chocolates, 40 years of noguchi, cherry blossom tea

I have a newfound love for chocolate. Truly my taste buds have changed - I used to not care for it. I was walking through my neighborhood on Valentines Day and noticed a small line outside of a shop I had never noticed before - Borough Chocolates. I immediately fell in love and have since stopped in many times for truffles of different flavors. I wrote about the chocolate shop (here) immediately upon discovering it, and one of my fab Substack readers forwarded the message to the owner (Jessica) and put us in touch. I of course became slightly obsessed- she makes chocolate oysters, chocolate swans, hand paints her truffles, and did a chocolate collaboration with that perfume brand, Régime des Fleurs, which has led me to actually smell the perfume and desire it versus just admire the bottle and desire it. I also love that Jessica has this photo of her grandparents at Versailles hanging behind the register.

For Mother’s Day, we did a sweet collaboration - she made four chocolates with four Masha Teas - earl grey, juniper, wild rose, and hojicha. Available in her Greenpoint shop starting tomorrow.

Also, this weekend is a celebration of 40 years of the Noguchi Museum. They asked me to develop a custom tea blend to commemorate the occasion. I will share more of the blend and the thought process behind it next week, after the fact, but one element that I’m really excited about is these cherry blossoms which I sourced in Kamiyama, Tokushima in Japanese mountains with the help of a florist that I met last time I was in Tokyo. I am blending them with cherry blossoms sourced from Washington State as a part of the tea. I will let you know next week if there is any left - if you know that you’ll want some, please let me know :)

Last weekend, I had Saturday afternoon to myself and was going to use it to work on my book. BUT I just honestly really, truly, deeply needed to rest. So I watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, then Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, and then The Wolf of Wall Street (lol - my husband never wants to watch Leonardo DiCaprio movies and I realized I needed to take advantage of the opportunity) - all three of these movies have beautiful tea scenes or references, each different than the last. I tried without success to reach out to someone at the Criterion Collection about doing a tea in movies series - I guess it wouldn’t narrow things down very much - but tea sets are the ultimate prop and you’ll see teapots or mentions of tea casually in there in so many different types of movies. To return from this digression - the market today was SO beautiful. When I lived in Oregon, people would talk about fair weather cyclists (people who only biked when it was nice out vs during rainy season) that was me. The fair-weather market goers are really coming out now, and I don’t blame them.