Costello’s Travel Caffé
2222 NE Broadway – Portland
50¢/ea
I had driven by this place countless times over the past several years and never thought to stop in. I guess I just thought it looked and sounded kind of dopey: “Travel Caffé.” Like it was trying too hard or something. What the hell is a “travel café”, I would ask myself? And anyway, I am not traveling, I live two miles from the joint.
Read MoreWanda’s Café & Bakery
Nehalem, OR*
$1.50
Something told me that the very minute I declared that I’ve never experienced a good bakery in any beach town that I would experience a good bakery in a beach town. Which is, in fact, what happened. Like, the very next day after I wrote it.
It was as if I were daring a good cookie to come my way. And check it out…it did! People, this is a good cookie. I would go a few miles out of my way (on foot, even) for this cookie. If you find yourself driving on US 101 anywhere near Manzanita and Nehalem, Oregon (and you fancy a hearty morsel of chewy oats), you should, too.
I will tell you why:
Read MoreMacrina Bakery
1943 First Avenue South – Seattle (plus 2 other Seattle locations)
$1.90
At the beach this week – in lovely Manzanita, Oregon. I am with my family, celebrating my mom’s 70th birthday. Knowing that I’d be kicking around here for 5 days with nothing more on the agenda than reading, running on the beach, munching on forty seven different types of snacks that come in bags that I rarely normally eat, drinking too much white wine, and hanging out with my kinfolk, I figured I’d have some extra time to track down and then tell you about a great beach cookie.
Read MoreMother’s Bistro and Bar
212 SW Stark St – Portland
$1.50
After more than pleasing experiences with both the extra chocolatey chocolate and ginger molasses at Mother’s Bistro earlier this year, I was eager to try the oatmeal cookie that I had spotted in their dessert case- looking so nice, hearty and…oatey.
Read MoreCOOKIE SALON
Friends, I have fulfilled a New Year’s resolution. Since the beginning of this year, I started up a “cookie salon” with a handful of friends and my sister (who is also a friend, btw).
What is a Cookie Salon?” you might ask.
From Wikipedia:
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace’s definition of the aims of poetry, “either to please or to educate” (“aut delectare aut prodesse est”). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th century and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently, in urban settings, among like-minded people.
Mostly, it’s an excuse to eat cookies and feel like we’re doing something important, intellectual and artistic.
We’re pretty much just making it up as we go along – no hard and fast rules have been set. It should be stressed that the meeting’s featured cookies are, indeed, included as “participants.” In other words, in keeping with the above conversation, we aim to increase our knowledge of the participants (i.e., cookies and one another) through conversation.
We’re meeting approximately once a month, choosing a different theme each time. So far we’ve had:
1) Oatmeal Salon
2) Nut Butter/Nut Flour Salon
upcoming salon: New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie
The idea is to make a cookie (a couple of overachievers in the group have made 3-5 different cookies per salon) relating to the chosen theme and then pack a dozen or so in a tin and meet a neighborhood pub where they don’t seem to pay much attention to six women sitting at a mini-hoffbrau table with an abnormal amount of (not the pub’s) cookies spread out before them. And then to simultaneously taste each cookie, one-by-one, discussing and pontificating as we go. This is what it basically is: cookie monsters geeking out on cookies the way that only cookie monsters who also bake (and not just eat) cookies are able to do.
Like, we’ll talk about what happens when you use baking powder and not soda, how less flour and more oats make a chewier cookie, etc. Or if we like golden raisins better than Thompson. Or apricots better than raisins. Or how processed peanut butter behaves in comparison to natural peanut butter. Or how the Gourmet Cookbook recipe stacks up next to Dorrie Greenspan’s. Important stuff like that.
I am now posting photos and notes from Oatmeal Salon and Nut Butter/Nut Flour Salon -and will post a report for each ensuing salon.
Membership is open. No annual dues required (apart from bringing cookies to the table. Literally.)
Inquire within for more details.
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