My Alergy Journey, Part X: All About A Bagel

Mmmm…bagels!

One of the perks of schlepping from Central NJ to the Upper East Side of Manhattan is that I can get a bagel.

In fact, it’s doctor’s orders.

Before each Oral Immunotherapy office visit, patients are instructed to have a carb-heavy meal. Bagels are on the approved list. Although New York City is filled with bagel eateries, I eat Kosher. So, my choices are more limited. As luck would have it, there’s a terrific little bagel place right around the corner from Latitude called Bagels & Co (photo below). I have been getting an early train so I have a few minutes to enjoy the real deal. 

Bagels & Co., at the corner of York and 76th Street.

Do you want to eat a good Kosher bagel in Central New Jersey? Good luck! Dunkin sells something they call a bagel, but it's too soft and too small. A store in Highland Park ships in bagels from Brooklyn. They’re not as fresh as something made in the store.

Did you know: The bagel was developed in Europe, where Jews were forbidden by antisemitic governments to bake bread. They found a loophole and boiled it instead. The bagel was so delicious that both Jews and non-Jews developed an insatiable taste for it. The round loaves had to be carried to the market, so they did so by making a hole in the middle and carrying them on a long pole. That's how bagels got their distinctive shape. Antisemitic governmental regulations foiled by Jewish innovation again!

Now that's a bagel!

And so, before my bi-weekly updose session at Latitude, I eat a bagel. Worth the trip.

How’s treatment going?

For the last two weeks, I’ve been taking a dose equivalent to 1/150th of a teaspoon of Sunflower and Cashew, respectively. Other than an occasional light case of GERD, things have been so uneventful that I devoted this entire post to bagels. Today my dose was doubled again, to 1/75th of a teaspoon for each allergen.

And now, today’s street photos!