The Chocolate Wars
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Let’s agree to agree: chocolate is delicious, and it’s also good for you. But, like all great love stories, this one has a twist: in order to reap any health benefits, the chocolate you eat has to be dark, dark, dark.
Here are some Real Facts paired with some Julie Facts about dark chocolate.
- Dark chocolate contains antioxidants and helps to lower blood pressure…but only in people of a certain age who already have mild to high blood pressure. I have pretty low blood pressure, and I like to think that’s because I have been eating chocolate all my life. I find that eating dark chocolate relaxes me and that’s why I always have some on my person. I also like to think that I am not “of a certain age” yet.
- If you eat the recommended 100-gram, 450 calorie chocolate bar
a day, you could significantly lower your blood pressure…and/or you could gain a lot of weight. Gaining weight might make you stressed out and, therefore, elevate your blood pressure. So don’t eat a whole chocolate bar every day, please, unless you are under medical supervision or unless you for some reason want to get chubby to fit back into your pregnancy jeans.
- Did you know that you cannot eat that dark chocolate with a glass of milk, because the milk actually counteracts the benefits? This is why I try to wash down my dark chocolate with a glass of red wine, thereby doubling my antioxidant intake and maximizing my chances of clean living. Not to brag, but I’m super healthy like that.
Chocolate makers read the science section of the New York Times just like we do, and so they know that we know that dark is the way to go. Ever since hearing that the average chocolate-eating public might start buying dark, these modern-day Willy Wonkas have been hard at work perfecting the taste of high performing, high-cocoa-percentage chocolates. If you’ve ever paid for items at a gourmet deli or Barnes and Noble, your eye has probably passed over the point-of-purchase displays of chocolate bars that whisper, “Buy me” and “Eat me.” You can even buy a chocolate bar while paying for your bras at Lord & Taylor, though I’m not sure why you’d want to. But you can! I bet you are a discriminating consumer like me, noting evidence of the artisanal chocolate bar craze, and wondering how the different brands stack up. Maybe you’ve even sampled a few.
If you don’t mind me asking, how fierce is your chocolate bar? Can you withstand 72% pure cacao? Do you like “intense dark chocolate,” as one 
Balducci’s bar says, or “really intense dark chocolate,” like another bar reads? What’s next after that, I wonder…holy hell chocolate? Crazy f*&%ing strong chocolate? We-dare-you-to-eat-this-and-talk-straight-afterwards chocolate? Some of these bars are downright scary.
So, to take the fear and the sting out of the morass of options, I would like to bring you the best of the bunch, in a very unscientific taste test. I have been conducting this hard work over the past few weeks, just in time for bathing suit season.
Godiva offers 3 dark options, a 72% plain, a 72% with almonds, and a 50% with sea salt, each $5.00. I’m a sucker for sea salt, so while I was buying some books at Barnes & Noble (a store loving re-named Nook & Godiva by my friend, comedienne/writer Karen Bergreen) I grabbed a bar. It was superyum. I now carry Godiva dark chocolate pearls in my handbag. (25 calories for 8 pieces!)
Vosges Haut Chocolate wishes you peace, love and chocolate with every bar and actually comes with instructions for “How to enjoy an exotic candy bar,” on the back label. The steps include “breathe, see, smell, snap,” and, finally, they let you “taste.” Still being a sucker for salt, I went for the Black Salt Caramel Bar. This bar should come with instructions saying not to eat it while driving a car because I ended up with caramel all over my hands and on the steering wheel. Weighing in at 70% cacao, this bar did have a “glossy shine,” to it, as the instructions suggest a good bar should, with a smooth and silky texture. Vosges has the most creative combinations out there. It would be fun to try a bunch of them with friends as an after dinner treat, instead of a more traditional dessert at a dinner party or BBQ. Break apart some bars!
Balducci’s makes several options that try to psyche you out with their sheer intensity. I found the 54% dark chocolate with salt to be a bit too salty, although the more I ate of it, the better it tasted. The “really intense” bars also come with pomegranate and raspberry flavoring. Balducci’s carries about 400 kinds of chocolate bars, though, so you can go nuts…or nut-free.
