Shopping – by Gary Smolker

     

The Shopping Experience

All Women and some Men like to shop.

Many men who like to shop do not want to or like to shop with a woman.

Each of the photographs above were taken by me in June, 2017, while I was in different shopping venues.

The purses shown above were photographed by me while I was in the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California, USA.

The eatable chocolate shoes shown above were photographed by me while I was in an Alitalia terminal in the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome, Italy.

The bottom set of pictures are photographs I took near the Merry-Go-Round in the South Coast Plaza.

The set of photographs are of  a “carrel” full of “animal shaped balloons.”

Parents purchase those animal shaped balloons for their children to “walk” and/or play with while their parents are shopping.

Useful Practical Knowledge

If you need to buy something, a very important question is: “Where is the best place to buy it, where is the best place to shop for it.”

Of course, the answer to that question depends upon what you are shopping for.

Where Is The Best Place in the World to Shop?

MEN, TAKE NOTE: WOMEN LIKE TO SHOP!

Women have a larger variety – a multitude – of good reasons to shop and to go shopping then men do.

In the modern world we live in, sometimes shopping is not solely/exclusively about trading money for goods.

My goal in writing this article is to spread understanding of the multitude of factors that women and men consider before they decide where to “go shopping” when their sole goal is not to buy a “generic” something for the best price.

MEN:

• It is a good idea to get along with women.
• If you understand why women go shopping you will have a better chance of getting along with them.
• Women do things for a reason.
• Do not ignore something staring you right in the face.
• That women like shopping is staring you right in the face.
• If you make a noticeable effort to understand why women in your life like to go shopping those women will more strongly believe it is a pleasure to know you.

MY ADVICE TO MEN: Think of shopping with a woman at a gorgeous venue that has eye opening mind stimulating merchandise for sale as being equivalent to going with a date to a top rate museum full or magnificent works of art and stunning artifacts.

Best of all: You get to enter this museum and experience one or more hours of enjoyable mind expanding learning and mental stimulation without paying an admission charge.

THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD TO SHOP

The issue discussed in this article is, “Where is the best place in the world to shop?

My criteria/parameters for choosing the best place in the world to shop are:

• I ask myself: (1) Where will you see the most interesting things in a span of one or two hours?
• I assume you will not be spending more than one or two hours in the shopping venue that is the best place in the world to shop.
• I also ask myself: (2) Which shopping venue has the highest percentage of the highest quality top-tier shops/stores/departments to go into or window shop?

In my opinion the best place in the world to shop, under those criteria, is in the terminals at the Aeroporto Leonardo Da Vicini Fiumicino… the best place to shop is in the airline terminals located in Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Rome.

I flew on Alitalia Airlines from Los Angeles International (LAX) to Rome Fiumicino (FCO) on May 20, 2017; during a stopover – before flying on to Sicily – I stayed in the Alitalia terminal which I found myself in after my plane landed for an approximately one hour thirty minute during a stopover before catching my connecting Alitalia flight to Catania Fontanarossa (CTA).

There are no direct flights from Los Angeles to Sicily.  To get to Sicily by commercial plane, one must first fly to Rome then catch another flight to Sicily.  Catania is a city in Sicily which has the airport I landed in when I first got to Sicily.

I was dazzled by the stores I saw as I walked through the Alitalia terminal(s) from the gate I deplaned at when I arrived in Rome from Los Angeles to the gate in the terminal from which my connecting flight to Catania Sicily boarded.

On my way back home, I flew from Rome Fiumicino (FCO) to Los Angeles International (LAX) on June 4, 2017 after a two hour forty minute stopover stay in the Alitalia terminal after my flight from Catania landed before boarding my direct Alitalia flight from Rome to Los Angeles.

During my two hour four minute stopover on  June 4, 2017 I visited several of the stores/shops located in the Alitalia terminal.

Based on comparing my recent first hand (window) shopping experiences in the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport on May 20 and June 4, 2017 with my shopping experiences in other major airports throughout the world, with my shopping experiences in major shopping centers/malls, and in world famous shopping venues throughout the world, it is my conclusion that if you have one or two hours to spend shopping the Alitalia terminals in the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Rome are the place to be.

Rolling Through My Head

Rolling through my head are memories of recent outstandingly pleasant shopping experiences, including many I had during the two weeks I was in Sicily from May 20 through June 4, 2017, and many I had while visiting the South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California a few days ago.

