Great weekend!

What a nice weekend I had. Friday was the summer solstice ANDC, "Bloom" at the Just Dance Ballroom again. I adorned myself in butterflies

It was a chill and nice event. Nothing crazy happened. I lead Bishop's desk again. 

On Saturday I went sailing with Patrick!!

I've been meaning to see the boat he's been working on for months - maybe even a year now. It was a beautiful day to be on the bay and we went around Alcatraz

and under the new Bay bridge.

I've never even been to Alcatraz. The complex is bigger than I'd thought. Then I took the train down to see my sister and the kids. 

The next day I went to a petting zoo and petted more kids! :D Here is a baby goat.

Then the boyfriend  and I went for a hike 

Chemex filter!

Lots of ways to make pourover coffee these days. I got a large stainless steel filter that fits perfectly in my roommate's Chemex carafe thing to replace disposable paper filters. I am a big proponent of eliminating one-time-use goods as much as possible and this seems like a high quality, stainless steel filter that will last a long time. Hopefully, for the life of the Chemex.

This is a really great filter for a lot of reasons. First of all, it looks nice and seems to be well made. The surfaces and edges are all smooth with no scratchy or bumpy cut off or soldered bits. The rubbery ring at the top more or less matches the wood on the Chemex and fits perfectly and snugly in the top.

Some of the other reviewers just put this in a mug - doesn't the coffee come out of the sides of the filter and leak all over the cup? I guess they bought this not knowing this was for a Chemex?
Secondly, the mesh is very fine and does not let any grounds through. When I ordered it I expected it to be a wire mesh, but this is actually more like perforated metal with very small holes. You can see in the picture I included how small they are. No coffee grounds or silt ended up at the bottom of the Chemex of coffee. Amazing!

Thirdly, this replaces paper filters. Paper filters are compostable but you are still creating demand for single use paper products, something I strive to reduce from my life. If you make coffee every day, you are using 365 paper filters which had to be treated with tons of water and chemicals. The manufacture of this metal filter obviously uses some resources, but it is a one time thing and will last for years (I think). Also when you use paper filters, you should not pour water directly on the paper to eliminate the paper flavor. This eliminates paper flavor :)
I love doing pourover coffee. It's very satisfying to watch the foam develop when you pour in hot water and I think it makes for a very flavorful and clean tasting cup of coffee.

I thought it was pretty good. I made enough in the Chemex for Ted and he thought it was pretty good too.

Britain’s EU referendum: The Economist’s “Brexit” poll-tracker

Britain’s EU referendum: The Economist’s “Brexit” poll-tracker | The Economist



This is a fun interactive graphic on brexit opinions. It's hard to believe that they are leaning slightly towards leaving. I hope they have a greater voting culture than they do here and it's actually representative instead of just the nuts driving it

Flowers!

Dan sent me flowers at work AGAIN today! I am so lucky! They are beautiful. I brought them home

New pourover coffee dripper!

New pourover coffee dripper!

I was very excited to receive one of these for free to review. I have seen plastic versions of these, so I was familiar with them but had not used one. Also, pourover seems to be the thing in coffee here in SF (Philz! Ritual! Also protip: when looking for good coffee on Yelp, search for "pourover" rather than "coffee") and it looked simple enough to do myself.

When it first arrived, the bottom base was chipped. It was not a breakage that would impede its use, but i alerted the company about perhaps reevaluating the packaging for future shipments. The co-founder herself wrote and told me they'd send me a replacement, for which I'm very grateful.

The coffee dripper comes in a nice brown gift box and includes ten #2 unbleached filters. The back of the box has instructions on how to use this type of coffee maker, which was super useful to me since I'm new to this method. It has three small holes in a row at the bottom. The ridges on the inside come all the way to near the top, making it easier to pull out the wet filter instead of it sticking to the ceramic. It's smooth without bumps or bubbles to tear the filter.

It's really easy to make great pour over coffee with this. Put it on your cup, open up a filter and line the dripper, and put in the amount of grounds you want. I like to use two tablespoons per cup. Don't fill the dripper with water to the top. Just wet the beans and only the beans (not the paper). When the grounds settle, repeat.

So far, I've used this with two types of beans so I could get a wider data set of flavor First time was the Marley Coffee and today it was Blue Bottle (more pourover!). The final results were great. I am sure the results vary depending on the beans you use, but the flavor of each bean variety came through clearly and the coffee was neither too strong, too watery, or burnt, as can happen with an electric coffee machine. It's also really satisfying to watch the creamy foam develop on top and watching the beans settle as the coffee drips out.

The best thing about this coffee dripper is how little effort is takes to use it and put it away. It is small enough to hang with my other coffee cups on cup hooks and cleaning up just means putting the whole filter in the compost and giving the thing a quick rinse. I can definitely see myself using this device for years.

Backpacking Plumas National forest

Grass Lake in PNF

I just got back from a pretty fabulous 4 day vacation in the Plumas national forest, which is a bit north of Truckee/Tahoe. Three days of backpacking and one day at the Black Mountain lookout.

