Chocolate 101
From basic ingredients like tropical cacao beans, vanilla and sugar, candy companies, and dessert chefs around the world create the delicious, seductive substance known as chocolate. Depending on the exact ingredients or cooking process, chocolate can be created in countless forms and flavors to satisfy the tastes and cravings of "chocoholics" of every persuasion. So what are some of the most popular varieties of chocolate, and how do they differ from one another?
Jacques Torres is one of the world’s foremost chocolate experts. A French native who now lives in New York, Torres is an internationally celebrated pastry chef who has won countless awards and honors for his culinary artistry. Torres is also a frequent media guest, and entertains and informs dessert lovers with his own television series and his various cookbooks. Fans of his pastries and confections can now buy products directly from his state-of-the-art chocolate factory and shop. Here Torres gives us an introduction to several basic kinds of chocolate:
* Dark chocolate. According to Torres, dark chocolate, which is noticeably less sweet than other forms of chocolate, starts with a bitter paste of ground beans called cocoa liquor (not to be confused with an alcoholic drink). Cocoa butter is added to make the chocolate more fluid, and then sugar and real vanilla to add sweetness and flavor. Cheaper chocolate will contain vanillin rather than the pure form.
* Milk chocolate. If milk powder is then added, the resulting product will be milk chocolate, which is the most popular kind of eating chocolate in the world. The vast majority of chocolate bars and treats are made with milk chocolate.
* White chocolate. If you take milk chocolate and remove all the cocoa liquor, you get white chocolate, which is sweet and rich and has a dairy taste that is much farther removed from the original beans.
* A global treat. According to Torres, chocolate comes from all over the world. The beans themselves are grown in paces as varied as the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. From there the beans are turned into chocolate in kitchens and factories around the globe. To find out which type of chocolate is best for your taste buds, start sampling different kinds today!
Fine Living.com for more...
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Australia Day
In 1818, January 26 became an official holiday, marking the 30th anniversary of British settlement in Australia. Australia became a sovereign nation, it became the national holiday known as Australia Day. In modern times, Australia Day serves both as a day of celebration for the founding of the white British settlement, and as a day of mourning for the Aborigines who gradually had their land taken away as white colonization spread across the continent.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
MY ARTFIRE STUDIO...FEEL FREE TO BROWSE
Abstract drawings and acrylic paintings on stretched canvas. Some 34" x 26".
www.artfire.com.sullysee.
www.artfire.com.sullysee.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas Blessings To All
Today is Christmas Eve, a day to reunite and rekindle relationships with family and friends. This is such a special time, in so many ways. Nearing the end of another, entire year. How do you wish to remember this Christmas? So many fellow sojourners on this planet, in need of food and shelter. Let's all go and spend a few hours, a few dollars to help our fellow travelers, here on Mother Earth.
Thank you and so many Blessings, Cyn
Thank you and so many Blessings, Cyn
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Feng Shui Basics
We can't see it, but energy is constantly moving through our rooms, our world. Allow it to flow in a harmonious way.
Have you ever wondered why some places make you feel tense, while other places make you feel more relaxed or energized? Feng Shui (pronounced fung schwee), which means "wind and water," is the Chinese practice of using and balancing energy in all aspects of life.
Kartar Diamond, a certified consultant and instructor from the American Feng Shui Institute, explains some basic principles for creating harmony in your home.
* View each room separately: What works in one room might not work in another.
* Avoid extremes: You want spaces and rooms that are balanced. For example, rooms should not be too hot or too cold; ceilings should not be too high or too low; the room should not be too dark or too light. In other words, it should be just right for you.
* Go with the flow: Position furniture in a room so that the energy can flow through easily.
* Create conversation areas: It's not necessary to leave wide-open spaces within a room. Create areas that encourage and nurture conversation, comfort and a feeling of welcome and warmth.
K. Diamond
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Have you ever wondered why some places make you feel tense, while other places make you feel more relaxed or energized? Feng Shui (pronounced fung schwee), which means "wind and water," is the Chinese practice of using and balancing energy in all aspects of life.
Kartar Diamond, a certified consultant and instructor from the American Feng Shui Institute, explains some basic principles for creating harmony in your home.