• On Monday, June 13, 2017, I spent four exceedingly pleasant hours window shopping, and also meeting with and talking to sales personnel in the South Coast Plaza (SCP) in Costa Mesa, California, and ultimately I purchased a gorgeous necklace for my daughter Judi.
• Just 11 days before that, on June 2, 2017, I was shopping in the Ortigia Sicilia shop in Noto Sicily.  I spent about 15 very pleasant minutes in that shop and purchased a puzzle depicting Noto [which I had the store send/ship to my daughter Terra in Massachusetts] and during that 15 minutes I also purchased oil perfume that I had shipped from the Ortigia Sicilia store to my office in Encino California to give to several women I work with.
• Below is a picture I took of the Noto Puzzle I sent to my daughter Terra.  Next to the picture of the Noto Puzzle I sent to my daughter are photographs of distinctive packaging used in that store – photographs of paper bags in which purchased merchandise is put in then carried out of the store. Next to the photographs of two paper bag packages are photographs of descriptive labels in the Ortigia Sicilia store which describe the perfumes displayed on shelves in that store. All the products purchased in that store can be directly taken out of the store by the purchaser or can be shipped worldwide.
•        
• I love chocolate.  Modica is known as the City of Chocolate in Sicily.  I spent several days in Modica.  I spent about 30 minutes in a Museum of Chocolate in Modica.  Below are photographs I took of posters posted in the Museum of Chocolate. Almost every other store on the main street in Modica sells a variety of chocolates. The most famous Chocolate manufacturer in Sicily is the Dolceria Bonajuto which is located on the main street in Modica Sicily at street address Corso Umberto I, N. 159, Modica.  I visited the Dolceria Bonajuto on May 29, 2017 and returned on May 30 and May 31.  Below are photographs I took of people outside the Dolceria Bonajuto taking samples of chocolate being served on a platter by the Bonajuto store.  While in the Dolceria Bonajuto I bought Chocolate Cardamom to give to women I work with in my office in Encino, California.  I spent about 10 minutes or less each time I visited the Dolceria Bonajuto. On May 29, 2017, just down the street from the Dolceria Bonajuto, at Corso Umberto I, 133, I discovered the most charming book store, Libreria Mondadori.  While in the Mondadori book store I purchased two books: “Le Ricette di ieri e di oggi” [“Recipes of yesterday and today”] and “Sweet Sicily.”  I love books and I love bookstores.  I spent about 30 or 45 minutes in the Libreria Mondadori book store the first time I was there and about 30 minutes each of the next two times I was in that book store. Below are photographs I took while I was inside the Libreria Mondadori.  The Libreria Mondadori is a great place to hang, a great place for browsing books written about many topics.  I find reading books “addictive” but don’t assume that people who read books are more tolerant or open minded than people who don’t.  The bottom photographs are a series of photographs I took in Libreria Mondadori.  The first photograph was taken by me after I had entered Libreria Mondadori while I was looking at a staircase leading up to the second floor. The second photograph was taken by me while looking up at one side of the second floor of Libreria Mondadori.  The third fourth fifth and sixth photographs were taken by me while I was on the second floor of Libreria Mondadori while looking towards the front door to Libreria Mondadori from the second floor.  On the second floor of Libreria Mondadori, in addition to books to browse or purchase, there are chairs and couches for one to sit on and tables for one to work on.
  
• 
  

The Best in the World

I am a firm believer in the value of personally seeing the best in the world of anything and of everything.

The pictures at the beginning of this article are the best in the world in different categories.

The Two Purses

Those purses are beautiful, but wrapping a stunning scarf around the handle of a purse is the work of genius.

The ladies working in the Sam Edelman store in South Coast Plaza on their own initiative chose scarves and wrapped the scarves they chose around the handles of those purses.

Eatable Chocolate Shoes

The eternal triangle is “women, chocolate and shoes.”

Whomever thought of making eatable chocolate shoes is a genius.

Animal Shaped Balloons

Children become impatient while shopping with their parents.

Whoever thought of “making” animals out of balloons that could be given to children while their parents are shopping is a genius.

Why Are the Alitalia Airline Terminals in the Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in Rome the Best Place in the World to Shop?

Below is a photograph of a ceramic bowl and a series of photographs of a container of cookies I took while “window shopping” in an airline terminal waiting to catch a connecting flight from Rome to Los Angeles after having flown on Alitalia from Catania Sicily to Rome Italy.

Photos taken by me in the Alitalia Airline Terminal in the Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport Rome on June 4, 2017.

I rest my case.

