Cuppa Joe Coffee is a local coffee bar that serves up some fine coffee. If you're tired of overroasted, chain style coffee joints, Cuppa Joe is a refreshing change. Their coffee is mellow, flavourful and they pride themselves on serving as recently roasted as possible beans.
Since they started their retail store, Gord and Robert (my friend Susan's husband!), the owners of Cuppa Joe, are now roasting their own beans and selling roasted coffee to other stores and eateries.
If you cook, you must have pots. My favourite pots for western style cooking are made by Paderno. I love these pots! They heat evenly and hold heat well. They don't drip after you pour something out of them. And the handles are welded on (versus being bolted on).
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today Mexico celebrates its victory at Puebla, Mexico on May 5, 1862.
I'm off to a friend's place for a Cinco de Mayo fiesta armed with a delicious Chicken in Mole Sauce courtesy of Gerardo, my co-worker! The recipe will be posted soon. In the meantime, you can try these Chicken in Mole Sauce recipes from Google.
The New Orleans Menu Daily which I discovered via the April 26 Pepper sauce Top Ten in Looka! is an amazing New Orleans food resource! It has New Orleans recipes, restaurants and explains Cajun cooking.
Someday, Barb and I will eat in New Orleans! Until then, anybody know of a good Cajun restaurant in Vancouver? If so, please let us know!
For Barb's birthday this year, we had a very small appetizer and dessert party with Barb's close friends from high school. She made this wonderful sausage appetizer:
I just spent the long weekend painting our place a sunny lemon yellow (the paint was actually called "lemon meringue"!). So I've got lemon on my mind. Coincidentally, this month's Gourmet (table of contents only, articles not available online yet!) features an article on lemon desserts.
One of my rules of thumb is that the more expensive the kitchen, the less it's actually cooked in. Most of the really good cooks that I know cook in very modest kitchens. Critics call books like La Varenne Pratique, "gastro-porn", I call articles like Kitchens of the Rich and Famous "cucina-porn" :-)However looking at articles like this is fun!
Two madeleines wrapped in almond paste and dusted with dark cocoa together form a little piece of heaven! The people at La Petite France, a bakery which just opened TODAY, call this a "patate" because it looks like a potato.
Since it just opened today, we can't review this place other than to say that it also has wonderful petit pain au chocolat and offers excellent looking breads, pastries, cakes, coffees and teas. Worth checking out if you are in the neighbourhood!