enter & win

Correctly identify any one of the following coffee havens and

WIN A COFFEE DATE WITH ME

you’re welcome

cake happened

so my oven died in the middle of an attempt to make gluten and dairy-free chocolate cookies for my baby sister even though it goes against my religion to forsake cake flour, butter and milk. i cried buckets over my ruined holiday baking plans. when visiting family, i always show up bearing a bundt cake to ensure cries of delight as i come through the doorway. i considered cancelling my annual northern visit because i didn’t want to discover how a cake-less tanja would be received. but my sister insisted i should bring up ingredients and bake a cake in her kitchen. she is the boss of me so i did. cobwebbed cake tools were found in the back of her cupboards, a few inches of counter space were freed up in her busy kitchen, and a fresh toy paint brush stood in for a pastry brush. and from buster’s anonymous lemons gift, a zesty lemon bundt cake rose up. it was an easter miracle!

my grandniece, isa, was impatient waiting for the cake to cool. i reminded her that she doesn’t like cake. she just likes schprinkles.

my favorite thing to do in mendocino is soak up all the sun shining on my sister’s front porch. my family’s favorite thing to do is force me to go for a hikey-poo regardless of the weather. getting battered by wind and rain and arguing about wearing enough clothing is mandatory. every year.

my mother lives in a tower underneath double rainbows. she puts me up and puts up with me. she tucks me in and in the morning we have peet’s french roast and oatmeal with cranberries, banana and cinnamon. i still had room for my brother-in-law’s waffles after.

 

gardening

i am still wasting time with boys. and we are quite good at it. saturday’s adventure began at sweet adeline’s bakeshop where i had such a wonderful piece of gorgeous layered irish coffee cake, i did not, for once, take a picture. i did not want to “share” this cake. he had the runner up: a red velvet cupcake. oh and there was a lot of swooning going on but there might have been a lemon square chaser.

as we didn’t have anything better to do, the boy-girlfriend decides to get his tires rotated or balanced or aligned or something and we had to wander up to the pleasant hill shopping center and kill some time. and even in downtown oakland/rockridge he turns it into a nature romp. there are penned puppies to be petted, a deer on a cliff-face as agile as a bighorn sheep, and a mr. pigeon chasing a disinterested mrs. pigeon with tireless patience. and i come home with these three tiny rescue mutts:

sunday is a two-for-one day and i have breakfast with my very first ever favorite boy, my big brother. we trot up to sconehenge where one can always get a delish wholesome meal. i just get the fruit bowl because my early morning bread & butter with coffee is still holding and because i have problems synching my meal times with others’ timetables. i’m just glad i was on brother’s list of stuff to do. penciled-in in pink, perhaps? and of course i order fresh squeezed orange juice so i can pretend we just came back from switzerland.

home by noon so i can be picked up by another boy-girlfriend and we run off to jack london square for fun in the sun. the farmers’ market is in full force and we promenade alongside the sparkly waters smiling at babies in buggies. there are cooking odors to be avoided and dreads/tattoo compliments to be absorbed. and then things take a sinister turn. ferris wheels beckon in the distance and then disappear. we follow rusty train tracks for miles like dusty hobos. baby buggies have become wheelchairs. our date ends when i have to give up my passenger seat to the giant potted cactus he impulsively purchases. i have to say, his competitiveness is not girlish at all.