the ultimate marriage...

there are some geniuses in this world....this i know to be true.

there is the genius who invented the clorox wipe....the one who came up with the brilliant idea for ikea...., and, of course, every member of the team that realized the world needed Rockstar: INXS.

my most recent genius discovery is less about one person and more about a burgeouning society of people...those who have discovered the glory of the Earth's most decadent pairing and made a movement of it--of course, i'm talking about chocolate and wine. While I'm certain this clan of epicurians is neither new nor revolutionary, i've come, in past weeks, to be surrounded by them--and i love it.

I begin with two fellow brooklyners, Alisha Lumea and Avril Pendergast-Fischer, these women decided to make their passion for decadence a business and create Coco Vino, an online chocolate shop that produces bonbons to die for--that happen to be socially conscious.

Dedicated to celebrating the everyday beauty of life, Cocoa Vino couples two of life’s most sensual pleasures—chocolate and wine. The robust character of many wines and liqueurs makes them ideal flavorings for filled chocolates, and they feature in many classic European recipes. Using traditional European production methods and a New York sense of style and innovation, Cocoa Vino pushes the classic into the modern by exploring new flavor harmonies and unexpected pairings....All our ingredients respect the environment, the physical and economic well-being of workers and your health.

Organic, sustainable, and made with products obtained through fair trade, Cocoa Vino's bonbons range from dark chocolate and malbec to dark chocolate, espresso, and sambuca. Yum. Not in the mood to order online? Hire these geniuses to create the favors for your wedding or to throw a wine and chocolate party at your home.

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staying with brooklyn (I'm slowly learning I'll never have to leave the borough again), I have to plug the best new bar in park slope...cocoa bar.

during the evening, cocoa bar transforms into a dessert and wine bar/lounge. our wine and beer menu has been carefully selected to be perfectly paired with our chocolate pastries, truffles and pralines.

complete with a storefront shop and takeout drink bar to a interior lounge space with table service to a huge backyard patio space...this is the place to order a bottle of cabernet and a decadent dessert and while away the evening hours.

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while at cocoa bar, i discovered perhaps the most amazing spa products i've ever seen...a line of chocolate and wine face scrubs, soaps, and body washes from aqua dessa...all organic (some even vegan), aqua dessa has been offered millions to sell out to big business cosmetics...

Since our products are made with fruits, beries, honey, seaweeds, herbs, and botanicals, these natural ingredients haven't been testen on animals. After being exposed to the manufacturing practices of cosmetics...we walked away from all the millions of dollars and glamour and made a commitment to make it our life's mission to create the purest products in the world...

hey...if you can't eat chocolate every day...at least you can bathe in it.

what a marvelous idea.

fix your jones for chocolate and wine together @ www.cocoavino.com, www.cocoabarnyc.com, and www.aquadessa.com

Posted by sarah t. at 11:40 AM 0 comments

pretty and practical...or vice versa

Form follows function--that has been misunderstood. form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union. --Frank Lloyd Wright

Whenever anyone quotes Wright on form and function, they stop at the first -- and forget to continue on...to where he really imparts his genius. For anyone who's ever asked why something practical can't be gorgeous or whimsical or both...anyone who is obsessed with their ipod because it is both music and beauty...anyone who thinks that whoever designed the mini cooper is a god among men for designing something that is both a great car and a great looking car...

why settle for the itty bitty booklight...when you can have something ever more charming? check out black & blum's reading light, quote: "This cute little chappy will join you with your nightly read." It's worth the shipping and handling costs from the UK, i promise you. surf around their website while your there....I'm a big fan...especially of the wall climber...think about it for a kids' room...or for your own.

in the kitchen, i've become a little too manic about zyliss products...they have such gorgeous, clean design, but work better than any shredder, slicer, or peeler i've ever used before...i'm especially attached to the pizza wheel--such a ridiculously simple design--how come no one has thought of it before?

and for the wine enthusiast in you...there's no place like l'atelier du vin...home of arguably the most beautiful decanters...corkscrews...and barware available for those looking to build a wine bar that makes houseguests drool...their mission?

to devise a good tool...we stick to a few rules that we have set ourselves: usefulness of function, reliability and ease of use, classic design and simple shapes.

if only every company were as focused....

fix your jones for slick home gadgetry @ http://www.black-blum.com/, http://www.zyliss.com/, & http://www.atelierduvin.com/

Posted by sarah t. at 4:59 PM 0 comments

making lemonade...

So I've been thinking for a while about how to blog the positive things about Katrina....

Frank Stronach, who airlifted evacuees from New Orleans to Palm Beach, Fla. all while he is bankrolling the construction of a new mobile-home community, complete with school and community centers in Louisiana for more than 300 victims of hurricane Katrina....

