Winning Some Chocolate and Losing Some Chocolate

July 19, 2009

Martine’s We recently tagged chocolate field trips to our errands and other excursions.  One weekend stroll in the neighborhood took us to Martine’s (East 82nd), a very pricy outlet (not in the discount sense) of the house chocolates molded and sold at Bloomingdale’s from Belgian Callebaut.  The attendant treated us to an unusual cream filled [...]

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Chocolate in the South?

July 8, 2009

This past April we managed a return visit to CoCo Chocolatier, as we settled into  Williamsburg, Virginia, for some research about Colonial chocolate at the Rockefeller Library.  A break from the data bases of early historical newspapers and library took us to Colonial Williamsburg’s chocolate making day, which occurs the first Tuesday of each month.  [...]

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Family Fun Day: Gomez House, Teaneck and Chocolate

June 28, 2009

Last weekend on a stormy June day (2009), Mark and I packed our barely awake Brooklyn based adult kids into a rental car for what our 26 year old called a “family fun day,” an outing to the Gomez Mill House, the oldest extant Jewish homestead in America of 1714 built by the Gomez family, [...]

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Chocolate in Mexico

January 31, 2009

Tired from the long flight from NYC to Mexico City, via Cancun , my energy level spiked as I meandered into a Mayordomo chocolate shop at the airport. Smelling the recently ground chocolate, marveling at the piles of cocoa beans I aimed directly for several small dishes set out on the counter filled with dark, [...]

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Got Gelt?

November 25, 2008

In early December of 2006, my husband Mark and I discovered the roots of chocolate Chanukah gelt. That winter we drove a rental car from Brussels to Liege, Belgium, searching for a chocolate museum in the nearby town of Eupen. As we descended the hilly road that took us into downtown Liege to our hotel, [...]

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Cocoa-dar

October 12, 2008

Chocolate has entered my life at fun and surprising moments, causing me to suspect cocoa-dar. One such experience occurred as my husband Mark and I traveled in 2006 in our van from Paris south on a small road to Carpentras via the towns of Dijon, Lyons, and Avignon. As Mark drove, I usually read or [...]

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Shanah Tovah u’Metukah! But, Where’s the Chocolate?

September 7, 2008

A serious chocolate lover has to wonder why Judaism today has neither serious ritual celebrations nor customs using good chocolate, especially at Rosh Hashanah when we emphasize the sweetness we anticipate and long for in the coming New Year. On Rosh Hashanah, we greet each other with the phrase, Shanah Tovah u’Metukah! “a good and [...]

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Chocolate Travel

August 2, 2008

Wherever I travel, I seek out chocolate connections with Jews. In the last couple of years, my trips to Belgium, to the southwest of France, to Spain, to Israel, to New England and elsewhere, have revolved around my chocolate research. My interest in Jews on the Chocolate Trail started with travel. Around the time that [...]

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Return to Madrid

July 13, 2007

July 13, 2007 Mancerinas in Madrid Back to Madrid, examples of beautiful mancerinas—first developed by the Marques de Mancera (1639-1648) in Peru—displayed at the Museum of Decorative Arts.

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Ávila

July 10, 2007

July 10, 2007 Ávila There are great pastries here, but this hot chocolate was foul.

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