Rose Buds

      The rose buds order arrived in time to decorate our rose tea infused chocolates. Only, instead of rose buds our supplier had packed rose hips -  a whole bunch of them! Even though they both come from the same plant, except for the first word these two have nothing in common in terms of culinary taste. We have no use for the misplaced rose hips but our parents would welcome a year's supply of rose hip tea. Instead, we headed to Chinatown in search of rose buds. Our final destination? - a much needed scrub treatment in a Korean spa to shed our chocolate-infused skin. We escaped a few jay walking tickets and faced a few dozen raised eye brows as we hopped from store to store trying to describe the limited English speaking Chinese store staff a rose bud in a combination of words and pantomime. We found it - rose buds with lovely pink and red colored petals Chinese women drink as a healthy infusion. We add them to black tea along with cardamom, cinnamon, orange peel and other spices to create our own blend of tea to infuse our chocolates with. Next we head to Koreatown just in time to subject ourselves to the most rigorous scrubbing our bodies had seen since our mother's gave us a rub-a-dub-dub in our baby tubs nearly a century ago. It's hard to tell what percentage of our shed skin contained the dark chocolate that had made its way through our bloodstream and skin pores, but it was clear from our before and after weight that at least a few pounds of our collective skin had gone down the drain. Renewed and a few pounds lighter we finished our Orient-inspired retreat with a sushi lunch. We now understand the secret behind Asian women's glowing skin - rose buds!