Sean Penn working round the clock to help rescue his fellow New Orleanians while Matthew McConaughey pitches in with the Humane Society to rescue dogs and cats...

Kids across the country stuffing backpacks with school supplies to make the first day of school as normal as possible for displaced little ones.

Then, yesterday, I picked up the New York Times and started reading a briliant op-ed by David Brooks, Katrina's Silver Lining. Essentially, Brooks sees the entire katrina experience as a fantastic opportunity--one to stop urban poverty and inequity in its tracks and redesign and rebuild New Orleans into one of the greatest cities in the world--without centuries of cultural strife and urban dissent. Genius.

Katrina was a natural disaster that interrupted a social disaster. It separated tens of thousands of poor people from the run-down, isolated neighborhoods in which they were trapped. It disrupted the patterns that have led one generation to follow another into poverty.

It has created as close to a blank slate as we get in human affairs, and given us a chance to rebuild a city that wasn't working. We need to be realistic about how much we can actually change human behavior, but it would be a double tragedy if we didn't take advantage of these unique circumstances to do something that could serve as a spur to antipoverty programs nationwide.

In all this tragedy, David Brooks has given me immense hope...what if we can wipe the slate clean? What happens when the haves and the have-nots live side by side? What happens when centuries of oppression are literally washed away? Where can humanity go with a fresh start?

And isn't it cool that the city that can make all this happen is one of the most beautiful, fresh, culturally amazing ones in the world? I say...bring it on.

Fix your jones for the end of social inequity as we know it @ David Brooks' column.

Posted by sarah t. at 2:08 PM 1 comments

the importance of being quixotic

it's been a while since i posted, i know...and i apologize for that--i've been glued to cnn for the past few days...but this morning, I snapped out of my obsessive search for new information on the tragedy in the delta...and allowed my tivo to record something for the first time in four days.

lucky for me...trusty tivo turned to one of my favorite channels--ifc--and recorded Lost in La Mancha, a documentary I've been told to see countless times but just never got around to renting. For the past two hours I've lazed on the couch and watched tragedy unfold for Terry Gilliam and his team as he attempted to put one of the greatest pieces of literature on celluloid. I couldn't tear myself away from the heartbreaking story of Gilliam's dreams being shattered by a string of terrible luck.

Quoth Variety:

There's no shortage of disaster stories in the history of film production, but none have been recorded with such frankness, immediacy and aching sense of disappointment as in Lost in La Mancha… entertaining and instructive... a tantalizing memorial.

Perhaps the best part of the documentary (which views like the best season of Project Greenlight yet), is when one of Gilliam's art directors points out that Gilliam embodies the heart and soul of Don Quixote himself--a man who's fantasy project seems more real and within reach than any project he's ever worked on...and who must come to accept a harsh reality that his fantasies will never come to fruition. About an hour into the film, I resolved to go see Gilliam's latest picture today--in the hopes that my $10.75 will help him finance a second shot at making his film. (Click Here for your TiVo to record Lost in La Mancha for your own viewing pleasure.)

Of course...what Lost in La Mancha really did for me was make me want to go back and read Don Quixote again--the last (and only) time I did that was in high school...but I remember loving the vivid imagery, Cervantes' scathing narrative, and the charming hero--who embodied everything good and chivalrous and gorgeously idealistic I'd ever imagined. It's no wonder so many artists over so long a time have been inspired by this brilliant character.

Considering it was published in 1605, in Spain, one wouldn't think that a teenager would have found such joy in the pages of Don Quixote, but I did...

The plot covers the journeys and adventures of Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. Alonso Quijano is an ordinary Spaniard (an hidalgo, the lowest rank of the Spanish nobility) who is obsessed with stories of knights errant (libros de caballerías), especially those written by Feliciano de Silva. His friends and family think he is crazy when he decides to take the name of Don Quijote de la Mancha and become a knight errant himself (a don being a title of a higher nobility, and a quixote in Spanish was a piece of armor). Then he sorties to wander Spain on his thin horse Rocinante, righting wrongs and protecting the oppressed.

Don Quixote was crazy for sure...but there was something about this man who tilted at windmills, saw an old nag as a trusty steed, and a low-born prostitute as a fair maiden, that connected with me...and I remember debating heatedly in my English class in support of his reality being the only one that truly mattered. I think I'll leave it at this...and take myself off to buy another copy of that book.

An Aside: Not too long after reading the book, I can remember buying the soundtrack to my favorite television show--Northern Exposure--on which there was a song by a band I'd never heard of, "Magazine 60," called Don Quichotte. Strange song, for sure...but fun nonetheless. Here's a clip...and the whole thing...enjoy.

"One man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this."

Fix your jones for don quixote @ the unabridged online don quixote, don quixote at wikipedia, lost in la mancha, and amazon.com

Posted by sarah t. at 2:03 PM 0 comments