New York
How Justine Doiron, a TikTok Cook, Spends Her Sundays
Justine Doiron didn’t plan on becoming a recipe developer when she moved to New York in 2016. She was fresh out of Cornell University’s hospitality program and had embarked on a career in public relations. Cooking was just a hobby then.
Today, she’s better known by her online moniker Justine Snacks and shares recipe videos with 2.3 million followers on TikTok.
Ms. Doiron, 30, first gave TikTok a whirl in April 2020. Since the app’s main audience seemed to be teenagers, she geared her content toward them with trending recipes for sushi cakes and pasta flowers. Eventually, her style morphed into what she’s best known for today: approachable, veggie-forward recipes paired with stories from her day-to-day life.
She recently published “Justine Cooks: A Cookbook” and has another one in the works. All of Ms. Doiron’s recipe testing, on and off camera, is done in the kitchen of her 250-year-old wood frame house in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn.
“I’m really building out my dream life in the house, because this year’s been the year of Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, and their resurgence of this ‘nostalgia core,’” she said.
Ms. Doiron lives with her fiancé, Eric Lipka, 31, an intelligence analyst, their French bulldog, Walter, and their rescue cat, Gladiator.
EARLY TO RISE I wake up at 6 a.m. if not earlier. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately, which I guess just comes with age and general anxiety about things (love that). I also really like my mornings to myself. I use the first hour of the morning to ingest coffee like it’s my job and write down my general outline and plans for the week.
TO MARKET TO MARKET I go to the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket as my grossest self. I’m just pajamas-to-jeans, a T-shirt, a puffy jacket, a coat, beanie, puffy eyes and S.P.F. on my face, and I’m out the door by 7:30 a.m. I like seeing everything at its fullest potential. I don’t like to feel like I might have missed out something.
Carroll Gardens has ACQ Bread Co., which is my favorite bread in the entire city — it’s everyone’s favorite bread. They have a line down the block no matter how early I am to the market. Every two weeks I get their Living Bread, which has seeds and sprouts.
GUILTY PLEASURE Afterward, I pop into Trader Joe’s. It’s a 10-minute walk from the Carroll Gardens market, so the amount of guilt I feel walking into Trader Joe’s with two tote bags filled of vegetables that aren’t theirs, to get five cans of chickpeas, some edamame and some coffee creamer, is crazy, but it’s part of my routine. Then I take the subway home.
LEISURELY BREAKFAST My big luxury is a big, slow breakfast, my shower and being lazy for the next 90 minutes. For breakfast, I toast two slices of the Living Bread I just bought, and then I like to boil jammy eggs. I’m a three egg kind of girl, and I mash them up with chili, flaky salt, red wine vinegar, black pepper and I just put that on the toast. It’s a great time to get avocado, so if I have blessed myself with a ripened avocado and have that available, that’ll go on there too. Eric, if he’s lucky enough, and awake and hungry, will get the same.
FIXER UPPER Our house is amazing, but when we got it it needed some tender love and care. I really want a Brooklyn garden in the backyard (which is just concrete, let’s be honest). We’re making garden beds that have good drainage, and I’m watching the sun and seeing where it’ll go. Soon, I’ll start seeds on the third floor of the house.
TEST KITCHEN I’m usually so excited and inspired by ingredients, especially right when I get them, because nothing hits like the vegetables you just buy. They’re at their peak gorgeousness and freshness. I’m currently in the throes of working on book No. 2, so I do a quick little recipe test, or a quick little, “let’s put these flavors together with this ingredient and kind of see where it nets out.” Maybe this will turn into an idea further down the line. We’re not super hungry since we had a late breakfast, so it’s a little peckish recipe test snack.
EARLY BIRD I’m such a morning person and a lazy night person that sometimes we meet our friends for just drinks or aperitivo. Agi’s Counter is in our neighborhood, and that’s my favorite place. I like to get the window seat (if you know, you know) and just get something super cozy there for dinner.
CLEAN UP I have kept this habit since my 9-to-5 corporate days. I can’t start a week without feeling some semblance of: normalcy, control, clean. I just straighten the house, do whatever laundry I can and make sure the kitchen’s clean. It takes me about an hour, and I do it while listening to a podcast like “Las Culturistas.” It used to be so much more intense, but I’ve relaxed now that we have a dog and a cat and I share the home with somebody else. I realize I’ve let go of a lot of control of things, but the cleaning has stayed.
EARLY TO BED Eric and I are together most of the day, but we like to prioritize hanging out all in the same room. He might be logging on and finishing up some emails, while I read and prepare to fall asleep. I’ve really gotten into reading. I loved “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach and I’m getting back into reading Maggie O’Farrell — I leap at her books anytime they’re available on the library’s Libby app. I’m in this phase of my life where I completely understand how lucky I am to have so much peace and so much freedom with my schedule. I use that freedom to go to bed on the earlier side.
