Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

Fleet Week brought the navy to town. There was a big frigatey thing and an aircraft carrier parked outside our apartment in the habour for a week and quite a few airshows – the noise of the Blue Angels buzzing the city was very cool – F/A-18 Hornets. We got to see some of the fly-bys and aerobatics from our apartment but most of the activity was over the Big Orange Bridge.

On our bus ride out to Emmeryville to go to the movies on Sunday we were pleasantly surprised to come across this cafe on the edge of a suburban town house/apartment complex.

We were just walking passed to get to the pedestrian crossing when I saw a La Marzocco coffee machine inside and a sign advertising Ritual coffee. Too good to be true? Out here in the suburbs a cafe serving independent coffee? It did look a little like a Robert Harris cafe but the machine with tulip cups on top suggested they might make cappuccinos …

In we went for a cinnamon bun and 2 cappuccinos as a treat before the movie. Because you always have to pick up your own coffee from next to the coffee machine here, I made sure I was up there nice and early to see how the guy made the coffee. He used a nice clean basket, he timed his extraction, he was very careful with his small jug of milk and didn’t use a milk thermometer so he’d obviously received training from Ritual. Unfortunately it all went wrong when he poured the milk – he held the jug at a great height and in gushed the milk in. So it was rather bubbly and a little dirty tasting but the flavour was almost there. With a bit of refresher training he’ll probably make a decent cup. I might email Ritual and tell them

Black Diamond Cafe, 6399 Christie Ave. Ste. A, Emeryville, CA 94608

I’m not really one of those people who can easily let the day unfold, especially not Saturday – although I like the idea of just letting the day take you where it may I do like a certain amount of planned activity, just to be sure that things like coffee beans have been stocked given that our coffee bean suppliers aren’t open on a Sunday.

So yesterday while breakfasting at Gotham, I never thought my uttering ‘I feel like making cupcakes’ would lead to an entire day in the kitchen.

We were quite amazed at all the things on the go for just feeding the 2 of us!

We minced the fruit for the 2010 batch of Christmas fruit mince for pies at Christmas (well The Mister did & I handed him what needed to be minced!)

We made cupcakes – vanilla coffee cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting (I was horrified that the recipe called for 2kg (yes KG) icing sugar … we only had 400g … however having a preference for more cake than icing we were happy with the light coating and they still looked good … and tasted fantastic!)

We made some pork & plum stew invention served with (what I call) warmed coleslaw … not that it tastes like that, it’s something adapted from Mother … just without the fennel at The Mister’s request!