Happy Coffee

For Mother's Day this year Tim got me a Keurig coffee maker, with an auto on timer to help me start my days with two kids.  I have spent the last several months taste testing several coffees and found a few I like.  Until about two weeks ago, I found San Francisco Bay Coffee company through Amazon.com.

I was so thrilled to find these coffee pods, there is no plastic cup on them!!!  So much less waste!  I was sick about throwing away those little plastic cups everyday and now I don't have to.  I chose to sign up for Amazon's subscribe and save program, where they automatically charge your credit card and ship your item on a regular basis, this brought the cost of the coffee pods down to 41 cents each, the cheapest I have found anywhere.  One more reason I decided to get this coffee with out taste testing it was that for every 1 or 2 star review on Amazon the San Francisco Bay Coffee company personally responded and offered a resolution to any possible problem with the product.

view of the bottom of the coffee pod

I subscribed to the French Roast flavor of coffee, because it is considered their dark roast.  San Francisco Bay offers 2 other varieties of coffee, I personally like coffee you can stand a fork up in.  Their French Roast coffee delivers!  I love the strong dark taste, and it's perfect with a little milk and a bit of agave nectar.  It has an amazingly rich smell, and it goes down smooth and easy. I'm very happy we found these coffee pods and I'm also glad someone thought to get rid of those plastic cups.  The only drawback to these pods is they need to be stored in an air tight container to maintain freshness, I put them in a Rubbermaid storage container I had laying around.  The good part of that is they send you 3 vacuum sealed bags of 12 pods each so you are only storing at most 12 pods at a time the others can stay in their factory bags until you are ready to open them.

P. S. My aunt just let me know that Costco in Oregon carries these pods in a box of 80 for $26.00, or 32 cents/each.

My Breakfast, Wild Flours Bakeshop

I wanted to type a nice post about my breakfast this morning, instead I'm surrounded by two adorable children who want all of my attention.  I've managed to balance Ellis on my lap and the computer on my legs with Ceci on the other side begging for wonder woman videos on youtube.  I bargained a few minutes away from wonder woman videos to write this note about my delicious coffee cake from Wild Flours Bakery in Huntington Village.   We stopped by last night on our way home from haircuts and picked up some cupcakes and breakfast treats.

First of all, it's a dedicated gluten free bakery that does not use any nuts!  They are also dairy free for those who need it.  I love walking in the door and telling Ceci she can pick anything she wants in the cases, that is a huge mommy moment for me, considering most of the time I have to negotiate with her to select one or two items that are close to safe for her.  Ceci picked a gorgeous vanilla cupcake topped with chocolate mousse frosting and some pink sprinkles, I chose a cookies and cream cupcake for dessert last night, and a coffee cake for breakfast today.  We were too greedy to stop and take pictures of the cupcakes, they were so yummy we gobbled them up.

All the cake components of our treats were so light and airy and perfectly sweet.  The vanilla cake is almost to delicate to hold up the sinfully rich chocolate mousse frosting, but somehow gets the job done in the most delicious of ways!  My cupcake had a light chocolate cake, again light, airy, and delicate, with the perfect flavor of chocolate.   The icing on my cupcake was more of a ganache than a frosting which I suspect comes from the lack of dairy, and was a bit purpley-grey from the cookie bits being blended into it.  Now ask me if I was bothered by any of those issues after the first bite, my answer is NOPE!  I ate the whole thing!  This morning I got the joy of a beautiful coffee cake that I did not have to make.  The topping was so crumbly, with the perfect balance of sweetness and cinnamon, on top of the again, delicate, airy and sweet, dry cake.  I loved it!

Maybe I'm glad it's a bit of a hike to the bakery, so I can save it for when I really want to go, otherwise I would weigh a million pounds.  Everything is always yummy there and it is so hard to choose just a few treats when we are at the counter.  As a person who has been gluten free all my life, there is such a beautiful happiness seeing an entire bakery case full of treats that are totally safe for me to eat.  I said it earlier, but it's worth repeating, taking Ceci into a bakery where everything is safe for her to eat, makes my heart so happy, seeing the huge smile on her face as she runs to the glass case and presses her tiny button nose against it to choose the most beautiful treat she can find.

We are so happy we have found Wild Flours Bakeshop!

Ok, back to Wonder Woman videos!