* View each room separately: What works in one room might not work in another.
* Avoid extremes: You want spaces and rooms that are balanced. For example, rooms should not be too hot or too cold; ceilings should not be too high or too low; the room should not be too dark or too light. In other words, it should be just right for you.
* Go with the flow: Position furniture in a room so that the energy can flow through easily.
* Create conversation areas: It's not necessary to leave wide-open spaces within a room. Create areas that encourage and nurture conversation, comfort and a feeling of welcome and warmth.
K. Diamond
Home | About Us | Questions | Advertising | Site Map | NEW Privacy
Fine Living Feng Shui
A Feng Shui compass is one tool used in determining a structure's energy balance.
Feng Shui Foundations
Many people seem to feel tense or uncomfortable in certain buildings or places, but perfectly relaxed and content in other locations. A complex and ancient Chinese practice called Feng Shui (pronounced fung schwee) offers explanations and solutions to this phenomenon. Feng Shui, which literally means wind and water, is becoming increasingly popular in many areas of the Unites States, and has been called "astrology for architecture." What is this unique eastern practice really all about?
Kartar Diamond is a certified consultant and instructor from the American Feng Shui Institute. She teaches weekly classes in Southern California and owns Feng Shui Solutions, a consulting business specializing in existing and new residential and commercial property. Here she offers a primer for those seeking to understand the basic foundations of Feng Shui:
* A house's energy: Feng Shui is all about energy, and a Feng Shui consultant's job is to determine the energy characteristics of a building and the effects on the occupants. Calculations are made, and then remedies, designed to balance energy to positive effect, are recommended.
* Time of building: Since certain energies get created as soon as the foundation is poured, an essential element in Feng Shui is determining when a house or structure was built. Once the exact date is determined, this number is used in complex math formulas that also include the structure's magnetic direction, as measured by a special Feng Shui compass.
* Shape and design: Feng Shui adherents believe that a home's shape and design can determine the emotional states of the people who spend time there. Some houses need to be more yang, or lively, while others need to be more yin, or calm. According to Diamond, a home that has good Feng Shui can benefit just about anybody.
© 2008 Scripps Networks, LLC. All rights reserved.
Feng Shui Foundations
Many people seem to feel tense or uncomfortable in certain buildings or places, but perfectly relaxed and content in other locations. A complex and ancient Chinese practice called Feng Shui (pronounced fung schwee) offers explanations and solutions to this phenomenon. Feng Shui, which literally means wind and water, is becoming increasingly popular in many areas of the Unites States, and has been called "astrology for architecture." What is this unique eastern practice really all about?
Kartar Diamond is a certified consultant and instructor from the American Feng Shui Institute. She teaches weekly classes in Southern California and owns Feng Shui Solutions, a consulting business specializing in existing and new residential and commercial property. Here she offers a primer for those seeking to understand the basic foundations of Feng Shui:
* A house's energy: Feng Shui is all about energy, and a Feng Shui consultant's job is to determine the energy characteristics of a building and the effects on the occupants. Calculations are made, and then remedies, designed to balance energy to positive effect, are recommended.
* Time of building: Since certain energies get created as soon as the foundation is poured, an essential element in Feng Shui is determining when a house or structure was built. Once the exact date is determined, this number is used in complex math formulas that also include the structure's magnetic direction, as measured by a special Feng Shui compass.
* Shape and design: Feng Shui adherents believe that a home's shape and design can determine the emotional states of the people who spend time there. Some houses need to be more yang, or lively, while others need to be more yin, or calm. According to Diamond, a home that has good Feng Shui can benefit just about anybody.
© 2008 Scripps Networks, LLC. All rights reserved.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Happy Birthday Picasso
A Bit About Picasso
Realist and Surrealist Works.
