One thing I’m look­ing for­ward to is a day of R&R in one of my favorite cities – The Big Apple. This year’s Food Net­work New York City Wine & Food Fes­ti­val is set up a bit dif­fer­ently in that the demos are at the Grand Tast­ing Tents so the like­li­hood of me run­ning around the city like a chicken with my head cut off like last year is null and void. The tents are near one of my favorite happy places, Chelsea Mar­ket, and, if time allows, per­haps a quick jaunt to the store with a shoe floor that has its own zip code might be on the agenda.

1. I’m on the fence between sassy flat and wedgy boot. How­ever, in a per­fect world, what I would LOVE to wear is this Tory Burch Law­son bootie. I’m a sucker for wool and lace up details.  I know I know – when it comes to shoes, I will never learn.

2. Well, I can say that I learned my les­son last time and, in addi­tion to NOT wear­ing 4″ stiletto boots, I will also not be lug­ging any­thing super heavy – whether it be cook­books, mag­a­zines, etc. until I’m head­ing home.   It’s bad enough that the dslr cam­eras are a bit hefty.   One must item to take is my lovely iPad to do some blog­ging and writ­ing in my trav­els and this Rebecca Minkoff Touch And Go iPad Case has been a life­saver – chic and func­tional. I broke down and got the pink one but I will say that when I’m look­ing for my iPad among a slurry of books, binders and other items, I always can see the bright pink and smile.

Now – if only this gor­geous Jimmy Choo nude iPad case would be priced MUCH lower, I’d be a very happy stiletto wench. Sadly, it’s about the cost of a pair of stilet­tos *sigh* Oh well…

3. One of my must visit places is the Chelsea Mar­ket. Every time I head to the city, I drop by there to pick up a thing (or three) and I have def­i­nite plans on pick­ing up some seri­ously del­ish pump­kin seed brit­tle from Jacques Tor­res, perus­ing the cook­books at Pos­man Books, look­ing for intrigu­ing cook­ing finds at Bow­ery Kitchen Sup­ply and pick­ing up this lovely Pem­broke Salt Dish from Anthro­polo­gie for my Aleppo pepper.

4. One of the demos I’m excited about see­ing is the Beek­man Boys. They have a great cook­book, The Beek­man 1802 Heir­loom Cook­book: Heir­loom fruits and veg­eta­bles, and more than 100 her­itage recipes to inspire every gen­er­a­tion, that is gar­ner­ing quite the buzz. Ama­zon has it but it was a bit of a wait time on deliv­ery.  Luck­ily for me this week­end, Barnes & Noble had copies promi­nently dis­played and a copy imme­di­ately went home for the cook­book arse­nal.  This is a cook­book that will be trea­sured – beau­ti­fully pho­tographed with vin­tage notepad touches and the recipes – oh the recipes. We’re talk­ing sea­sonal recipes that scream com­fort such as Beer Braised Beef with Onion Dumplings, Har­vest Beef Chili with Pump­kin and Beans, Orange Gin­ger­bread with Bour­bon Cus­tard and Jum­ble­berry Pie. Seri­ously – get this cook­book because I promise you will cook from it often. These are recipes that I’m sure are “Polka Spot The Llama Approved”.

5. Finally, after the chaos of the day to day and all that’s gone on with the Sous Pug recently, I reached my exas­per­a­tion point and made an exec­u­tive deci­sion – the hair needed to be chopped. I’m a ser­ial cheater when it comes to hair­styl­ists and always have been. When I went to SOBE, the ‘do was the result of last minute rush­ing to some­one I didn’t know and, when I saw the pho­tos, I winced. Also, know­ing that I was cut­ting off a ton of hair, I didn’t want my fab­u­lous friend Heather to be put into a posi­tion of deal­ing with my crazy “Cut. It. Off.” moments as I adore her too much. Look­ing at my packed sched­ule, I made a call to Manayunk’s own Salon L’Etoile and begged the gals to see if my favorite styl­ist there, Jeff, had an open­ing. Thank­fully there was one spot left and thanks to Jeff’s very skilled scis­sors, the hair is short (well for me) and sassy and will do fine in NYC. Jeff accepted me back with open arms and he’s aware of my styl­ist com­mit­ment issues but never judges.  Seri­ously, if you are in Philly and need a fab salon that will spoil you rot­ten, check them (and him) out.

What do you have planned for the weekend?