Jones-ing for Coffee

Last year I served as first vice president of our nursery school. The position encompasses the smaller fundraisers during the school year versus the larger ones like the auction or carnival.  The difference is titrating your dose of insanity instead of getting an entire shot of crazy all at once.  Theoretically! It didn’t work out that way for me, I got an extra large dose of crazy every other week.

Our director and board gave me license to pursue fundraisers that reflect my interests.  Since we can’t sell cocktails as a fundraiser, a missed opportunity I say.  I fell back on my other obsession, COFFEE! I love coffee!  I think my stunted growth has nothing to do with my genetic inheritance and more to do with my rabid consumption of coffee in my late teens. Isn’t that when your huge growth spurt starts??  Certainly I can thank coffee for my Biology degree, my successful corporate career, and now my entire existence; since I can’t function much without it.  It’s not so much an addiction as a mutually satisfying marriage.

Enter Jones Coffee Roasters in Pasadena, a roasting house with their own family farm in Guatemala.  The first time I had Jones Coffee was the morning after a charity event.  My husband was brewing a sample pack that came with our gift bag.  I walked into the kitchen smelling sherry brewing with my coffee, sherry?  That got my interest!  It had a really heady, intense aroma that literally had me swooning.  Jones is located in a large warehouse where the roasting occurs. You can smell the coffee beans sending their aroma out to seduce and entice the entire population of Pasadena. Order a latte and  you get a rich and intensely smooth drink topped with a lovely heart image on top. The pastries are from Europane and on Fridays, handmade tamales that I would wrestle my blind, crippled grandmother for. But the coffee is why people come here, it’s just sublime. So when a friend told me that Jones sells coffee for fundraisers, I jumped at the chance. It was a tremendous success at our little nursery school. This year I am bringing the fundraiser to the elementary school. Oh, didn’t I tell you?????? I signed up for crazy again, yep! PTA, vice president, fundraising.

Let the crazy begin



Jones Coffee Roasters

Favorite Restaurants of 2010

Waterloo & City / Culver City

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Paul & I are contemplating where to go for dinner on our date night this Friday.  Lucky us, my parents have the girls for two days and nights so that we can indulge in some fine dining without breaking the bank. God, the cost of babysitting just kills us.  Should we indulge and go to Hatfield's?  We have been obsessing about Karen Hatfield's brown butter tart with nectarines for months and of course, the savory dishes are all to die for.  It just seems so extravagant after our Christmas and New Year in Cambria.  My favorite restaurant this year though has been Waterloo & City in Culver City.  It was the most exciting restaurant we ate at this year, even the girls loved very morsel of the chacuterie plate and squid ink pasta with chorizo.  Do we want to brave rush hour traffic from Pasadena to Culver City on  a Friday night?  Or we go to the Lazy Ox in downtown instead? It certainly is first runner up with the awesome farro risotto and braised lamb cheeks.  We love Little Tokyo and enjoy the vibrant communal feel of the Lazy Ox.  But then there's a new restaurant I want try in Silver Lake called Forage.  One of my favorites, Winnetka Farms, is their vegetable purveyor.  Hummm, decisions.

Paul has a rogue subscription to Los Angeles Magazine that he didn't pay for or subscribe to, but it's fun reading.  I glance through January's issue and the dining critic has his list of top three restaurants of 2010, all three of our top picks for this Friday.  He obviously has exquisite taste (o:
We'll probably end up in Silver Lake because I am up for something new in 2011.

What's your favorite restaurant this year?

Happy New Year!

It's hard not to embrace joy when you are surrounded by beauty.  We are in Cambria bringing in the new year with family and friends, in a dream vacation home high in the forest with a view of the ocean.  We hiked the Fiscalini Ranch trail yesterday before the rain came and had a delicious lunch at Robin's Restaurant in town.  The fog and rain came rolling in late last night and we woke to a New Year's day with light drizzle and then torrential rain.  All of it welcome in this beautiful vacation house called Chartwell, a serene retreat in the forest of Cambria.

In the midst of winter, the coastal bluffs still send out their blooms

May serenity and joy find you in the new year.

My Winter Garden

A post Christmas walk with Holly around the my garden and neighborhood brought us a a bounty of fresh blooms for a wintertime arrangement.  The persistent rain and hectic holiday schedule has kept me from the garden but the flowers are still blooming and we have red bell peppers, beets, carrots and green tomatoes on the plants.  It really is one of the wonderful things about living in Southern California.