I should have seen it coming.  My body gave me warning signs all week.  I couldn’t wake up all week.  Getting out of bed felt like waking the dead.  I fell asleep in the middle of my acupuncture appointment on Thursday.  Yesterday, I started feeling weak and achy.  Last night it hit me.  I am sick.

This particular virus bypassed my sinuses almost completely and settled in directly in my chest.  My lungs hurt.  My throat is sore.  I am coughing.  I canceled all my activities for the day and I am drinking strong herbal infusions in the hopes of kicking this virus out of my lungs as quickly as possible.

Taking a step back for a moment, I spent Thursday and yesterday afternoon with several colleagues scouting out locations for a company event that I produce in July.  We bounced around in the cold and rain from building to building looking for just the right space.  One of the locations we looked at was a cooking school.  While it was not right for our event, the owner and host turned out to be a fascinating woman.  Annemarie Huste began her career in the United States as chef in 1963 as the personal chef to several wealthy families, including head chef to Jacqueline Kennedy.  She wrote five cookbooks, hosted several cooking programs and since 1970, she has taught a cooking school out of her home. 

I immediately decided to that hers were the next classes I would take.  In many ways, she reminded me of Lydie Marshall.  They both knew each other, both taught classes in New York in the same time frame.  They both teach classic European cooking (Lydie is French Provencal and Annemarie is German and French).  
 
However, our search for an event location carried on.  We looked at many places, finally ending out last visit at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel.  The epitome of elegance, the Waldorf Astoria is   one of the oldest and most beautiful hotels in New York.  It is home to many visiting dignitaries, uber-rich and ultra-famous.  Among many things, they offer a world-renowned high-tea service.

We traveled from floor to floor exploring large luxury suites and apartments in the hopes of finding a suitable location for our event.  We asked our account rep several questions that she could not answer right away, so the group of us made our way to the lobby for some tea (not high tea) while we waited. Our rep suggested that we try the Madelines as well.  Now, I love Madelines.  They are such simple, rich, elegant cookies that – when made well—they have a lovely citrus and butter flavor.

 Using the time to re-group and discuss the various locations we visited, we waited for our tea and cookies.  We must have satthere for about 20 minutes without service before the hostess of the waitress came over and apologized for the delay.  Moments later, these elaborate deserts made their way to our table.

“Please accept our apologies for your delay.  These are on the house,” she explained.

In front of us sat these magnificent chocolate domes with chestnut chocolate cake as a base topped with chocolate mousse, covered in ganache and decorated with gold leafing.  The cake base of this decadent delight was as light as the mousse with a richness that caused me to savor each bite. 

I looked over at my colleague Dave.  He handles our even set-up and break-down, basically the physical logistics of moving a lot of large items in, setting them up and then breaking them down at the end of the event.  Based on the nature of his job, you can imagine that Dave leans more toward the blue collar – rather than the white collar – side of the fence (Dave happened to be one of the colleagues in the elevator in my office holiday party blog).  So you can imagine how funny and out of place he looked in this somewhat stuffy, jacket and tie, ultra-elegant lobby eating fancy chocolate desserts and drinking tea with a group of ladies. 

Even Dave found these chocolate desserts to be absolutely outstanding!  The other two ladies from our PR Agency, Janine and Janet slowly devoured these delectable desserts with us before we made our way back out into the freezing rain.