Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

We were walking back from an errand in town earlier this week and saw a huge red sign above a store on Folsom Street.

Huh? Seriously? ‘Coffee bar & boutique electronics.’ Just a block from work? Was it too good to be true? We went up and peered in the window, the door was closed and the window was fairly reflective so I couldn’t see in until my nose was practically pressed up against the glass and HELLO – cool dudes, coffee machine, bar stools, bags of Blue Bottle beans, coffee menu and hario rack. Yes!

We burst through the door and rather too exuberantly greeted the 2 guys inside. They’d just opened that weekend. It’s a very VERY cool open space inside where they’re going to showcase and sell high end audio equipment with a coffee bar to the side. The Mister’s eyes were bulging already, they didn’t have much equipment set up but I could just see him cogitating on where his next home theatre was coming from! Anyway, back to the coffee (and we’ve had several now) – consistently good, smooth, strong, good temperature and very well made. They’re very methodical and careful in their technique and each day we’ve gone in there has been a growing crowd of lads making coffee – they’re all in their training period. I hope they maintain this care as they mature.

It’s funny, The Mister reckons when they see me coming they bring out everyone to make the coffee!

Everyone is so friendly and interested to hear about Xero and Vend and they’re grateful to have some regulars so early on. I do feel bad for Eipcenter, but Elite’s coffee is so much better and a tad closer to the office. We encouraged them to get on Twitter and it was awesome to see one of their first tweets:

Elite Audio Cafe, 891 Folsom St, San Francisco, @eliteaudiocafe

Last night we had our little Xero Team US holiday party (more PC than saying Christmas) – we’re now up to 3 on staff! President Jamie surprised us by bringing Santa hats to the office and The Mister surprised me by agreeing to wear one!

Of course he couldn’t take it off all night for fear of what his hair might look like underneath and even walked all the way home wearing it! We invited Kara and James (who manages the shared office space) along to dinner as well as a couple of new staff who’ve just been hired but don’t start until the New Year. It was a great evening of pizza, wine and ice-cream. It’s going to be a big year for us next year and it was great to go out as a group and all get on so well.

Without diplomacy or agenda, based on taste & consistency, these are the best places I’ve had coffee in 2011.

1. Ninth Street Espresso Chelsea Market – New York
2. Customs Brew Bar – Wellington
3. Blue Bottle Ferry – San Francisco
4. Stumptown Ace Hotel – New York
5. Blue Bottle Mint – San Francisco
6. Public Domain – Portland
7. RBC NYC – New York
8. People’s Garage – Wellington
9. Stumptown Roasters – Portland
10. Fuel Espresso Willis – Wellington

Received a photo of little Enrico wearing his San Francisco Xero knitting! What amazing colored gingery hair!

I just can’t figure out where to get short pastry from here. Actually I see no evidence that it actually exists so I don’t even know if you can buy it or it’s just that I’m looking in the wrong places. Actually flaky pastry is a bit of a challenge too – it comes in ready shaped large pie shells for making fruit pies, sometimes you can buy frozen 2 sheets of flat round flaky pastry that you can push into your own pie dish and claim homemade, but no such thing as flaky or short crust pie sheets. I know I know, I should really make my own, if the Orange Niece can do it, then I should be able to. However, no kitchen whiz here so if I attempted it, it would be totally by hand. I had brought the one remaining jar of 2010 Xmas fruit mince with us and really wanted to do some Christmas baking. With The Mister not being a fan of shortbread (but he’ll eat fermented fruit? go figure!) that left me with really wanting to make Xmas fruit mince pies. (Which you also can’t buy over here so no mini pies from Aro Bake for us this year!)

So I attempted it the pastry. Bought a rolling pin ’specially. Now we all know I’m not the most patient of cooks and this was probably my 3rd go at making pastry, totally by hand. I remained pretty calm actually and after wrapping it up in plastic to put in the fridge I took it into the lounge to show The Mister … as I was about to exclaim how proud I was of my efforts I realized I didn’t have any cookie cutters to make the little rounds! Had to scratch around the kitchen to find 2 things of slightly different sizes that would fit into the muffin tins … came up with the plastic lid off the cocoa and a wine glass – the first couple of attempts at rolling and cutting produced some raggedly thick rounds but I got better with practice! (Remembering Mother’s word to stop fiddling with the dough!)

