This is Chocolate Babka:

I don’t know what it tastes like, but I understand it’s a chocolate bread that’s very moist and yummy. This particular loaf was found at Russ&Daughters today in the Lower East Side.

These are the many different kinds of smoked salmon at Russ&Daughters:

Here are some of the yummy salads next to the salmon:

And the yummy pickled fish next to the salads:

And the very tempting chocolate and sweets counter. Mmmmm!

But this is not a commercial for Russell and Daughters.

This is about my friend Gbemi who took me there:

Her real name is Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. She’s the author of 8th-GRADE SUPERZERO and an amazing friend and human being. I met her two years ago at the Read Out Loud! Family Literacy and Book Festival in Harlem and we’ve been friends ever since.

When you’re an author, you need a friend who is also an author. It helps you to feel less lonely.

Gbemi and I meet once a month for breakfast, each time at a different place in the West Village or in SoHo, to talk about the books that we’re working on.

This was our July breakfast of egg brioches and piping hot madelines made just for us at the sublime Dominique Ansel Bakery on Spring Street:

Here’s the mocha I had at our inaugural writer’s breakfast at Cafe Angelique on Bleeker St in February:

When you’re an author you think about food a LOT. You even take pictures of your drinks. This is normal, I think. But I don’t really know. All I know is that I don’t feel unusual or anything like that. After all, Marcel Proust would have photographed those piping hot madelines too if he had had an iphone!

Anyway, I digress.

A LOT. Have you noticed? When you’re an author, you digress. This is so you can fill a page with more words and not leave any blank spaces. If you leave too many blank spaces you will not get published.

Anyway, when you’re an author you’ll need a friend like Gbemi who will have breakfast with you, and smile when you take pictures, and then take you to her secret place to buy her secret smoked salmon and secret chocolate babka and secret beet and lemon shrub super juice that will help you write like a machine. Look, it’s already working!!!