There are also several of what I’d call “Feel Good, Do Good” brands out there, including Sweetriot and Prestat. Both brands are committed to fair trade, helping farmers in Latin America and West Africa. The Prestat 71% Dark Chocolate English Mint Crunch has what I’d call a “grown up” flavor that I imagine British royalty enjoy. Sweetriot’s Pure 60% Dark Chocolate with Crunchy Nibs had a strong, earthy, bitter flavor that I can’t honestly say I liked, but maybe you will. Three stars. I had to wash that one down with some Godiva. Sweetriot also makes an 85% dark chocolate that I was too afraid to try.
My favorite dark chocolate treats are the Brookside fruit and dark chocolate pieces, which can be found at most health food markets. There are several flavors, from Gogi with Raspberry to Pomegranate and Acai. They are all delicious and they make me feel like I am eating fruit when I am definitely not. They come in a handy re-sealable baggie for snacking on-the-go.
So…where do you stand on The Chocolate Wars?
Columnist and blogger Julie Gerstenblatt writes with humor and candor about her life in Scarsdale, her friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia.
The Sandal Revolution
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The box arrived from Bloomingdale’s just as my husband, Brett, was walking out the door to attend a neighborhood meeting one evening. That’s bad timing, when the UPS guy comes face-to-face with one’s husband. The uniformed man stands at your doorstep, a guilty look on his face, as he hands over the goods. He knows the rules. He knows he’s supposed to drop the package when your husband is either a) at work, b) at the gym, or c) has left the house precisely eight minutes ago, but sometimes he screws up and gets caught. The husband looks at the return address on the box, sees the name of a clothing store like Bloomies, or an e-tailer like Gilt, or a supermegavirtualworld like Amazon, and shakes his head sadly at the UPS man. Dude, he thinks, You’re complicit in her schemes. I’m so disappointed in you.
Here’s what happened in our house.
“What’s in this box?” Brett said, stepping into the kitchen with the package. I could hear the tires of the UPS truck as they burned rubber up the street.
Now, there are lots of things a wife could say in response to this. I could have played dumb, saying, “I don’t know, let’s open it and find out!” I could have said, “Oh, nothing. Bloomingdale’s just likes me so much that sometimes they send me free stuff. Boh-ring.” I could have feigned sudden blindness, saying, “Box? What box? I don’t see anything…except spots…and now the world is tilting slightly…honey, put down that make-believe box and call 911!”
But, this time at least, I felt I had nothing to hide. Spring is here and I need new sandals. Desperately. Bloomingdale’s considers me 
part of their Friends and Family – they’re nicer than some of my blood relatives that way – and so I shopped with a 20% price reduction and free shipping.
“In this box, Brett, are two pairs of new sandals,” I said, pronouncing the sentence with pride.
“Two?”
“Yes, two. I need to try them on and see how they fit. I might even return one pair.” (Yeah, right.) My gaze met his straight on, daring him to challenge my need for spring footwear.
He shrugged and left the kitchen, heading out to his meeting.
I was free to open the package in peace.
The shoes were brand spanking new, with all the Styrofoam bits still attached and with thin pieces of tissue paper wrapped around the hardware buckles. No other woman’s feet had tarnished these shoes. They were so freshly picked from the store’s warehouse that they had never made it out on the floor. The scent of leather filled the kitchen. I breathed in and out deeply, feeling a Zen-like calm.
In front of me sat two beautiful specimens of this spring’s It shoe. Is it a platform? Sort of. Is it a wedge? Kinda. Is it a flat? Maybe. You may look at it and go, what the heck is that thing? And that is precisely why the fashion community has put their heads together to give this shoe a name. Readers, I’d like to present the newest in hybrid shoe luxury: the flatform.
The flatform is high like a platform and simultaneously flat like a ballet slipper. It’s a sandal revolution! In certain light, the flatform does seem kind of chunky and ugly, but once on the foot, it’s usually not. I urge you to try on a pair. Mine are simply divine.
I stepped into one pair – with cork platform bottoms and cognac suede straps – and strutted around my kitchen island. I am so tall in these shoes that my kitchen looked different to me. I suddenly understood how much more I would get out of life if I could see the world from the perspective of someone 4 inches taller. And then I realized that, with flatforms, I could always be that 5’6” person! And I could do it with free shipping! I was walking on cloud 9 and 4 inches.
Have you ever seen a woman wearing amazingly gorgeous heels or platforms that she can’t walk in? She looks like a duck, with butt angled out slightly, using her neck for balance. Well, I see these shoe victims all the time and think, oh, poor thing. She is not pulling off that look at all. Flatforms might just solve this insidious problem. In flatforms, you can be tall but not fowl.
