Thursday, April 22, 2004


patrick coston comes through

and this morning, the supernova of new york chocolate, patrick coston, dropped off some extra mini-biscotti for the scaa atlanta convention. omigod.

beautifully presented in sleek black boxes that could come from prada, he was so kind as to give me 2 flavors: vanilla-almond-fennel and chocolate hazelnut. they are simply ineffable. ineffable.

these are beyond biscotti, beyond cookies: amazing. the texture, the delicate crispiness, the perfect slender diagonal cut, the aroma, the pure flavors that so there, but not overwhelming. these are not the heavy, stiff, tooth-breaking, stale-tasting things usually passed off on you as biscotti.

on his way around town he described to me how his wedding & party favor business was taking off like roman candles; he's making wedding and event cakes as well, including some classic croquembouches.

could you imagine? a coston croquembouche? (for readers not up on the pastry thing, the croquembouche is the ultra-traditional french wedding cake.)

sometimes people deride it as a pile of sticky little cream puffs. but in coston's hands, imagine, just imagine! if he applied his concern for top artisanal quality, for modern but restrained flavors, for intriguing texture, to these pieces?

the thought alone makes me wobble. . .if you're having an event, you need coston's pastry, chocolates, and desserts. end of story.

waiting for me in atlanta already are also some highly-regarded biscotti so sweetly donated by oren himself. bccy regulars know how i feel about oren. . . oren. oren. oren.

and also david w. of matthew algie has offered biscotti, which i'll pick up at the elektra booth. so i'm very happy! i am no longer short biscotti for all my scaa consumer member track events this weekend at the conference.

last -- but far, far from least -- i'm also planning to connect with the ever-wonderful jim munson of dallis coffee. he has kindly arranged for the donation of chocolate buddhas for one of my events!

i just can't thank any of these people enough. my gratitude to them and thankfulness for their unstinting support of the scaa consumer member program is frankly boundless!

and while we're talking about chocolate: what is it about american puritanism that every enjoyable thing has be proclaimed "addictive?" i'm referring to the recent study of course that finds chocolate, pizza, etc. stimulates pleasure centers in the brain.

of course it does! all our emotions are registered in the brain! you know, to survive in a plain charles-darwin kinda way, creatures have to have drives. we have to have the desire to go do things: one of which is eat.

and to keep doing it, our body has to give us signals that cause us to repeat and look forward to this behavior. thus the pleasure. isn't this evolution 101?

i remember talking to an very old high-school friend of mine, evan gamble, who is now a famous nano-technologist and quantum computing kinda guy in california, about robots. he said to me, making robots do things of their own "free will" is going to be very hard; making a creative, self-directing robot that solves problems will be tough.

why? i asked. because what would motivate a robot? he answered. why would the robot want to do anything and not just conserve its power source?

on the other hand, i don't need much motivation at all to pick up a coston biscotti for my coffee. . . they are truly alluring!

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