penn., farm: Ardith Mae Farmstead Goat Cheese.

Just yesterday, I had told Mike, “I don’t much like goat cheese.”

The fromage gods must have heard.

I stand before this cheese, not daring to tell Mr. Ardith Mae that I’m not sure about trying anything because I don’t much like, well, pretty much everything he makes. (Although, I did find his selection of goat’s milk soap tempting.)

“This one is just like camembert,” he croons, uttering a magical word in my world. So I take a bite. And then another, this time of a buttery yellow sliver that has the salty mouthfeel of a hearty cheddar.

Those sausages? No one seems to have heard of them.

Before I know it, I have the makings of not exactly the most nutritious of starts: a fat bag of cheese, two jelly
donuts, a jar of homemade pear jam and a slender brick of seven-grain
bread.

It is a silly, silly breakfast.