Restaurant Review: Coupa Cafe

For those of you heading down the peninsula and have a hankering for a little Venezuelan bite, head toward Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto. This adorable little cafe not only boasts spacious outside seating, a little South American cuisine, but also some of the best chai you will ever drink in your life.
Seriously it's pretty amazing

While the menu has an impressive spread with everything from breakfast (served all day) to pasta and salad, we decided to try the Venezuelan fare. We ordered a pabellon empanada with carne mechada, black beans, sweet fried plantains & loleta cheese, served with three special
venezuelan sauces and a cachapa, a traditional venezuelan corn griddle pancake served with fresh queso loleta & sides of black beans, nata & guasacaca.

Empanada in front and the cachapa in back

The epmanada was AMAZING and we were disappointed that we had agreed to split it. The meat inside was flavorful and, while most of the sauces weren't used, the red one was pretty good. The cachapa was good as well; however, the cheese inside was pretty salty and not enough beans were provided to try and cut the salty flavor.


We ended the meal with the Tiger Spice Chai, a rich and spicy blend that soothes your soul and makes you wish it was a bottomless cup.

Restaurant Rating out of 5 Price Would Try Again?

Cafe Coupa 4.5 $$ ($ for drinks) Yes!

New York Times: Cardamom-Scented Oatmeal Pancakes

Seeing that pancakes are the BEST breakfast food, here's a new way to change up an old classic. Mark Bittman takes you step-by-step on how to make these yummy and healthy pancakes.

DIY: Faux Bow and Stripe Mittens

 

I was in desperate need of mittens. I needed something quick less I lose my fingers to the unnaturally painful freeze we've been experiencing this winter. San Francisco is not the coldest place in the world and I've lived through much colder winters in other cities but there is something about the wet-cold that comes with the fog and gets in your bones that's hard to shake. My Boston friends laugh, my Chicago friends shake their heads but I say don't judge until until you get caught along the wharf in a cardigan on a day that started out sunny and ended with the city in the belly of a sub-arctic cloud. Just because it's California doesn't mean it doesn't get cold (it's all relative anyhow).

But the mittens, gloves, a muff, anything! I had a great need and (as is almost always the case) very little cash. I walked into Anthropologie (because who doesn't like to look at what they can't have?) and of course I wanted every pair they had: wonderful colors, lengths of all varieties and bows, so many bows; they're in this season and were on over half of the mittens they had there. 

While I was riffling through their big wicker boxes of cold-weather accessories I got the idea that maybe I can make something like these for myself on a college budget. I made myself leave the store and look elsewhere for a smarter alternative and as luck would have it I found it across the street at Old Navy. Two pairs of one size fits all mittens for one dollar. One. Dollar. 

Mine.

I loved the striped pair, the black pair not so much but for one dollar who cares? As I scampered off with my prize I got an idea to make the pair I liked even better by using the pair I knew would never really see the outside of my sock drawer. Cut up the black ones and make some bows I thought! Well faux bows anyway; faux in that I wouldn't actually be tying them, otherwise they'd be too bulky and they wouldn't lay flat.  

My supplies: Two pairs of mittens, some red embroidery thread, a needle and of course a pair of scissors.

 

To make the bows I cut the stretchy wrist pieces off of the black gloves and then cut both of those in half so I had four identical strips of fabric.

From there I stitched a decorative border with the red embroidery thread around two of the strips (these would be the lengthwise part of the bow) and laid the other two strips on top of them like crosses. I tucked the strips on top underneath and secured them tightly to scrunch the middle of the bow and give it its shape.

And it turned out like this! Sorry for the terrible picture quality there, I was using a borrowed camera and didn't realize how fuzzy it turned out. If you kind of squint you can make out my stitching detail.

After I assembled the faux bows all there was left to it was to situate them on the mittens and sew them down. I think they turned out pretty well and it makes a relatively plain accessory more exciting. Most importantly--aside from the satisfaction of being crafty and making something yourself--it brought the price down from $38 (not including tax) to $1, seeing as I already had the other materials for the project around the house. Morel of the story? Try taking matters into your own hands when your wallet says no, just because you don't have money doesn't mean you can't have fun things. So take that Anthropologie, I'll have my cake and eat it too.