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<$5: The Tuck Shop - A $4 sausage roll that rocks PLUS It's Tim Tam Time!

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Landing the most scrumptious sausage roll at the Tuck Shop NY The Tuck Shop Revisited for Tim Tams, Mint Slice, and a runny meat pie The Tuck Shop featured in my "Best Job In The World" application The Tuck Shop? Never 'eard of it! +++ HOW DO you make a sausage roll? Put it on a hill and push it. That's the über clean joke about this snack from my kindergarten days, when the local Aussie "tuck shop" or school canteen dispensed greasy, fatty pies, pasties and sausage rolls to a nutritionally unenlightened public. Oh how we loved that flaky bakey crap. The pie - something that has never taken off in the USA except in the form of a 'pot pie' - was a pastry case filled with drippy, peppery mince in a brown gravy strong on Worcestershire sauce. How did you eat it? Peel off the pastry lid and eat that first. The using your index fingers, scoop out the filling and suck it off your fingers, ouching at the temperature. Finall

60cents-$5 Microdesserts @ Three Tarts, NY

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$5 Chai Greek Yogurt Cup trying not to eat it too fast ... My folding bike experiment, tikit on Trial , included this visit to the Three Tarts : I visit the Three Tarts almost as often as the bathroom but I can assure you there's no direct causality ... The antithesis of supersize me, ThreeTarts is 'microsize me' with its tiny, utterly original, coin-sized cookies, tarts, muffins and parfaits, meticulously baked and priced to empty the small change in your pocket. You will find concoctions here that you will find nowhere else. Here are the absolute standout numbers in my book: 1. The Chocolate Lovely - two superfine, super thin, super dark (almost black) chocolate cookies with a dark ganache filling. There is a delayed reaction as the chocolate hits your palate then creeps slowly over it, intensifying as it goes. Wow. What a way to spend 60 cents. Shape changes from bat to penguin to megaphone depending on the whim of the Japanese patisserie me

Free Monday Nights: Howard Williams Jazz Orchestra, The Garage NYC

Monday is apparently muso's night off, and here in Manhattan some of the best Broadway musicians get together and jam "for fun". The 16-piece (looks a lot bigger from the wings!) Howard Williams Orchestra plays Monday nites 7-10pm at The Garage - a really cool and jazzy multi-tiered space. Roger, whose brother pays the double bass in the band, says it has been a tradition at the space for 15 years. "My brother carpools in from Philly, every Monday. If musicians can't make it, they have to find a stand in." So fun it may be, but this is serious. I'm not actually a fan of this kind of jazz, but hearing and seeing it live like this has a presence and power that is hard to convey. I've been quite a few times, so I take that back - I guess I am a fan. There is food, but the menu is somewhat pricey unless you stick to a fairly quesadilla or salad for around $10-15. There's no cover, but please support musicians and businesses like this by

Pretty much free yoga in Chelsea and beyond

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Free yoga on Pier 64 offered by Chelsea Piers Fitness Center. Yoga in NYC doesn't come cheap. Classes hover around $18 unless you buy some kind of package. But here are some options in Chelsea and a little further, that can tide you over 'til you get that Wall Street job and can afford a membership at Equinox and wherever else you please ... Free summer yoga at Pier 64, offered by Chelsea Piers Fitness Center August/Sept only, before the snow comes in ... Donation only Community Class at Laughing Lotus , 19th and 6th Ave, M-F, 2.30pm-3.45pm. Ongoing. For Summer only, Lotus also offer a free Wed 7-8pm class on a grassy knoll near 15th and the West Side Highway. Easy Yoga with the Galfromdownunder , Chelsea Rec Center, 25th bet 9th and 10th Ave. Tuesdays 6-7pm. Ongoing. Yes folks, this is my completely free, 'tude free class, part of Boomberg's ShapeUpNYC initiative - you don't have to be a center member to attend, make sure you tell them that if the front

$10 seats: World Class dance diversity at the JOYCE THEATER, Chelsea, Manhattan

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The Joyce, a neighborhood dance theater in Chelsea, Manhattan,  reminds me of Dr Who's Tardis : a modest, low key, retro frontage that opens up into a giant internal world of global dance entertainment. It's not that the theater is huge - the tremendous variety of shows simply makes it seem that way. In recent times they've started offering $10 seats, thereby putting world class dance within reach of a huge and recession-strapped audience. And if you've never been to a dance performance and experienced the psychological boost it gives you, you're in for a treat. $10 buys you seats in the very front row, "the bleeding nose seats", where, unless you're tall or sneak a cushion inside, you will possibly see the show from the dancer's ankles up. But choreographers make sire a lot of action happens above the ankles, so for the amazing price, it's a no-brainer. I might be the only person on the world that believes watching dance actually has a

Cheap'n'Choosy Shoesies: DSW Shoe Warehouse, Union Square, NYC

A new spin on the dowdy old Aussie UGG (sheepskin) boot - a decidedly Caucasian geisha by Ed Hardy  Oh woe is me. The signs of ageing are happening at both poles - I'm plucking out the first strands of gray hair, and ... carting the nth pair of perfectly good shoes to the Salvation Army. Yep, my feet have slowly but surely spreading over the years, from a petite size 5 at age 17 to almost a 7 (!) at age 47. Does gravity really suck that bad? Now in my younger years I'd be rejoicing - what a perfectly legitimate excuse to follow in Imelda Marcos' stiletto-steps. I challenge all but the most die hard Tomboys to deny they had a personal warehouse of both silly and sane shoes between age 20 and 40. Lately, I'm just disgruntled because it means having to replace perfectly good shoes that seemed to fit two years ago with new ones - just so I can walk more than a block without ending up hammer-toed. But it's not all bad. I've come to genuinely believe th

Wholesale fashion @ NY Garment District: Happening Fashions et al

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This is one of the many rambling wholesale outlets in the Garment District with their questionable garish offerings in the window and racks of samples out on the pavement for $25. But this one has great leather coats, jackets, dresses. And surprise, surprise, if the clearly non-commercial shopper walks in, the laid back dude patrolling the racks of fur leather etc will sell you the odd one-off wholesale. I suspect that if you've made the effort to come all the way to NYC he might as well. Anti-fur people stop reading here... I'm not really a fur person - I tend to wear the fake fluff. But I picked up an amazing Jean Harlow like rabbit fur stole for $40. It was made from the offcuts of fur I suspect, it has a kind of 'bobbly' texture. Rabid vegans stop reading here... I have to say, nothing warms like fur. I bought it for a friend's grandmother to sit around in her armchair while the snow rages outside, reading a book without having to don a giant sweater or