Gratutitous pic of hot chili home fries, right out of the oven, for Sonia:
Happy Hour @ Home, Part 2
Continuing on our quest to collect as many local spirits as we can find, Amy and I picked up a bottle of this beautiful local vodka. Crater Lake vodka is produced by Bendistillery and has a smooth and light taste. And it is filtered through crushed volcanic rock!
-S
Steve's Coffee
Last weekend Amy and I took our dozenth trip up to Seattle this summer for a wedding-related event. This time it was a celebration of our friend Steve's nuptials to his adorable fiance, Doobie.
It was a wonderful time and we got to see a lot of our friends from college.
Since college, Steve has been immersing himself in the world of coffee. He's gone from regular coffee jerk to nationally recognized coffee roasting expert. (He's also got the world's best collection of photos of every first cup of coffee he's had for the last two years.)
Before we left for Seattle we picked up some of our favorite beans from Portland's Ristretto Roasters. When we returned we had a pound of Ecco Caffe beans that Steve had generously given us in exchange.
Neither Amy nor I are coffee experts, but we can certainly tell when an espresso shot is sweet or strong, caramelly or bitter. I'd have to say that the Northern Italian Roast Steve gave us was smooth but not too weak, with a very warm flavor. The coffee has a little better body than the Ristretto blends we've tried but is way more tame than the "ka-pow" local Stumptown beans.
Sauvie Island Bounty
We spent Saturday morning on Sauvie Island. Here, picking raspberries at Sauvie Island Farms. It was the end of the season, but we found plenty of ripe and juicy ones on the undersides of branches.
We brought home 26 pounds of fruit.
10 pounds of that, though, was the peaches alone. I now want to plant a peach tree.
These raspberries are slated for our Muffin of the Week, Raspberry-Cream Cheese Muffins. Yum. (Or, we might use the last of the marionberries. The rest have already been turned into a pie for a birthday potluck picnic Saturday night, and ice cream that was supposed to accompany said pie, but wasn't behaving like ice cream until today. Long story.)
