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 copperizedThe 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!?

La Petite Chocolatiere

La Petite Chocolaterie make their chocolates in Asnières where Seurat painted his Bathers.
I read there are over 1200 bakeries in Paris...but how many chocolate shops I'd like to know? Parigramme guide, PARIS CHOCOLAT, describes 120 chocolate shops + the 20 I added.There are many more small shops with no web site, only the size of a large closet in each arrondissement. They take great pride in their product. Family owned, their quartier supports them as they do their local boulangerie and pharmacie.La Petite Chocolatiere are known for their palet amer 70% (thin bittersweet disks of chocolate) and rhum ganache.Infused ganache, chocolate-covered dried fruit, assorted palets (thin chocolate disks) of different cacoa percentages. The variety of choices is staggering in even a tiny shop.If you see the sign, fabrication artisanal, you know they have less than 50 workers and use traditional methods to make their product whether it's chocolate, bread, paper or whatever. It's designed to protect and support small producers in France.When you buy something in most small shops, often they will invite you to taste a chocolate gratis!