The weather and landscape was absolutely beautiful. We saw many alpine lakes and waterfalls, hiked through snow, got lost and found the trail, hopped on the PCT for a couple of miles, saw a million flowers, and that was just the backpacking part. After a late launch from SF and a pit stop in Sac, we hit the trail at around 4pm. The fist leg was only 3 miles and we knew the sun set around 9pm, so it was no big deal. Grass Lake was an easy mile from the trailhead. The first night was spent at Rock Lake, which we amazingly had all to ourselves.

It was clear and cold and in a narrow valley that dropped off behind the lake, which gave us a view of the mountains beyond. We carried in our leftover lunch burritos from Sacramento so we didn't have to cook that night.
After waking up, we packed up hiked the mile to Wades Lake. The second day was going to be traversing the park, crossing Mt Elwell, and finishing up at Smith Lake. That mostly went according to plan, with some small hiccups. Wades Lake was like a painting of mountain lakes. A pine tree and snow covered slope surrounded a big blue lake. We weren't able to find the trail up and out of the valley to the ridge so Dan lead us straight up the side of a very steep hill. I was pretty unhappy about this. The hillside was crumbly and scrambly in parts and bushy and pokey in others. He forged ahead and found the trail at the crest. I am not sure this trail is very well traveled - it was hard to find at times.
After a bit, we came across a family with their 4 year old on his first backpacking trip. They pointed us towards the PCT, which we were supposed to take for a little while, but it was beyond a snow field.

Using our handy hiking poles and doing our best with our trail shoes, we managed to climb up to the top of this crest and were rewarded with a spectacular view. We managed to find the PCT but even that was soon shrouded in snow. I was not prepared for this. We wandered through the snowy forest, following what foot prints we could find, and then finally relying on intuition, for what seemed like for hours. Finally, we found a trail of some sort. And a little while later, PCT through hikers! There were several more times when we were very confused about where we were, but we eventually found our way to the base of Mt Elwell. There was a trail up and over the mountain, or around the base. We opted for the base. That took us next to Long Lake, through and over some wonderful streams with little purple flowers and pretty rocks and finally to Smith Lake. My phone died around this time so I only have one picture, but it is another really nice lake, in kind of a crater. Again, we were miraculously alone that night. Our best guess for miles covered that day is thirteen and a half but who knows.

The next day was a short three miles or so out. Then for the easy part: staying in a fire lookout tower. Ha. The staying may be easy but the getting there was not. The Booking site and the ranger warned us that a high clearance vehicle was needed to climb the road up to the tower. Did we listen? Noooooooo. We drove our Miata.

Stained glass window sticker!

So I got another product to try out! It's this stained glass decal that makes any window look like it's a stained glass window.


I really like the color scheme. Greens, aquas, and purple are my favorite. If you look closely at the "glass", you can see that the pieces have different textures and marbling the way real stained glass art does :-) I thought the printing was clear and the colors rich.

I put this decal in the bathroom window where it adds cheerful color and privacy with very little effort.One thing wish could be improved was the corners curling up when I first put it on. This is a result of how they came packaged in a cardboard tube. The tube great, no complaints there, but it did bend the decals a bit. A little bit of water helped them stay down.
I wish they would sell larger rolls of this stuff, more like contact paper. The sheet I got was only 12"x18" which you can see is a pretty small area.

Ratna Ling Retreat Center

Boy have I told you about the Ratna Ling retreat center yet? I got a LivingSocial voucher for this place last year and have been looking forward to going for a long time. It's up in Mendocino, past Jenner and Bodega Bay, and then inland. The drive is super beautiful with lots of coastal driving and then fields and fog and cows.

The grounds at the center are really beautiful. There are fields and redwoods and small ponds. It's very quiet and misty. You hear a lot of birds and turkeys roam the land. The "cabins" are enormous. Very new and modern two-bedroom homes and Jacuzzi tubs(didn't use those though, because of the drought). The food was fantastic. All vegetarian with lots of gluten free options. It's all western food - not Indian or Tibetan like i was expecting. We had a shephard's pie friday night, eggs and omelets Saturday breakfast, eggplant parm Saturday night. Veggie kabobs and bbq tofu for lunch. Sunday brunch was fritattas and quiche and banana chocolate chip bread. There is always fruit and yogurt at breakfast too.

So most of the time, the place is rented out as a retreat center to big groups. While we were there, there was a yoga retreat. A lot of the people were from San Francisco. We and perhaps one other couple staying there were the only ones not with the yoga retreat.

I wish more classes came with the retreat. We had one mediation class in the morning and one yoga class in the afternoon and that was it. They were good, especially the mediation teacher, don't get me wrong, but I was expecting a more rigorous schedule.

I really enjoyed a getaway where I didn't have to bring groceries and cook. Everyone on the staff was extremely nice.

Here are some pics of the food on my Yelp review. I wasn't able to get pics of the turkeys :(