Spreading the (Brooklyn) Fudge!

Come see me today at Tom’s Restaurant at 782 Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights! (We make Brooklyn Fudge at the kitchen at 766 Washington Avenue, and our office is next door at 768 Washington.) I will be at Ton's as I usually am most Saturdays, giving out samples of Brooklyn Fudge to people waiting on line. Have one of their legendary Egg Creams or Cherry Lime Rickies while you’re there. Comfort food always makes you feel better!

Tomorrow I’ll be going up to the Hudson Valley for Maple Weekend at Remsburger Maple Farm and Apiary. I met the Remsburger Family at the Chocolate Expo back in February, and thought they and their products were great. They often do events here in the city, and sell at the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal Green Market. They make wonderful things such as Maple Cotton Candy, Maple Cream, and there will be a Pancake Breakfast and Maple Tree Tapping Demonstrations.

The Remsburgers have been maple farming in the Hudson Valley for several generations. I'm happy that people are turning away from industrial farming and really starting to support local farmers more and more now with the organic movement and the 100 mile diet.

Supporting local farmers and conserving the land is very important to me, because I grew up on a small farm that had been in my family for generations myself. Unfortunately, like much of the farmland within 50 – 75 miles of Washington DC, it is now a housing development. My heart will always be broken over this, but I do my best to find ways to transform tragedy and disaster into something positive whenever I can.

Much of the Virginia countryside around where I grew up has transformed into strip shopping centers and sub-divisions now, and we cannot bring that land back. But we can preserve farmland and countryside that has not been (over)developed yet. The way to do that is to support local farmers whenever you can by shopping at the Green Market, places you know source from local farmers, ordering from a CSA in your area, and getting involved with organizations like the Land Conservancy. This world sure could use more farms and fewer Chuck E. Cheeses!

Dynamite Brooklynite: Harold Feinstein

One of the friendliest people I met last night at the Bond Street Gallery, was Harold Feinstein, the artist himself, on hand for his “Coney Island of the Heart” show. I did not know what he looked like, so I didn’t know who he was until he told me, which embarrassed me, but it seemed like he forgave my ignorance and immediately put me at ease. And that probably explains why his photographs feel genuine, real, open and uncontrived: because that’s how he is with people, all kinds of different people.

I also did not know that I was quoting him the other day. I didn’t know he wrote the quote that so eloquently described Coney Island and his take on it. Let me share his whole quote:

“I was born in Coney Island and used to say that I dropped from my mother’s womb straight into the front car of the Cyclone roller coaster! A nickel would get me a ride on the trolley to Coney and for the rest of the day I’d use up my quarter on rides, attractions, and plenty of sweet treats. I’d earn a little more to spend by drawing portraits on the boardwalk and having spent every last nickel, hitch a ride on the back of the trolley home again. But watching was always my favorite pastime. Over the years, the expression “melting pot” has been stunningly reflected in Coney Island’s appeal as the playground for the working class. Here Orthodox Jews, African Americans, Italians, Russians, Puerto Ricans and folks from all over the world were drawn together by the lure of the surf, sand, boardwalks, side-shows, hot dogs, and the permission to leave go of all inhibitions. It is classic Americana exuding the spirit of generosity and common humanity that is the best of the American spirit. These photographs span six decades. In 1995, on Coney Island’s 100th anniversary, ABC Nightline featured my photography as a way to celebrate this legendary place. In spite of periodic gloomy predictions, Coney Island’s magic continues to transcend time.”

Looking at his photographs in person, I felt a feeling of hopefulness that I could not explain. Now that I know a little more about the man who took them, I understand that’s because of how he sees the world and the people in it, regardless of whether or not he has a camera in his hands, when other people might have a more jaded perspective.

Thanks for the hopeful perspective, Harold! That’s what this world needs!

Multiple (Brooklyn) Fudgasms at Bond Street Gallery Thursday Night!