During World War I, Picasso went to Rome, working as a designer with Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He met and married the dancer Olga Koklova (1887–1955). In a realist style, Picasso made several portraits of her (1917), of their son (for example, Paulo as Harlequin; 1924, Musée Picasso), and of numerous friends. In the early 1920s he did tranquil, neoclassical pictures of heavy, sculpturesque figures, an example being Three Women at the Spring (1921, Museum of Modern Art), and works inspired by mythology, such as The Pipes of Pan (1923, Musée Picasso). At the same time, Picasso also created strange pictures of microcephalic bathers and violent convulsive portraits of women which are often taken to indicate the tension he experienced in his marriage. Although he stated he was not a surrealist, many of his pictures have a surreal and disturbing quality, as in Sleeping Woman in Armchair (1927, Private Collection, Brussels) and Seated Bather (1930, Museum of Modern Art).
Paintings of the Early 1930s.
Several cubist paintings of the early 1930s, stressing harmonious, curvilinear lines and expressing an underlying eroticism, reflect Picasso's pleasure with his newest love, Marie Thérèse Walter (1909?–77), who gave birth to their daughter Maïa in 1935. Marie Thérèse, frequently portrayed sleeping, also was the model for the famous Girl Before a Mirror (1932, Museum of Modern Art). In 1935 Picasso made the etching Minotauromachy, a major work combining his minotaur and bullfight themes; in it the disemboweled horse, as well as the bull, prefigure the imagery of Guernica, a mural often called the most important single work of the 20th century.
Guernica.
Picasso was moved to paint the huge mural Guernica shortly after German planes, acting on orders from Spain's authoritarian leader, Francisco Franco, bombarded the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Completed in less than two months, Guernica was hung in the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition of 1937. The painting does not portray the event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage by employing such imagery as the bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and dead child, a woman trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a figure leaning from a window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its symbolism, and the impossibility of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the horrors of war. It was on extended loan at the Museum of Modern Art from 1939 until 1981, when it was returned to Spain at Madrid's Prado Museum. In 1992 the work was moved to the city's new museum of 20th-century art, the Reina Sofia Art Center. Dora Maar (1907–97), Picasso's next companion to be portrayed, took photographs of Guernica while the work was in progress.
World War II and After.
Picasso's palette grew somber with the onset of World War II, and death is the subject of numerous works—for example, Still Life with Steer's Skull (1942, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany) and The Charnel House (1945, Museum of Modern Art). A new liaison was formed during the 1940s with the painter Françoise Gilot (1921– ), who bore him two children, Claude (1947– ) and Paloma (1949– ); they appear in many works that recapitulate his earlier styles. The last of Picasso's companions to be portrayed was Jacqueline Roque (1926–86), whom he met in 1953 and married in 1961. He then spent much of his time in southern France.
Late Works—Recapitulation.
Many of Picasso's later pictures were based on works by great masters of the past—Diego Velázquez, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, and Édouard Manet. In addition to painting he worked in various media, making hundreds of lithographs in the renowned Paris graphics workshop, Atelier Mourlot. Ceramics also engaged his interest, and in 1947, in Vallauris, he produced nearly 2000 pieces. Important sculptures were also done during this time: Man with Sheep (1944, Philadelphia Museum of Art), an over life-size bronze, emanates peace and hope, and She-Goat (1950, Museum of Modern Art), a bronze cast from an assemblage of flowerpots, a wicker basket, and other diverse materials, is humorously charming. In 1964 Picasso completed a welded steel maquette (model) for the 18.3-m (60-ft) sculpture Head of a Woman (unveiled in 1967), for Chicago's Civic Center. In 1968, during a seven-month period, he created an amazing series of 347 engravings, restating earlier themes: the circus, the bullfight, the theater, and lovemaking.
Picasso died in his villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie near Mougins on April 8, 1973.
Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work was exhibited on countless occasions. Most unusual, however, was the 1971 exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris, honoring him on his 90th birthday; until then, living artists had not been shown there. In 1980 a retrospective showing of his work, including pieces from collections around the world, was held at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1985 the Musée Picasso opened in the restored 17th-century Hôtel Salé in Paris. It contains the world's largest collection of his works and his private art collection. M.V., MICHELE VISHNY, M.A., Ph.D.
History.com
Realist and Surrealist Works.
