Look What I Did!

Every weekend I try to make latte art. Most weekends I have too much milk in the pitcher and I make something up---It was supposed to be a swan! See it? This past weekend I was making 3 cups of coffee instead of the usual 2.  I ran out of milk and had to steam more. Just the right amount of steamed milk was in the pitcher and this is what came out! Now, if only I knew how much was in the pitcher.

Rainy Sunday in Napa: Oxbow Public Market

It was rainy Sunday morning, so we spent some time indoors at the Oxbow Public Market.  I had sworn off these kind of places because they tend to be the same kind of stalls over and over again and I have trouble deciding what I want, but this was different.  Oxbow Market is small and each stall is different.

Tiffany and I bought specialty salts and spices at Whole Spice Company.

A very nice man at Tillerman Tea sold me 3 different kinds of Oolong.  He didn't look at me like I was nuts when I asked for Dong Ding Oolong--in fact he had many different choices.  Unfortunately they were out of green puerh tuo cha.  I would have bought one.  I could definitely work in a spice shop or a tea shop.

We had lunch from C Casa.  I had a taco with meat that tasted like tamale meat (beef of course) and Ross had a duck taco. I wasn't very hungry--still stuffed with lamb ragout and coffee cake.

Cupcakes at Kara's Cupcakes.  Ross and I split a passion fruit filled cupcake and Ross, Tiffany and I split a vanilla cupcake.  The vanilla frosting on the passion fruit cupcake was like buttah--no grainy sugar at all.  The vanilla cupcake had vanilla-bourbon frosting that was more like traditional butter cream and very flavorful.  I would have liked the buttah texture with the bourbon flavor.

I got a cappuccino from Ritual Coffee Roasters to go with the cupcakes.  Finally got that pretty coffee.  It was amazing to watch the guy pour these.  Ross's latte was pretty too.  I'm going to buy a different milk pitcher and practice making foam and pouring.  I want to be able to make a heart like this or a leaf one day.  Oh, and I had just bought some vanilla sugar at the spice place, so we used that in our coffees.

New Vanilla

A long time ago (we used to be friends) I bought a vanilla infusion kit. I had seen vanilla made with bourbon, and I loves me my whiskey, so I decided to make vanilla using bourbon. I bought some Knob Creek and added it to the bottle with a couple of split vanilla beans on September 4th, 2008. I put the bottle in the cabinet, and it has been sitting there ever since. As you can see in the photo the liquid didn't turn black. It smells slightly like vanilla. I really expected more vanilla flavor after two years. I started using the vanilla a couple of weeks ago, and it gave the butter cookies I made a little something extra. A mellow bourbon flavor.
I've also made vanilla sugar using vanilla beans and regular sugar. We were running out of vanilla sugar, so I decided to buy new beans. When I found the beans I also found some vanilla paste. The vanilla paste is awesome. It is like a thick vanilla speck syrup. You get the vanilla flavor and the nice little specks. So far it makes great steamed vanilla milk and vanilla cappuccinos.