Join us at the inaugural opening of sister art spaces, the Bond Street Gallery and the Bond Street Annex at 297 Bond Street, between Union and Sackett this Thursday (March 27^th) from 6pm – 9pm! The galleries will serve up delicious, diverse imagery dripping in local color with their exhibits “Coney Island of the Heart” and the “James White Photographs”; while Brooklyn Fudge serves up the chocolate version of the same.

“Coney Island of the Heart” features the work of Harold Feinstein, Bruce Davidson, Bruce Gilden, Sid Grossman, Harold Roth, and Henri Silberman. “It celebrates the history of Coney Island as the playground of the working-class melting pot through exuberant and singular images of the Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Russians, Puerto Ricans, and others who have played there.”

Ironically enough, Brooklyn Fudge happens to be made in a working-class melting pot as well, and was actually transformed from the original Virginia recipe, to one of Brooklyn origin, steps away from Bond Street Gallery, while I was living on Douglass between Bond and Hoyt. The people who played at Coney Island sound a lot like some of the early Brooklyn Fudge Tasters and Makers who made Brooklyn Fudge the fusion it is now: the Jews (Rebecca Berlant, Brian Taylor, Susan Taylor, Michael Silverman), Italians (Peg Simone), African-Americans (Priscilla Maddox, Claudia Jemmott), Russians (Igor and Andrei from my old Bond Street storage cube), Puerto Ricans (Juan Vasquez, Josh Diaz, Letty Colonio), and let’s not forget my favorite Hoosier, Barbara Richard, Silicon Valley Girl, Gretta Perlmutter, Cubano Jovani Remior, medio-Cubana y Mexicana Mary Abramson, all 900 of the roommates and people I’ve crashed with in the past two years, and last, but certainly not least, my Africano Cien Percent, Berber Cien Percent, Musulmano Cien Percent, Amrane Boussaid from Algiers, Algeria.

I’m so proud we’ve made an un-inbred product, one truly born of fusion! I’m proud to serve it in a setting that couldn’t be more celebratory of Brooklyn, and what it is, which the work in this exhibit so masterfully depict.

AND, AND, if this is not enough yumminess….did I mention the James White photographs feature eight Victoria Secret’s Models? How can you miss this?

The Importance of Being AHNest

I could have crawled to Manhattan faster than the R train carried me, but the inspiration of this afternoon far outweighed the inconvenience. You don’t need me to tell you that Priscilla Ahn sings like an angel (and plays the harmonica, ukulele, and guitar like one too); tens of thousands of people know that. Her words refreshed and uplifted me as much as her music. She lives the mantra of being who you really are, and doing what you really want to do. She did that, and stays true to what she thinks is right, even when other people were saying, “why don’t you do it this way.” I really admire people like that, and always love it when they prove that they were right and the people saying “why don’t you do it this way” were wrong.

At least I like to look at them as wrong, but I guess the truth is that their way could have worked too, (for them), but the most important thing in any discipline is to do what you think is right for you. You usually can’t get behind something if you’re not feeling it. Nobody else can live your life for you, and you’ll never know if it was right or wrong for you until you try it. Whether it’s right or wrong, either way, you’ll eventually have to do something next.

I’m much longer in the tooth than Priscilla, and her presence today reminded that I too was less fearful and more devil may care than I am now. Although some of that fearfulness that creeps in with age has greatly extended my lifespan, and I recognize that it comes naturally with the slings and arrows life throws our way the longer we live it, people like her remind me that we can choose how much we let it rule us, and that perseverance always wins out. I hear that message in practically everything I read and in every conversation I have. Several of those conversations were the other folks in the studio audience at LIVEatFYI today, and that says a lot of the environment and the people who fill it.

The environment Paul Kontonis and the rest of the For Your Imagination team oozes possibility, creativity, and independent spirit. What a breath of fresh air! Even the plants looked happy and well taken care of there! It was my pleasure to be a part of it this afternoon, and I greatly appreciate them including me in this fun and inspiring event.

Amazing how potent FREE music can be!