I tried on the second pair – with a black woven rattan base and thin honey and black straps – and found that they were just as comfortable as the first, but slightly dressier. I instantly knew that I would be keeping both.
I will wear my new flatforms with walking shorts, and Capri pants, and skirts and dresses, and wide-leg jeans and skinny jeans.
Now that I can view the clothes in my closet from an entirely different angle, everything seems new again. Turns out, all I needed to update my spring and summer wardrobe were a few pairs of shoes. (OK, and maybe a cool belt and some fun jewelry that I’ll write about another time.)
Brett and the UPS man can breathe easy.
Viva la flatform!Columnist and blogger Julie Gerstenblatt writes with humor and candor about her life in Scarsdale, her friends and family, and the particular demands of motherhood and wifedom in modern-day suburbia.
Fox Meadow Tennis Club Announces Spring Junior Program
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The Fox Meadow Tennis Club at 14 Wayside Lane in Scarsdale announces their Spring Junior Tennis Program, open to all area residents. They offer three great ways for Scarsdale area Juniors to play tennis and sharpen their skills; all supervised by Head Tennis Professional, Gary Squires.
Match Play:
Mondays
April 23 - June 18 (except Memorial Day)
Play supervised competitive singles and doubles matches! Work on scoring, strategy, court etiquette, and sportsmanship.
Boys and Girls:
9 - 12 years 3:30-5:00 pm
13 - 18 years 5:00-6:30 pm
$175 (7 play dates)
Group Clinics:
Thursdays
April 26 - June 21
Clinics will include fun drills and games to develop strokes, footwork, and strategy.
Boys and Girls:
5 - 8 years 3:30-4:30 pm
9 - 12 years 4:30-5:30 pm
13 - 18 years 5:30-6:30 pm
$240 (8 clinics)
Personalized Clinics:
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays
April 24 - June 23
Are your juniors ready to bring their skills to the next level? Then opt for private individualized instruction designed to quickly elevate their game. (Contact Gary Squires for pricing)
To register, or for further details:
• Contact Gary Squires at 914-384-0336 or garysquires3@gmail.com
• Visit www.foxmeadowtennisclub.com/juniors
Winners Announced in the 43rd Annual Scarsdale 15K/4Mile Runs
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The weather was cool but dry for the Scarsdale 15K and 4 mile runs on Sunday April 1. The race began on Brewster Road and continued through Fox Meadow and Greenacres where streets were closed off to accommodate the runners and water was distributed along the way.
Participation was good, with 199 runners finishing the four-mile run and 149 completing the 15K. For the 1 mile Kids Fun Run, 65 children ages 12 and under turned out.
The Scarsdale 15K and 4 Mile runs were conducted by the Scarsdale Parks and Recreation Department and co-sponsored by the Scarsdale Antiques Running Club.
The Race is the longest running race in Westchester County.
In both races, awards were given to the overall male and female winners and for the first three finishers in the following male and female
For the 15K race, the overall male winner was Russell Cruz and the top male finisher from Scarsdale was James Pilchik. For the women, the overall female winner and first Scarsdale female finisher was Jana Trenk. In the 4-mile race, the men’s winner was Sherman Lau and the women were lead by Leota Branche.
A complete list of winners in all categories is available here.
Pictured at top: 4 Mile Race Start. Photos provided by the Scarsdale Recreation Department.
Maroon and White Celebrates Scarsdale Athletes
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The Maroon and White winter awards dinner was a big success at Lake Isle Country Club on Tuesday night March 6. About 660 parents, student athletes, coaches and administrators were on hand to celebrate the achievements of Scarsdale students in gymnastics, ice hockey, cheerleading, wrestling, basketball, swimming, track, skiing and bowling. Highlights of the season included the boys’ ice hockey team’s participation in the Section 1 finals and senior Jacob Berkowitz’s success at the state wrestling final in Albany where he placed second in his class.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was the absence of Lake Isle’s famous chicken parmesan dinner – this year, much to everyone’s surprise, the menu featured Chicken Milanese!
