Friday, May 04, 2007

Coffee and Tea Festival

Les Macarons with Pomegranate Tea, watercolor

Here's the followup post on the Coffee and Tea Festival I attended on Sunday.The funny thing is there's no coffee or tea in this post?!

I made a beeline for these witty sculpture/lamps on Sunday.This is a HIS & HER set of lamp-things...
They sit on a faux tablecloth that's been copperized
The wire coming out of the spout is both the poured liquid and what connects the bulb to the pot..or something like that. Hmmm...well just visit Eric M. Sternfels' POURtensious and find out more. I thought they were fun and I loved the vintage cups and pots! So nice to paint...I tasted AMAI TEA and BAKE HOUSE's delicate tea sweets when Tavalon Tea Bar first opened in Union Square - flavored with Earl Grey + Current, Chai Almond, Lemongrass + Ginger and Green Tea.
"AMAI" means "sweet" in Japanese and AMAI is a sweet internet/blog success story. Kelli Bernard began writing about her baking passion on her blog, Lovescool.com and it evolved into a business. Kelli's treats are meant to enhance the tea drinking experience and soon AMAI will have it's own teahouse in New York. I promise to report back :)KEIKO makes Matcha Green tea chocolate from specially "shaded" tea plants. The net-covered tea develops more active substances and a highly aromatic scent.There must be a coffee artist at these things and Karen Eland can paint the Mona Lisa with just expresso coffee as her medium!Last but never least, these macaRons at the Tea Festival from Georgia's French Bake Shop. You know I bought a bag. They were so good they never made it to any still life setups. Why American pastry chefs haven't caught onto this huge trend is beyond me. Georgia's coffee mac was YUM, but there was little real coffee to be tasted at the festival.When I lived on 13th street, my neighbor's kitchen was next to my bedroom. Every morning coffee aromas would waft through the wall and wake me bolt upright, better than any alarm clock. Where were the coffee aromas at the "Coffee" and Tea show?
Perhaps next year they'll change the name to The TEA Festival NY!?

15 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:38 AM

    Love those lamps.. how fun. great blog and painting.

    Cris in OR

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  2. Anonymous9:39 AM

    Thanks for taking us all to the festival through your blog, Carol! Looks like it was fun. Your painting is sweet!

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  3. Maybe the french pastry chefs will kill them if they do...???

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  4. Anonymous12:14 PM

    It's nice to get to visit all these foodie events along with you!
    You really capture the atmosphere.
    Now if I could just curb my appetite for macarronies.

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  5. Anonymous12:15 PM

    I love today's watercolor. The glass is so transparent in this one and the Laduree little green boxes are soooo sweet :)
    Fleure Abbonda

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  6. Anonymous3:31 PM

    I'd love to be in your shoes and taste all those Green tea chocolates and cookies! Yummy

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  7. Anonymous4:58 PM

    LOVE those lamps and ya did good on the watercolor too CG!
    What a feast you got to taste!
    Luis C.

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  8. Anonymous10:43 PM

    The painting is so beautiful! I wish I had your talent. I agree with you about the macaroons. Georgia's were great. (I also agree with your observation about the lack of coffee. I went down to City Bakery to get a cup, that just seems wrong during a Coffee and Tea festival!) Thanks again for stopping by our booth. Nice picture of Andrew :) We hope to see you at the store.

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  9. Love these watercolour paintings. Especially the one directly below this post. Just curious to know: do you ever encounter any problems when you take pixs of items in stores? Enquiring minds just want to know.. :-)

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  10. Maybe American pastry chefs have caught on to the trend, but maybe they have the same problem you do : they eat them all before they get to the display case! :0p

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  11. Anonymous12:40 AM

    I thought I saw you in the chocolate tasting seminar! Read your comment in David L's blog. So, did you try Grom's gelato?

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  12. Once upon a time if you ordered a cup of tea in Washington, DC or New York City, you got a cup of semi-hot water and a bag of Lipton tea, still wrapped in its vergine paper envelop. No wonder, everybody had coffee all of the time. And then the tea landscape changed, doing so ever more rapidly when Starbucks (of all places) came up with offering a line of very decent tea from "Tazo". In Chicago I discovered "Rumi" tea (maybe I err, the name is trying to escape, teasing me), and soon afterwards, at the "Firehook" bakery on Capitol Hill (the Pennsylvania Avenue branch). Not to speak of all those colorful round high tins with that other new tea, whose name now escapes me (why didn't I keep at least one tin? I have moving!!!).
    I have to study in depth your reports from that wonderful tea fair(y). :-) Green tea chocolate, that will be the end of me, I see it coming. :-)
    (Did some further footwork yesterday, in preparation for your umcoming visit, I expect it every day now!)
    (Besides, I hear little voice when I try to get a comment mailed: Let's test her, two times! No, three! Four! *aaaa*)

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  13. matcha green tea chocolate...yum, reminds me, i should go to the 100yen supermarket and get some...great photos! they make my mouth water.

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  14. Wonderful post! I love waking up to the smell of coffee. And I think I have macaroons on the brain from all your lovely photos! The other day, I ordered my lunch and a biscotti at a cafe. Plus I got a complimentary almond macaroon! It was wonderful!

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  15. Brilliant fun. Thank you for the show. I shall return.

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