Mix up the Monday grind with a music break this afternoon from 1pm – 4pm as Priscilla Ahn performs live on the web at LIVEatFYI. I’m crossing the river and bringing Brooklyn Fudge into Manhattan to be part of the studio audience. Normally I have to be blown out of Brooklyn with dynamite; I don’t come across the river and brave the crowds in Manhattan unless there’s somebody or something really worth seeing.

Happy Easter: Do I Dare to Eat a Peep?

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”

At least I would if I were in California! But not on this frigid day here in Brooklyn.

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”

At least not until the Mermaid Parade comes around in three months or so!

The holiday and the unseasonable cold brings to mind the Easter spreads I used to make out in Long Beach, where every day was like a Seinfeld episode, except we were in Southern California and everybody was a gay Latino, except for me, and our one token Jewish person, beloved friend and yoga teacher, Rachel.

Since you could never move the car due to the parking shortage, we all got real close. We never kept the back doors locked, and we all had keys to each others cars so we could move them to save each other parking. A dozen people a day burst through the back door, and there was always somebody out in the yard screaming my name. I loved it.

Since my house doesn’t have central air, and California keeps getting hotter all the time, I cooked most everything out on the back porch with a propane grill that also had a burner. In the mornings I’d fry up some bacon and eggs to eat with our coffee. People popped over for various evening activities such as yoga night, American Idol Night, Sex in the City night, and we’d eat dinner and drink a couple bottles of wine, and sometimes practice yoga again around 2am. The lighter being omnipresent to ignite the…..the grill, I was particularly fond on any type of food or drink that could be set on fire.

A typical Easter meal would include peep kabobs and assorted pastel cocktails such as mimosas, pink panthers, bellinins, mangmosas, gauvinis, and non-red sangrias. I’ve already ODed on peeps for this season, both eating them and reading about them, and I get so bored with the same old thing being done in the same old way. As you know, I have a penchant for the fusion of things white trash and pretentious, due to their ability to cancel each other out and create something delicious in that space. The only person I’ve seen bring that perspective to peep-based sugarcraft is a (Los) Angelina with the wherewithall to roast her peeps with a crème brulee torch.

‘Nuf being said about that, I wanted to share some of my Easter cocktails with you. While doing a little research on some of these cocktail recipes, it came to my attention that sometimes my idea of what a drink should be is entirely different from other peoples. So let’s try them all and see what works best!

My Pink Panther

My pink panther is simply pouring a combination of pink grapefruit juice and pineapple juice into a glass and mixing it with champagne until I get the color I want, much like egg dyeing. For parties, I prefer cocktails that can be quickly and easily made while the hostess is tipsy herself, and not ones that take her away from her company. I find blenders to be conversation stoppers; however, when unwanted or boorish guests darken your door, a blended drink can save the day. The pulse setting effectively interrupts their tiresome comments, and you can always choose to send them to the store to get that essential ingredient you “forgot.”

Here are a couple other takes on the Pink Panther:

Gin-based Pink Panther (courtesy of drinkofthe week.com)

1 oz. Gin
3/4 oz. Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz. Creme de Cassis
3/4 oz. Orange Juice

Complex Pink Panther (courtesy of cocktail.com)

Combine ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and pour into a chilled martini or cocktail glass.
2 750 ml bottles pink Champagne
1 qt club soda
1 cup white dinner wine
1 qt raspberry sherbert
4 oz cherry liqueur
6 oz frozen pink lemonade concentrate
2 cups raspberries
ice block
fresh mint
Combine wine, sherbert, liqueur and lemonade concentrate (thawed) in a large pitcher or bowl. Stir. Add ice, Add raspberries and club soda. Stir gently. Keep chilled with ice block. Pour into punch cups and garnish with fresh mint. (Makes 38 four-ounce servings).

Malibu-based Pink Panther (courtesy of drinksmixer.com)

1/2 can pink lemonade
6 - 10 oz Malibu® coconut rum
1 1/2 oz whipped cream

Crush a hand full or two of ice into a blender, add the frozen pink lemonade and malibu rum, and blend for 30 seconds or until smooth-like consistensy. Add in your desired amount of whipped cream and blend further until smooth. Serve.

