Barcelona. November, 2010

Jay’s father was a cartoonist with a successful comic strip, Tiger, that still runs in syndication nationwide (though, oddly, never in a newspaper wherever his son happens to live.) When Jay and his sister were still single-digit kids, his father realized that he could send in his strip from anywhere in the world (rather than only from their New Jersey home) and he picked up the family and moved them all to the island of Mallorca. It was there that Jay remembers having the local pastries, ensaimadas, for the first time. A long, narrow rectangle of flaky dough, rolled out like a snake (sometimes filled, sometimes not) then coiled up, baked and dusted with powdered sugar. Here is the grown-up Jay having his first ensaimada in more than 55 years near Barcelona's Plaça de Catalunya, a mere 20 minutes (by plane) from his Mallorcan boyhood home. (Happy birthday, Jay, born -- no kidding -- on the numerically memorable 1.23.45.)