During World War I, Picasso went to Rome, working as a designer with Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He met and married the dancer Olga Koklova (1887–1955). In a realist style, Picasso made several portraits of her (1917), of their son (for example, Paulo as Harlequin; 1924, Musée Picasso), and of numerous friends. In the early 1920s he did tranquil, neoclassical pictures of heavy, sculpturesque figures, an example being Three Women at the Spring (1921, Museum of Modern Art), and works inspired by mythology, such as The Pipes of Pan (1923, Musée Picasso). At the same time, Picasso also created strange pictures of microcephalic bathers and violent convulsive portraits of women which are often taken to indicate the tension he experienced in his marriage. Although he stated he was not a surrealist, many of his pictures have a surreal and disturbing quality, as in Sleeping Woman in Armchair (1927, Private Collection, Brussels) and Seated Bather (1930, Museum of Modern Art).
Paintings of the Early 1930s.
Several cubist paintings of the early 1930s, stressing harmonious, curvilinear lines and expressing an underlying eroticism, reflect Picasso's pleasure with his newest love, Marie Thérèse Walter (1909?–77), who gave birth to their daughter Maïa in 1935. Marie Thérèse, frequently portrayed sleeping, also was the model for the famous Girl Before a Mirror (1932, Museum of Modern Art). In 1935 Picasso made the etching Minotauromachy, a major work combining his minotaur and bullfight themes; in it the disemboweled horse, as well as the bull, prefigure the imagery of Guernica, a mural often called the most important single work of the 20th century.
Guernica.
Picasso was moved to paint the huge mural Guernica shortly after German planes, acting on orders from Spain's authoritarian leader, Francisco Franco, bombarded the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Completed in less than two months, Guernica was hung in the Spanish Pavilion of the Paris International Exposition of 1937. The painting does not portray the event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage by employing such imagery as the bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and dead child, a woman trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a figure leaning from a window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its symbolism, and the impossibility of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the horrors of war. It was on extended loan at the Museum of Modern Art from 1939 until 1981, when it was returned to Spain at Madrid's Prado Museum. In 1992 the work was moved to the city's new museum of 20th-century art, the Reina Sofia Art Center. Dora Maar (1907–97), Picasso's next companion to be portrayed, took photographs of Guernica while the work was in progress.
World War II and After.
Picasso's palette grew somber with the onset of World War II, and death is the subject of numerous works—for example, Still Life with Steer's Skull (1942, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany) and The Charnel House (1945, Museum of Modern Art). A new liaison was formed during the 1940s with the painter Françoise Gilot (1921– ), who bore him two children, Claude (1947– ) and Paloma (1949– ); they appear in many works that recapitulate his earlier styles. The last of Picasso's companions to be portrayed was Jacqueline Roque (1926–86), whom he met in 1953 and married in 1961. He then spent much of his time in southern France.
Late Works—Recapitulation.
Many of Picasso's later pictures were based on works by great masters of the past—Diego Velázquez, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Delacroix, and Édouard Manet. In addition to painting he worked in various media, making hundreds of lithographs in the renowned Paris graphics workshop, Atelier Mourlot. Ceramics also engaged his interest, and in 1947, in Vallauris, he produced nearly 2000 pieces. Important sculptures were also done during this time: Man with Sheep (1944, Philadelphia Museum of Art), an over life-size bronze, emanates peace and hope, and She-Goat (1950, Museum of Modern Art), a bronze cast from an assemblage of flowerpots, a wicker basket, and other diverse materials, is humorously charming. In 1964 Picasso completed a welded steel maquette (model) for the 18.3-m (60-ft) sculpture Head of a Woman (unveiled in 1967), for Chicago's Civic Center. In 1968, during a seven-month period, he created an amazing series of 347 engravings, restating earlier themes: the circus, the bullfight, the theater, and lovemaking.
Picasso died in his villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie near Mougins on April 8, 1973.
Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work was exhibited on countless occasions. Most unusual, however, was the 1971 exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris, honoring him on his 90th birthday; until then, living artists had not been shown there. In 1980 a retrospective showing of his work, including pieces from collections around the world, was held at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1985 the Musée Picasso opened in the restored 17th-century Hôtel Salé in Paris. It contains the world's largest collection of his works and his private art collection. M.V., MICHELE VISHNY, M.A., Ph.D.
History.com
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