Since I’m a rum-lover, not much of a gin person, and because I like to keep things simple, I cotton to the Malibu based substitute, although needless to say I’d use Cool Whip instead of whipped cream. Sometimes when you’re making drinks for lots of people who are drunk anyway, and you're tipsy enough yourself that your really shouldn't being playing with knives, it is more appropriate to use a concentrate as a base, although whenever possible/sober I prefer to use fresh ingredients. In this case I’d make homemade pink lemonade, which is a whole other can of worms we can open on a warmer day. Suffice it to say I make lemonade with a cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, a cup of sugar, and however much more water it takes to fill up a half gallon jug, and then I throw in something like grenadine or cranberry juice to make it pink.

Wishing you Egg-cellent Cocktails and aBUNNYdant flaming peeps!

Music to Eat Fudge To!

At one point during my 11 years in corporate America, I worked in a fluorescently lit, windowless room half the size of a football field, filled with cubes with one foot high walls as far as you could see. Of the couple hundred people in that room, I was one of the few women, and probably the only person not wearing a French blue button down shirt and khaki pants. I refused to dress in drag no matter how much it was encouraged.

If we needed to communicate, we would email each other rather than walk over to each other’s desks. Since our cubes had no walls, all of our conversations would run together, so we communicated via jabber and email. I don’t know about everyone else, but the guy in the cube next to me and I were bored out of our minds. We were handling government contracts, which means you often get to impasses where you have to wait on the government, or for some higher level cog in the wheel to tell you what to do while waiting for the government, but you have to appear busy while doing this, which is hard. The year was 2001, and there wasn’t nearly as much to do on the internet as there is now. We worked our butts off appearing to be busy while doing nothing because we were not allowed to take action or initiative: we listened to music, we web-surfed, we sent emails.

Now thanks to modern technology, there’s wonderful stuff on the web to occupy people who have mind numbingly boring jobs and management they feel compelled to thwart. I recently met Paul Kontonis, whose company, For Your Imagination, brings truly entertaining content to the web. I haven’t had access to normal American television in about three years, but hear tell there’s hardly anything worth watching on it anyway. Every time I’ve attempted to watch iptv, I find nothing but amateur, wannabe tele-evangelists talking about the Lord. Since hardly a day goes by when at least one if not two people drop by our Washington Avenue headquarters to discuss this topic, (who can do it a lot better quite frankly) I saw no reason to go looking for it on the internet. But The Shitty Show Shoe reneweth my faith! It maketh me lie down in green pastures and restoreth my soul, (particularly after somebody tries to get me to sell it to them wholesale, and I need a laugh).

I look forward to perusing the wide variety of shows, both entertaining and informative. This Monday afternoon (the 24^th) from 1pm – 4pm Priscilla Ahn will perform live on LIVE@FYI. And I get to be in the studio audience! One time I got to watch a taping of the Dating Game out in LA, and this man periodically threw candy at the audience to keep them energized. I’m bringing some Brooklyn Fudge, and maybe they’ll let me throw it at the rest of the audience! What are you doing Monday afternoon? The same old boring old crap you can’t stand but do anyway because you don’t feel you have a choice?

Your body may be chained to a desk, but your mind doesn’t have to be! Join us for some music, entertainment, and a lifting of mental fog. If you don’t like what you do, or feel you have no choice in the matter, I strongly encourage you to reflect on that, because it can kill you. When I worked in corporate America, I received an email at least once a year that someone had dropped dead at their desk, and the last time that happened, it was a boy I used to travel with, who I’m sure was under 40, and had a wife and a new baby, and a new house. After that it didn’t make much sense forcing myself to spend so many hours doing something that wasn’t me no matter how lucrative it was, because it all catches up with you in the end, and all you have left are experiences and memories, and they best be good ones. Assumably, you will not be clutching your Blackberry on your deathbed, and as you gasp your last breath, you will probably not be regretting that you didn’t work more hours on something that ultimately meant nothing. The one thing worse than “damn, I wish I didn’t” is “damn, I wish I did.” Charlie O’Donnell graciously reminded me of that recently, as he does for many other people through Path101, a totally new approach to doing something for a living worth doing.