 

Gary S. Smolker, Fashion Blogger, Social Commentator, Movie Reviewer, Book Reviewer and Idea Exchanger
Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog
www.garysmolker.wordpress.com

Gary Smolker, Fashion Blogger and Social Commentator
Dude's Guide to Women's Shoes
www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com

 

Copyright © Gary Smolker, 2017 All Rights Reserved

Follow Me on Instagram @garyspassion

“Food, Sex, Chocolate and Mortality” – by Gary S. Smolker

Food, sex, chocolate and mortality are the four great givens of human existence.

Below are pictures of me cooking New Year Eve dinner on December 31, 2015.

Enhancing Pleasurable Activities

Cooking is fun, and eating is a social activity.

Eating chocolate is fun too.

Chocolate was a beverage of the elite known as the “Food of the Gods” during most of the thousands of years humans have been enjoying it.

Chocolate is manufactured from cacao.

An unknown Mexican Indian in the lowlands of Southern Mexico first turned cacao beans into the Food of the Gods.

Today, chocolate is the most famous Mexican food on Planet earth.

During 9/10th of its history, chocolate was drunk not eaten.

The caffeine, theobromine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine that chocolate contains makes it an anti-depressant and anti-stress agent, enhancing pleasurable activities, including making love.

Serotonin is a mood-lifting hormone produced naturally by the brain; phenylethylamine is similar to other mood changing brain chemicals.

Two of the above substances (caffeine and theobromine) comprising one to two percent by weight of the cacao are known to have physiological effects on humans.  These are the alkaloids (or, more technically, methylxanthines).

Alkaloids form salts when treated with acids and have physiological consequences on the animals that ingest them.  Humans pursue some of them with passion.

Theobromine, like all alkaloids, is a stimulant to the central nervous system.  Its specific talent is to dilate the blood vessels; it is also a diuretic, that is, it stimulates the flow of urine.

Caffeine is credited with lessening fatigue, enhancing the intellectual faculties, stimulating gastric secretions, and promoting urination.

Cacao is the source of the world’s first stimulating drink.

Chocolate was the first drink to introduce Europeans to the pleasures of alkaloid consumption.

By the way, chocolate, tea, and coffee only became widely available to the European public in the middle of the 17th century, albeit the first European encounter with cacao took place when Columbus, on his fourth and last voyage, came across a great Maya trading canoe with cacao beans amongst its cargo.

A very expensive modern chocolate product has been named Guanaja, the place where this happened.

Some women claim that as far as they know chocolate is a substitute for sex at Christmas, because of all the chocolate.

The Food of the Gods

During most of its existence chocolate has been a beverage of the elite, the aristocracy, royalty and the Church.

That remained the case until Europe’s Age of Reason where in England and other Protestant countries chocolate (and coffee) houses sprang up as meeting places and eventually clubs for nascent political parties.

The idea that coffee/hot cocoa deserves to be drunk in stylish surroundings is not new.

The original trendy cafe – in which coffee and pastry were paired for the first time – [Cafe Procope] opened its doors in Paris in 1675 on rue de Tournon.  A few years later it moved to the rue des Fosses Saint-Germain (today’s rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, where the establishment now the oldest continually functioning cafe in the world, can still be found at number 13.

When the Revolution brought down the Catholic and royal establishment in France, coffee and tea, – the favored hot drinks of the philosophes and salons of the Enlightenment – replaced drunk chocolate.

Tea, of course, is most enjoyable if one drinks their tea while eating a treat such as short cake with dark chocolate, or plain German dark chocolate or plain Belgium white chocolate or Dutch milk chocolate.

One must have chocolate with their tea.

That is to say, tea is most enjoyable with chocolate — one must eat chocolate while sipping their tea.

[Aside: If you are interested in biscuits, check out http://www.ibcfood.com]

At the end of the Age of Reason, the marquis de Sade, was a staunch “chocoholic” in spite of his wildly anti-establishment prose and actions.

The history of chocolate began thousands of years ago when unknown Mexican Indian (a member of the first civilization of the Americas – the Olmec – which existed from 1500 to 400 BC) first turned cacao beans into the “Food of the Gods”, chocolate.  This happened more than 3,000 years ago.

Among the Aztecs, cacao beans were used as money as well as foodstuff; chocolate was the beverage of choice of Aztec nobles and before them the Maya elite and later of the Jesuit clerics that came after Cortes’ conquest of Mexico.

 

Where and How the Tree that Bears Cacao Beans Grows

The tree that bears cacao beans/seeds is difficult to grow.