Congratulations to the athletes, Maroon and White Presidents Charlotte Carr and Liz Whitney as well as the entire board. Below please find photos of the graduating seniors and team records and individual awards. (pictured above: Senior Cheerleaders)
Here are the season's records for each team as well as individual awards from SHS Director of Athletics Robert Siracuse:
Boys¹ Basketball (6-13)
All-League: Greg Scacchi
Honorable Mention: Jack Hewitt
MVP: Greg Scacchi
Most Improved: Jack Hewitt
Casey Ferrone Memorial Award: Jeff Schwartz
Joseph Ades Memorial Award: Jordan Elkins
Girls¹ Basketball (10-9)
All-League: Shelby Zucker
All-Section Honorable Mention: Shelby Zucker
Boys¹ Bowling (53-45)
Girls¹ Bowling (34-57)
Cheerleading
UCA Nationals Qualifier
All-American: Lauren Wang
Gymnastics (1-7)
All-League: Sophie Bernstein
Honorable Mention: Emma Bernstein, Dannah Strauss
MVP: Emma Bernstein, Dannah Strauss
Most Improved: Caroline Kristof
Best Sportsmanship: Maya Pochiraju
Ice Hockey (15-9)
Section 1 Division 2 Finalists
All-League: Connor Wolfe
Honorable Mention: Hunter Jurman, James Nicholas
All-Section: Connor Wolfe
Section 1 Division 2 Coach of the Year: Jim Mancuso
Section 1 Conference 2 Coach of the Year: Jim Mancuso
Leading Scorer: Hunter Jurman
Most Improved: Stuart Hindmarch
POW Big Hits Award: Sam Blakley, Rob Burns
Best Defensive Defenseman: Rob Burns
Best Defensive Forward: Devon Schell
Bruce Black Award for Leadership: Travis Misarti, Will Seider
Peter Shaw Award: Ian Klein
Boys¹ Skiing (8-2)
All-League: Nick Brechtel, Jason Luski, Takane Shoji
MVP: Takane Shoji
Most Improved: Josh Winward
Best New Skier: Nick Brechtel
Dedication to Dryland: Dewan Thenmalai
Girls¹ Skiing (5-5)
All-League: Julia Mayer, Melanie Norman
MVP: Julia Mayer
Most Improved: Ali Whitney
Best New Skier: Maggie O¹Keefe
Dedication to Dryland: Melanie Norman
Boys¹ Swimming (10-0)
League, Division Champions
All-League: Michael Lu, Sivan Mehta, Matt Ginsberg, Carter McFarland,
Charlie McFarland, Daniel Needham, James Frehill, Evan Moretti
All-Section: Michael Lu, Daniel Needham
State Qualifiers: Daniel Needham, Charlie McFarland, Sivan Mehta, Michael
Lu, 400 freestyle relay (Sivan Mehta, Daniel Needham, Matt Ginsberg, Michael
Lu), 200 medley relay (Sivan Mehta, Charlie McFarland, Carter McFarland,
Michael Lu). Note: At states, Matt Ginsberg subbed in for Lu in the 200
medley relay, Carter McFarland for the 400 relay.
MVP: Michael Lu
Coaches Award: Austin Serling
Boys¹ Track & Field
All-League: 4x800-meter relay (Ben Newman, Eric Dobosh, Kazuya Seki, Nick
Chan)
All-County: Patrick Clarke (55-meter high hurdles)
Girls¹ Track & Field
All-League: Helen Clapp (3,000-meter), Lillian Foote (high jump)
All-County: Lillian Foote
All-Section: Lillian Foote
County, Class A, Section Champion: Lillian Foote (high jump)
State Qualifier: Lillian Foote
Wrestling (8-5)
All-league: Mikey Hodges, Joe Koshakow, Daniel Jureller, John Tambunting,
Jack Braun, Jacob Berkowitz, Chen Shen, Brian Hackel
All-Section: Jacob Berkowitz, Jack Braun, John Tambunting
All-State: Jacob Berkowitz
Section 1 Finalists: Jack Braun, John Tambunting
Section 1 Champion: Jacob Berkowitz (182 pounds)
State Finalist: Jacob Berkowitz
100 career wins: John Tambunting (117-31), Jacob Berkowitz (135-19)
MVP: Jack Braun (42-4; 82-20 three-year career), John Tambunting (39-6)
Most Improved: Daniel Jureller, Mikey Hodges
Most Outstanding: Jacob Berkowitz (51-3)
