Culinary complaints

-Dream come true: my neighborhood has its very own Shake Shack. Less dreamy: it opens now, when I'll be here for about a month total till the lease is up. However to make the most of this without "Supersize Me" results?

-Still no garlic scapes at the market. I asked a farmer if there will be scapes and he said yes, in two weeks. At which point I'll be back in the dorm. Yes, yes, Paris food is adequate, and while dorm life is a kind of suffering, culinarily it couldn't be better-located... but scapes are my favorite vegetable if not my favorite food, and they're only in season for five minutes, and I've been craving them especially ever since green garlic - close but not quite - hit the stands. As soon as I'm living somewhere with even a tiny bit of outdoor space - I mean even a windowsill - I'm going to attempt to grow these myself.

-Food out has gotten expensive. As in, noticeable changes since I was last in NY, in January. Whereas I used to grudgingly pay $2.50 for iced coffee if I knew a place to have the good stuff, now over $3 is standard for places that promise cold-brewed. Granted, the plus side is that more places now offer this. I've made my own cold-brewed at home, but it suffered from the fact that the coffee we've been getting for ages is now a whopping $16 a pound, which led me to be stingy with the proportions, leaving me with a pitcher full of what looks like iced tea. And, and! The apple strudel at the Neue Galerie café, always an expensive treat but worth it for special occasions and such because Café Sabarsky is gorgeous, is now $9 a slice. A recent tofu-with-broccoli stirfry at a place that's by no means haute was, I believe, $13. Luckily I'm still in OMG-no-more-dorm-kitchen-for-now mode and excited to cook all the time. Otherwise, ick.