New York
Video: LaGuardia Crash Survivors Recount Ordeal
“I just thought, please don’t let this be how my life ends. I’m not ready to die. When we landed, it was a very rough landing. Like we landed and the plane jolted back up, and that caught a lot of passengers off guard. Everyone kind of like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then you hear the pilot braking, and it was like just this grinding sound.” “Everybody was shocked everywhere. There was — there’s people screaming. The plane just veered off course. I mean, it was just — it all happened so quickly, but it all felt just like a very dire situation.” “Oh, God. Oh my goodness. That’s crazy.” “People were bleeding from their nose, cuts and scrapes. I saw black eyes, all different types of facial contusions, bruising and bleeding. I was sitting by the exit door, and I opened the exit door. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst the survivors. Nobody was pushing, shoving, ‘I got to get out first.’” “The plane actually tipped back as we were leaving, as people were getting off the plane. That was when the nose kind of fell off the front of the plane, and the whole plane kind of went up to what we’d seen in all the pictures of the plane’s nose in the air.” And there was no slide when we got out. A lot of us were jumping off of the airplane wing to get down. And when I got out and I saw that the front of the plane, how destroyed it was, I just was — I was in shock.” “It was only really when I was outside of the plane, looking back at the plane, and I had seen what had happened to the cockpit, and then just like this sense of dread overcame me, where I was just like, wow, a lot of people might have just been pretty badly hurt.” “I’m grateful to the pilots who were so courageous and brave, and acted swiftly, and they saved our lives. And if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to come home to my family. I’m forever indebted to them. They’re my heroes.”
New York
Video: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead
new video loaded: Passenger Jet and Fire Truck Crash at LaGuardia Airport, Leaving 2 Dead
By Axel Boada and Monika Cvorak
March 23, 2026
New York
How a Family of 3 Lives on $500,000 on the Upper West Side
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Rent is not the largest monthly expense for Anala Gossai and Brendon O’Leary, a couple who live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That would be child care.
They spend $4,200 each month on day care for their 1-year-old son, Zeno.
“We really liked the center,” Ms. Gossai, 37, said. “Neighbors in our building love it. It’s actually pretty middle of the road for cost. Some were even more expensive.”
The rent for their one-bedroom apartment is $3,900 per month. Space is tight, but the location is priceless.
“We’re right across from Central Park,” she said. “We can walk to the subway and the American Museum of Natural History.”
‘Middle Class’ in Manhattan
Ms. Gossai, a data scientist, and her husband, 38, a software engineer, met in graduate school. Their household income is roughly $500,000 per year. While they make a good living, they try to be frugal and are saving money to buy an apartment.
They moved into their roughly 800-square-foot rental eight years ago when it was just them and their dog, Peabody, a Maltese poodle. Now their son’s crib is steps away from their bed. They installed a curtain between the bed and the crib to keep the light out.
Like many couples, they have discussed leaving the city.
“When we talk about the possibility of moving to the suburbs, we both really dread it,” Mr. O’Leary said. “I don’t like to drive. Anala doesn’t drive. I feel like we’d be stuck. We really value being able to walk everywhere.”
Ms. Gossai is from Toronto, and Mr. O’Leary is from Massachusetts. In New York City, wealth is often viewed in relation to your neighbors, and many of theirs make more money. The Upper West Side has the sixth-highest median income of any neighborhood in the city, according to the N.Y.U. Furman Center.
“I think we’re middle class for this area,” Mr. O’Leary said. “We’re doing OK.”
The couple tries to save about $10,000 each month to put toward an apartment or for an emergency. They prioritize memberships to the Central Park Zoo at $160 per year and the American Museum of Natural History at $180 per year.
Their son likes the museum’s butterflies exhibit and the “Invisible Worlds” light show, which Mr. O’Leary said felt like a “baby rave.”
Ordering Diapers Online
The cost of having a young child is their top expense. But they hope that relief is on the horizon and that Zeno can attend a free prekindergarten program when he turns 4.
For now, they rely on online shopping for all sorts of baby supplies. The family spent roughly $9,000 on purchases over the last year, including formula and diapers. That included about $730 for toys and games.
Ms. Gossai said one of her favorite purchases was a pack of hundreds of cheap stickers.
“They are good bribes to get him into his stroller,” she said. “Six dollars for stickers was extremely worth it.”
They splurge on some items like drop-off laundry service, which costs about $150 a month. It feels like a luxury instead of doing it themselves in the basement.
Keeping track of baby socks “completely broke my mind,” Ms. Gossai said.
Their grocery bills are about $900 per month, mostly spent at Trader Joe’s and Fairway. Mr. O’Leary is in charge of cooking and tries to make dinner at home twice a week.
They spend about $500 per month on eating out and food delivery. A favorite is Jacob’s Pickles, a comfort food restaurant where they order the meatloaf and potatoes.
Saving on Vacations and Transportation
Before Zeno, the couple spent thousands of dollars on vacations to Switzerland and Oregon. Now, trips are mainly to visit family.
Mr. O’Leary takes the subway to work at an entertainment company. Ms. Gossai mostly works from home for a health care company. They rarely spend money on taxis or car services.
“I’ll only take an Uber when I’m going to LaGuardia Airport,” Mr. O’Leary said.
Care for their dog is about $370 per month, including doggie day care, grooming and veterinarian costs. Peabody is getting older and the basket under the family’s stroller doubles as a shuttle for him.
They love their neighborhood and the community of new parents they have met. Still, they dream of having a second bedroom for their son and a second bathroom.
Their kitchen is cramped with no sunlight. So they put a grow light and plants above the refrigerator to brighten the room.
Since they share a room with their son, he often wakes them up around 5 a.m.
“In the sweetest and most adorable way,” Ms. Gossai said.
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