Lost Coast

You may be familiar with the Lost Coast Brewery? NO? Well, shame on you. It's in Eureka, CA, which if you don't know where that is, is in Humboldt County, yes the one of the legendary weed, and also the home of CSU, Humboldt. Also, another random factoid: do you remember the scene in Return of the Jedi when they are in the forest with the Ewoks? That is Fern Canyon, and it too is in Humboldt County. And it is gorgeous!

The reason I picked this as my beer of choice for Kim's blog hop is that, as you may know, I went home last weekend/week. So my this weeks Look What I Did Last Week (<----- click here for my older beers and posts) has a lot of California in it. So, get your beer in hand and get comfortable!

The big event and reason I went to CA was...this little girl's 1st birthday! How exciting!

She is my best friend's daughter, aka, my neice. Can't you see the resemblance?

In honor of her birthday, my friend's MIL wanted to throw her a big party. With hundreds of people, and decorations and favors and food and...(you are probably wondering WHY, but this my friend is another story in itself!)

So we made 300 cake pops. No joke.

You can find the recipe HERE.

We had a few casualties. What do you expect? The poor thing was like, "Nobody sees me as an individual! They just want to use me! Don't they see I am more than just a sweet little ball of strawberry? Cake pops have feelings too! There is nothing left for me in this life!"

Plop.

Just a very tiny part of our 300 pop assembly line. A.Very.Small.Part. (it took 3-6 of us 12-14 hours to make all 300, roll them, dip them, sprinkle them, wrap them, tie them and label them).

Then I got up really early the next morning and snuck out for a (very awesome 6 mile, 60 degree) run before anyone could make me wrap another cake pop (or dip. or sprinkle. or roll. or.....PLOP!)

But they found me. And made me start helping with the decorations.

See those small balloons? I tied all those balloons. I am not exaggerating. 20 tables, 3 balloons each (the big ones, praise the lord, were self closing) plus extras for the porch and the gift table etc. My fingers were sore for days. I could barely open a beer. Kidding. This was a booze free party - I am not sure why...is there something wrong with an alcohol fueled 1 yr old birthday party?

Then I went home for a couple of days so I could get a vacation from the party! I did not take these while driving. Okay, maybe I did.

I took advantage of my favorite time of year at home and one of my favorite fruits by picking some blackberries (YUMMY! pick one, eat one, pick one, eat two...etc) and making blackberry cobbler! The recipe will be posted later this week.

(ps I can't believe I paid $3 for a tiny tub of these at the farmers market. If only they were ripe every time I went home!)

I went to visit my oldest friend. Not oldest like she's 100 years old, but the one I have known the longest. Remember this post about my first day of school -- she's the one with the Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox. I was so jealous of that box. It was metal and her mom gave her way cooler things in her matching thermos. Way. Cooler. Now she's a mom and will soon be packing a way cool lunch for her little boy.