a newfound culinary interest in dessert-making

Photo by Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

“A Rough Final Winter for New York’s Sanitation Chief,” about veteran ny sanitation chief john j. doherty, who postponed retirement to help new mayor bill de blasio:

If it has been a long winter for all New Yorkers, it has been an even longer one for Mr. Doherty.

“It’s a little depressing on some days, no doubt about it,” the commissioner said in an interview on Wednesday, his staccato Staten Island twang at full speed despite a 3 a.m. wake-up call and a morning of monitoring plowing efforts across the city.

A year ago, Mr. Doherty — who joined the Sanitation Department as a trash collector in 1960, before Mr. de Blasio was born — had toyed with the idea of stepping down, and pursuing a newfound culinary interest in dessert-making. The man once nicknamed “Mr. Snow” for his expertise in the art and theory of slush removal thought he might, for once, choose to relax.