So next week, I’m heading back to New York for a work trip.  Starting with touchdown at JFK, it’ll be three straight days of running all over Midtown for meetings and business meals.  Hopefully, I’ll get to sneak in a drinking session with a good friend who I haven’t seen in a year and a half. 

But Saturday… Saturday, I have off, and I’m staying the extra day.  I haven’t been back to my old hometown up in Connecticut in six years — not since I moved out to Los Angeles.  So I’m renting a car and making the drive I’ve made so many times in the past up I-95 to see the town again, see what changes have been made (and I’m told there have been a lot), see my old high school (which has a huge addition on it that wasn’t there when I went) and see my old neighborhood.  Tom Wolfe was right — you really can’t go home again, since 5 years ago, my parents sold the house I spent 14 years in, and I won’t even be able to go inside the house that I was raised in.  I’ll just be able to look at it from the street longingly.  (Honestly, how creepy would it be for me to ring some stranger’s doorbell and ask for a tour of their house?)

One of the things I plan to do is the food tour.  There are two places that I absolutely need to go to, since I’ve been craving their food for the last six years.  The first is my old favorite pizza joint, since they have this amazing gorgonzola pizza that is to die for.  I haven’t been able to find anything like it anywhere.  And the other… well, the other is a bakery downtown that makes these pastries called “chocolate logs.” Simply put, they’re one of the most decadent things I’ve ever had.  First, they take chocolate chips and bake them together with a little frosting inside to hold them in place.  Then they surround that with phyllo dough, slather more frosting on top and bake it again.  Seriously, it’s like heaven on a plate.  And it’s no wonder I’m still thinking about it after six years.