Fudge is in the Air! (I wish Spring were too)!

March 21st is supposedly the first day of spring, but I'm not going to bullshit you, as so many blogs and other media seem to be doing. It is colder than a witch's tit in a brass brassiere. According the Park Slope Weather Family, it is actually 33 degrees right now, but with the windchill it feels like 26, and Saturday, it appears we may have a heat wave, as the temperature rises to a balmy 46.

I am not a person who likes sub 60 degree weather, and it makes me much more irritable when it happens outside the months of January and February. On the bright side, it will probably be over for real in a month or so. Last year I angrily wore a puffer coat until April 19th, and then on the 20th everything changed. Everybody stopped wearing their ugly winter gear, and the mood seemed lighter and more hopeful. Although I realize we have a global warming problem, I still assume this tundrazation will finally end in a month or so, just like it did last year.

That said, there are many wonderful Spring and Easter events going on here in Brooklyn this weekend, but do wear a coat. As everyone knows, there are several egghunts going on in Prospect Park and one in DUMBO also. Coney Island opened last weekend, and the Dreamland Roller Rink is opening there this weekend.

Herein lies the only opportunity to excuse this outrageously cold weather. Because we are in frigid New York City attempting to be Springlike....you can hunt for eggs (just don't lick them, because you'll get your tongue stuck), and then you can go to Coney Island, ride the rides, go roller skating, and then you can go ice skating at Abe Star Rink at the Coney Island Board Walk (until it closes for the season on April 6). With the right wardrobe, you can tell Old Man Winter to go fudge himself and have yourself a grand old time.

As for me, as always, I'll be at Tom's Diner (782 Washington Avenue) in Prospect Heights, working the line, giving out nuggets of Brooklyn Fudge to people shivering in the cold.

Welcome Spring!

Do You Want to Know What Fudge Is? Do You Want Me to Show You?

Then come on down to Bidon Ville Coffee & Tea on Saturday (March 8th)! This Saturday I'll be doing a tasting there from 11am - 4pm, instead of my usual post at the Tom's Restaurant line in Prospect Heights.

I apologize for my blogging hiatus. I hate a stale blog.....but I hate stale fudge worse.....and if I have to choose between what I'm going to keep fresh, I have to put Brooklyn Fudge first and the Brooklyn Fudge blog second. Hopefully I'll be able to do both at the same time, if I can just stay put. I may make a rare trip to Queens on Sunday. My confectionary and organic cosmetics cohort, Gretta, AKA cupcake addict/advocate, has invited me to a cupcake meetup in her neighborhood (Astoria). That's awfully far north for me, but I do make exceptions for cupcake business. Her roomate is a boy from South Carolina.....and I always look forward to getting together with another out and proud Southerner up here in the big city. While most Southerners in this town are closeted, the South Carolinians never are, which is nothing compared to how they act in the South. I lived in Winston-Salem, NC as a teenager, and still remember the convoys of South Carolinians with their gamecock flags that would dominate the roads whenever Wake Forest played South Carolina. South Carolinians have a need to express themselves, and Lord help you if you encourage them. I hate to sound like a cliche, but I can promise you two things about this Sunday: Cool Whip will be involved and "Steel Magnolias" will be repeatedly quoted.

I may bring Angel with a Dirty Face (the Brooklyn Fudge cupcake) to Queens. It's a white cupcake topped with Brooklyn Fudge ganache. I think I'll bring the Wasabi and Citrus versions; I call them Turning Japanese and Tangelina Jolie. As a matter of fact, I may bring them to Bidon Ville too.

Bidon Ville is located at 47 Willoughby Avenue, in beautiful Fort Greene, Brooklyn (the 'hood where I currently live). I'll see you there!