I managed to squeeze out 18 rounds, with a fair amount of fiddling so expected the pastry to be quite hard and not very shortcake like at all.

Bit of faffing about and concern as to how long to cook them for in the gas oven but they turned out great! Didn’t last long after a few days of taking them to work for morning tea.

Yesterday I consulted the SF Best Coffee App to find somewhere new to try for coffee. With our Christmas shopping done, we still wanted to hang around town enjoying the Christmas spirit but didn’t really want to go to the shops – so we rode the BART out to the Mission to try Grand Coffee – great coffee pictures on their website and they use Four Barrel coffee.

I know many people rate the Mission but I just haven’t warmed to it. I guess I won’t be taken seriously as a real San Franciscan until I can say how much I love it – the quirky shops, independent retailers, happnin bars, street stalls, free spirits and great restaurants – right now I still feel quite unsafe going there and the streets have an interesting smell of urine and bulk packs of laundry detergent.

I thought we were lost when we were almost at the address and we were in the middle of fruit stalls in the street, 2 dollar shops and a Western store, when I saw the awning over a small window and door normally barricaded behind a metal security gate. Lovely.

We stepped into a tiny kiosk space – not what we expected at all. The barista station took up most of the space with a small bench and 3 stools for customers – except on this day it seemed to be full of staff who’d recently come off shift and were counting out their tips.

The coffee was well made, milk not expertly poured and it was too hot. But tasted OK.

We sat outside in the sun (the staff hadn’t moved by the time our individually crafted coffees were made) and watched the comings and goings – also discovered that the number 14 bus seemed to go into town every 5 minutes so we jumped on that for a ride back into the city. Bus rides are always interesting here – all manner of shopping and conversations.

Grand Coffee, 2663 Mission Street, San Francisco, @grandcoffeesf

We got it from a much smaller city lot than Bev and Dan’s tree, with a little water tray already attached – perfect for apartment living. It’s actually our first real Christmas tree. The Mister carried it home through town with lots of little kids squealing to their parents about the cute little tree.

We’ve decorated it orange and put it up in front of our window like everyone else has – I hope our neighbors can see it and enjoy looking at it as much as I do all of theirs out our window.

Can’t believe another year at Xero has rolled around – 4th December, my Xero anniversary – longest time I’ve worked in one place! Last year Jif & Larissa & I had morning tea together.

This year I made cupcakes for the office – my first cupcake baking experience here (they went down well with the office buddies, several of whom were Vend boys visiting from New Zealand who couldn’t resist Edmond’s banana cake in cupcake form) and I baked them in Santa Claus cupcake papers I’d been saving for a special occasion. I made The Mister stop work and have morning tea with me.

I was very surprised the next day to come out of a meeting to find a pink box on my desk, filled with mini cupcakes with orange frosting arranged by my boss in New Zealand – so lovely!

And finally, 5 years on with Xero and one of my dreams to be moved to an overseas post has come true! Very humbling to be trusted with such a core move for the company as we set about building a US team and breaking into such a big market. It’s pretty cool working here – I don’t get out of the office much (well, except for that rash of conferences in November) but with the 101 (freeway) just out the window and all the tech companies around San Francisco it certainly feels like we’re at the start of something big. It is strange not being in the Wellington office with all the people we’ve come to know over the last 5 years but we’re all so connected online and my job hasn’t really changed that much, that it just feels like carrying on as normal.

Now then, I wonder where I’ll be this time next year? New York perhaps?

Knowing how I like Christmas, Bev invited us out to their place this weekend to go Christmas tree shopping and trimming with them. We didn’t go out to a Christmas tree farm but to a big lot next to a Costco – just like on the movies! The pine smell was amazing when we got out of the car in a giant parking lot outside the supermarket and there were so many tied up trees to choose from. He took a bit of a risk getting me to choose – no idea what would fit into their house or what the tree would look like when untied – bit of a gamble picking which one so I just went for one that was huggable.

At a supermarket as giant as Costco the tree just got chucked into the shopping cart with everything else and wheeled through the checkout!

It only just fit into their house and after vacuuming all the dead needles out of it and cutting off the string (yes it exploded into The Mister’s face when the tight string was released!) it was onto decorating it. Apparently it is rather more giant than the ones they’ve had in previous years and I’m not living that down quickly!