With few exceptions it refuses to bear fruit outside a band of 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the Equator.

It will not grow if temperatures fall below 60° F or 16° C and it demands year round moisture.

Pollination

The flowers produced on the cacao tree are pollinated exclusively by midges.

The ideal breeding ground for midges is the litter and mess natural to the rain forest floor.

Unless flowers on a cacao tree are pollinated they will not produce a pod containing cacao beans.

Growing cacao trees in well groomed plantations is counterproductive.

For that reason, the yield of cacao beans in huge modern well groomed neatly manicured cacao plantations from hundreds of flowering flowers on a single cacao tree is a disappointing one to three percent.

From Pollinated Flowers on a Cacao Tree to Hundreds of Thousands of Cacao Beans

Once pollinated, each flower on a cacao tree produces a large pod containing 40 to 50 cacao beans/seeds.

The pods take five months to ripen.

From Cacao Bean to Chocolate

Once a pod on a cacao tree is opened and its seeds/beans are extracted four steps must be taken to produce cacao nibs which are then ground into chocolate.

These are (1) fermentation, (2) drying, (3) roasting, and (4) winnowing.

During the first day of fermentation all sorts of chemical processes take place which rise the temperature of the beans; during fermentation, the adhering pulp becomes liquid and drains away.

Most importantly the seeds briefly germinate and soon thereafter are killed by the high temperature and increased acidity caused by fermentation of the seeds and pulp.

This must take place because ungerminated seeds/beans do not give a chocolate flavor to the finished product.

By the third day, the temperature of the mass of cacao beans stays between 45°C (113°F) and 50°C (122°F).  The mass of fermenting beans must stay at this temperature for several days after germination, for if it does not the “chocolate” will not taste like chocolate.

Once fermentation is completed, the cacao beans are dried.  Traditionally the cacao beans are dried on mats or trays left in the sun for one to two weeks, depending on the weather.

During the drying process the enzymatic action initiated by the fermentation process continues, and the beans lose more than half their weight.

After the beans are dry they are roasted for 70 to 115 minutes at temperatures of 99° – 104°C (210° – 219°F) for chocolate and 116° – 121°C (240° – 250°F) for cocoa powder.  This is absolutely necessary for development of flavor and aroma.

Due to chemical changes and loss of moisture during roasting, the nib becomes a darker brown in color, more friable, and less astringent.

After roasting, during the final step (winnowing), the thin shell is peeled off or otherwise removed.  The resulting nibs can then be ground into chocolate or cocoa powder.

Fat

Over half the weight of the cured, dried roasted nib is made up of fat.

The exact percentage of fat depends on the variety of cacao and growing conditions.

Besides fat, each cacao bean contains less than 10% by weight of protein and starch.

The remaining portion of the cacao bean (which contains hundreds of identified compounds) that provokes the many varied responses to chocolate.

Caffeine and theobromine make up 1 to 2 percent by weight of the cacao.

Fat obtained from the nibs by a mechanical process is called “cacao butter” or “cocoa butter.”

In addition to being used in the production of high-grade chocolate, cacao butter in used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

The cacao solids which are left after cacao butter is extracted are “cocoa.”

Chocolate connoisseurs are concerned with the percentage of cacao solids in the chocolate the consume.

“Junk chocolate” has only 15% cacao solids.

Really fine chocolate has up to 70% cacao solids.

The remaining composition being sugar, milk solids, and solid vegetable fat.

The valuable cacao butter is taken out and sold elsewhere.

Aside: A natural preference for sweetness is not acquired but built in: even newborns suck faster on sweetened liquids.]

Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate Is A Wonderful Double Chocolate Cocoa Concoction

I love the Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate served at my local IHOP Store in Encino, California at 5635 Ventura Blvd., Encino, CA 91436.

Below is a picture of Maria Sanchez enjoying a Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate and another one of me enjoying a Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate with Maria on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2016 at the Encino IHOP store.

 

 

Have you ever had toasted marshmallow hot chocolate?

If not, try it some time.

Men: Try having a huge cup of toasted marshmallow hot chocolate with a woman and find out what a pleasurable conversation you will have.

You and she will be smiling while you are drinking your huge cups of toasted marshmallow hot chocolate, and doing so will become a pleasant memory.

It ancient Maya civilization, after Maya kings and high nobles died, they were buried in tombs with chocolate drink to accompany them on their journey to the next world.

Copyright © 2015 and 2016 by Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved