Helene is in town from San Francisco and is staying with friend Bill who lives right up the street from us. His apartment is an old high school converted into an apartment building. There are a couple of these converted schools in Queen Anne and I was really curious about what the insides looked like. I was happy to get a rooftop BBQ invite as a chance to check it out. Absolutely loved the high ceilings, tall windows and some even still have blackboards in them.

The rooftop was more like a luxury hotel with double weber grills, wrought iron tables and chairs and multiple levels. Lots of wining and dining going on and we were about to join the party!

As the sun set an incredible view of the city skyline and of course, the Space Needle.

Our view of the west wing of the “high school” from the roof top – for a second I imagine I am somewhere in Europe…

Marc mans the BBQ and I offer emotional “support”

No drugs were used in the making of this picture!

After dinner as the temperatures dropped we retreated to Bill’s apartment for – you guessed it – plum cake tatin and a big pot of tea. Bill has killer knives, a beautiful Le Creuset pot but had to improvise on his tea pot (1/2 gallon pyrex measuring cup and a strainer). Unusual for an Englishman but we appreciated the effort and bottom line is it worked. Thanks Bill and Helene for a great evening!

As if delicious coffee wasn’t good enough now it’s artwork too! This exceptional expresso is from El Diablo Coffee Company in Queen Anne and the photo is courtesy of Gavin. I was curious of how baristas make the simple swirly design in lattes and Gavin told me that was nothing compared to the artwork that comes out of El Diablo.

He was right!
The coffee was deelicious and also try the Cuban toast! Grilled, golden, yummy!
El Diablo Coffee Company is located at 1811 Queen Avenue North #101, Seattle, WA – right next to Queen Anne Books, a glorious combination!

Can’t get enough of my neighbor’s plums as you can tell by this big beautiful bowl of them!

And instead of making a plum tart I tried something different – Ina Garten’s Plum Cake Tatin. So easy, and so delicious!
This recipe will become a regular for me, you can substitute any fruit you want. Just have a hot cup of tea standing by and you are all set!

The carmelized sugar which you pour all over the fruit

The finished product! Maybe next time a little whipped cream too!

That is the slogan for the fabulous combination of Caffe Vita and Theo Chocolates. Usually I don’t like math but in this case I am definitely making an exception!

They say that behind every cloud is a silver lining and in our case it was a chocolate lining! This past Saturday we headed over to Fremont to Jet City Devices to get my sadly cracked iPhone screen repaired. The guy who worked there Tom was so cool and told us to go grab a cup of coffee and be back in 15 minutes while he made the repair.

Fremont is a little local yocal town full of small cool bars and shops but the first thing I noticed was a very vintagy sign by a parking lot for the Fremont Almost Free Cinema - how cool is that?! Kind of like Cinespia in Los Angeles minus about 100,000 people! That night they were showing Metropolis which we would have loved to have seen had we not already had plans…

Then a sign on a brick building across the street caught my eye – it said “Theo Chocolate”. We had to explore! Seconds later we were surrounded by gorgeous piles of chopped chocolate samples – chocolate with chili’s, chocolate with lavender, chocolate with coconut and curry. Wow, the selection went on and on!

And perhaps to cleanse the palate, samples of delicious Vita coffee – nice and hot! What a dreamy and unexpected combination we had wandered into! Theo does offer a tour which we will definitely take the next time we are not so spontaneous!

Of course this kitty cat wrapper caught my eye although there was certainly plenty plenty of delicious looking chocolates to look at and smell!

The best part about Theo chocolates and Caffe Vita is that their entire business is based on Fair Trade. Part of their philosophy which I wish more companies would incorporate:

“At Theo, we believe there is no luxury in products that benefit us today, while jeopardizing future generations ability to meet their needs”.

Cozyland approves this message! We also approve chocolate and coffee at Theo and Vita – a total win/win!

Helen was in town from San Francisco this past weekend to attend a Microsoft conference. In an unbelievable coincidence she was staying at a friend’s house just up the street from us! Amongst the many things we did this weekend, just hanging out on the front porch in the sunshine was relaxing and fun. Of course as tech-y journalists, relaxing usually means having some device in your hands be it an iphone or a ipad.

I think I just had an icat. I’m still a little behind…….

I love this picture of Helen and Marc in the doorway. I think they look amazing!

Apparently not a whole lot unless the BBQ you were attending happened to be in Kimberly’s backyard right next to her vegetable garden! And there was a bit of confusion on my behalf on what is a mole and what is a gopher. Now I know…

A lovely spontaneous invitation for grilled scallops, potato salad and heirloom tomatoes – who could resist these summertime treats! Kimberly had been craving them since she finished the Master Cleanse and Marc and I had been thinking about them ever since we saw them wrapped in bacon at the Ballard Seafood Fest! (some things are hard to forget about!).

Gavin had recently given Kimberly an awesome grill pan – I think originally meant for hamburger sliders as it had 9 small compartments and this turned out to be perfect for the jumbo scallops Kimberly bought!

The grill is fired up and suddenly the ground starts moving. Not earthquake style mind you (and thank God!) but like something is pushing through the earth! What the hell??? What horror movie am I in? But Kimberly’s yard was full of evidence. She had moles and one of them was intent on joining us for dinner!

But have no fear, we managed to scared the little guy off, or maybe it caught one glimpse of Gavin’s guitar pic manicure and thought “to hell with this, these guys are freaks, I’m outta here!”

So the neighbor and his dog stopped by and fixed Kimberly’s backdoor light while we drank wine and ate scallops as the sun went down. I like how people (and even critters) just stop by. Making it another lovely Seattle evening. Thanks Kimberly!

I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone. For that matter I also make a lot of phone calls, text, etc. etc. So, you can only imagine my “horror” when I dropped my phone, smack down on the sidewalk on Saturday night and this was the result. What a dreadful sight, right?

Oddly enough the phone still worked perfectly. I just risked glass splinters every time I had to drag my finger across the screen to open it. If you think I was unhappy just imagine how MacIntosh super nerd Marc felt.

First thing in the morning we had to be solution oriented so first we emailed fellow super nerd Ryan and he emailed a link from Amazon for a temporary cover just for cracked screens. Cost – $12. Ok, cool – I can deal with that. Second suggestion was to just get over it and buy a Droid. Perhaps not in the budget right now. Hmmm… Marc’s research was coming up with lots of expensive options and then miraculously he found a place in nearby Fremont called Jet City Devices where a cool guy named Tom said if we were there within the half hour they would fix it for $75 and within 15 minutes. WOW! And that he did. Good as new as if the whole ugly drunken (oh, forgot to mention that part…) thing never happened.

And in that 15 minutes we walked around Fremont and made some amazing discoveries which I will post about next and are probably much much more interesting than iPhone screen stories! So I’m up and running again – big thanks to Marc for always figuring it out!!! and Tom for fixing it so fast and cheap!