travel
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Choco-Travel Tips
Choco-dar first erupted on our multi-country circuit of Europe in a VW van. That adult onset, self-diagnosed radar for chocolate experiences led us serendipitously to many wonderful chocolate discoveries and surprises. In the process I learned some chocolate travel tips. Chocolate travel generated the book and the website that I came to call On the
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Chocolate Trail Broadens: “Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate” Travels
I am very excited that the NYCs Bernard Museum exhibit, “Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate” based on my book, On the Chocolate Trail, will now be forging new paths as it travels around the country. We selected On the Chocolate Trail as the book title for a number of reasons. First, it evokes the diffusion of
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Chocolate, Coffee, Tea and Me
Thank you to the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit for the invitation to speak at their event Chocolate, Coffee, and Judaism created in conjunction with the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibit “Bitter|Sweet: Coffee, Tea & Chocolate.” Not only did I have the opportunity to meet a curious audience, I also presented with Professor Howard Lupovitch
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On the Chocolate Trail in Brooklyn
Stories of New Yorkers and their chocolate abound so we followed the chocolate trail there. A long heritage of Brooklyn chocolate production and innovation precedes today’s bean-to-bar, artisanal, and industrial chocolate enterprises. All the way back in the late 1800s immigrants to Brooklyn succeeded in the chocolate, bakery and candy businesses. Now Brooklyn hosts Valhrona,
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Hunting for Chocolate: Fancy Food Show, NYC, 2016
Even before Mark and I got off the F train at the Hudson Yards Station heading to the Javits Center, we spotted folks bejewelled with their red and white Fancy Food Show tags. Earlier in June when I had reviewed the list of chocolate vendors scheduled to be at the Show, I had felt a
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Chocolate Made My Lunch: Nashville
In Nashville I managed time between my five lectures on the chocolate trail scholar-in-residence to pay homage to Nashville’s homegrown confection, the Goo Goo Cluster. Developed over 100 years ago, the Goo Goo tempted sugar lovers with its innovative combination of ingredients: caramel, marshmallow nougat, fresh roasted peanuts and real milk chocolate. Located near Nashville’s
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Local Chocolate in the South
Finally, there is a “local” American chocolate. In Nashville, Tennessee, no less. Olive & Sinclair Chocolate, Tennessee’s only bean to bar chocolate maker, sources its beans from Ghana and the Dominican Republic. It has found a way to court and reflect a Southern palate in its products. Their chocolate makers uniquely mix buttermilk into their
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Fathering Chocolate
Fathers, Dominicans that is, helped bridge the New World’s chocolate to the Old World. In 1544 Padres tantalized the Spanish court with chocolate prepared and presented by a Kekchi Maya delegation of New World natives. Fatherly faith indeed aided in spreading chocolate to new regions of the world, to new religious contexts, and to new
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Adventures On the Chocolate Trail: Atlanta, Portland, Seattle
In my recent travels speaking about On the Chocolate Trail, I have been able to sample some unusual chocolates and related products. Consider these: Atlanta: From Chef Brulee amazing colors make the bon bons and the matzah very appealing. *Chocoley A source for making chocolate creations, including molds, compound chocolate , kits, utensils
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It’s Chocolate Season
Chocolate season started on November 1 for Joanne and Jerry Kryszek’s company, Chocosphere. This is the busiest time in their on-line chocolate wholesale and retail company which operates from a warehouse in a Portland suburb. I have known about the company for years and finally had the opportunity to meet the Kryszek’s and see their
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Chocolate Love Lessons for Valentine’s Day
Love lessons pulsate through Denise Acabo’s chocolate shop, A l’Etoile d’Or, Montmartre, Paris. Baby-faced Denise, who may be in her 80’s, has tended to customers and chocolate for the last 40 years costumed in her braided hair and school-uniform kilt skirt. Against the backdrop of her carefully curated chocolate offerings, she preens for the camera:
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From Prins to Prinz: The Mysteries of the Chocolate Trail
Little did I realize when writing On the Chocolate Trail, how eerie the connections between Jews and chocolate might become. My choco-dar (internal radar for chocolate experiences) led me to a hauntingly personal story. In 2009, a very kind scholar, learning of my chocolate interests, mentioned a Dutch archival collection of a Jewish scholar who
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“Did Jews ‘Invent’ Chocolate” Hits YouTube
“Did Jews ‘Invent’ Chocolate?” An Exclusive Interview with Deborah Prinz by Walter Bingam for his radio program “Walter’s World” at Israel National Radio about my book On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao, published by Jewish Lights and now in its second
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Green Chocolate in March
On St. Patrick’s Day green chocolate took on a whole new meaning for us. Green-garbed celebrants lined up outside of Boston’s Back Bay bars in the middle of the day as Mark and I walked over the Charles River for a quick chocolate factory tour in nearby Somerville. One of just a few “(cocoa) bean
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Like Chocolate for Kiddush
Our family Shabbat dinner chocolate-tasting spontaneously turned into a form of kiddush (the blessing using wine which welcomes the Sabbath). In part I was thinking about Jews in Colonial period Mexico who sometimes used drinking chocolate for kiddush when wine was not available. Mostly I wanted to sample one of the Camille Bloch liquor filled
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Chocolate Kitsch in Rockport, MA
Mark and I were in Rockport, Massachusetts, for the wedding of longtime family friends. There, we enjoyed many small world family and Jewish interactions which were profound in some ways and fun as well. We: met the parents of a former boyfriend of a rabbinic student coming to our home at the end of the
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