I know.  I know.  I'm the worst.  All I do is travel and whine about living out of my suitcase and then depart again and leave you poor LINTERS all alone to fend for yourselves.  But I'm sure you've all been busy too, plowing your way through turkey, stuffing, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes and stuffing.

What?  I like stuffing.

Well, like you all, I was eating my weight in starches, but in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C. (with Obama, mais oui–yeah, we totally hang out all the time and play ball and talk policy and stuff) and finally back to good ole NYC.  I was also reading my LA Times story about NYC designers using LA as a testing ground (the whole front page of the style section) and my Martha Stewart story about honeymoon destinations.  Sorry, I felt that I had to slip that in:)

The good news is that I come bearing gifts.  Well, gifts in the form of information, that is, which I will unveil throughout the rest of this week and next:

To begin, in Brooklyn (so working backwards and starting with my final destination, I suppose) at AMAZING foodie heaven BKLYN LARDER: cheese & provisions (where I would like to move in), I discovered a life changing sweet: Beurre et Lait de Chevre (AKA: goat milk caramels)!

Two words: SHUT. UP.

If you're suspicious (and many of you non-lactards may be so), just try them and you will be in heaven.  See, I love a chocolate.  But I REALLY love a caramel and this is one I can eat guilt free.  Also, there seems to be some buckwheat component, so I guess what I'm really saying is that these are a health food.  Voila!

Health food that tastes like a buttery, condensed milky, salty, sweet heaven of caramel greatness.

Thanks to the very friendly folks at BKLYN LARDER, who are very helpful and totally unpretentious (and make a mean broccoli too BTW, not to mention selling amazing cheeses and their own pickled veggies), I tracked the caramel mofos.  First, they get a bunch of their amazing imported Frenchie products via Crossings French Food, who gets these particular caramels via a company called Paris Caramels.

'Nough said, at least in my book.  Of course, you should take that with a grain of salt because "my book" is most likely U is for Undertow, which came out this week.  Yup.  I said it.  I love you, Sue Grafton!

And, yes, I know that made no sense.

xo – N.

P.S. BTW–If you're in Brooklyn and looking for sweets, you should also stop in at new chocolate, wine and coffee bar (and boutique) Nunu Chocolate on Atlantic Avenue.  The owner is from South Africa and sources her cacao from a sustainable farm in Columbia, so she has interesting influences.  They say you have to cross the Atlantic for the best chocolate anyway.  This Atlantic is just a little less vast.