Recently in Food | Drink Category

It's often the question of the day for the "chef" of the house - What's for dinner? It's also the familiar quest to do something fun and unique at the next dinner party. Preparing meals during the busy week, having some fun on the weekends entertaining or just having a quiet Sunday to relax is only limited now by your imagination. What if you could freeze, mold, even bake with familiar characters and shapes everyone will be talking about.

Kick Up Your Mimosas Recently celebrating our one year anniversary @Extraordinique, our friend and photographer, Calvina, suggested Tyler Florence's fantastic recipe for Orange Cream Mimosas. What was the most fun was using Sillycone's Symbol Ice Trays to toss in frozen @ symbols for our toast! Cheers!

Try Buckwheat Pancakes with Vanilla & Cinnamon Butter
Enjoying the smell of sizzling bacon and pancakes on the griddle makes for the perfect weekend morning, but how about kicking it up a notch by making your own infused butter cubes. We used Sillycone Letter Trays and made a mixture of vanilla and cinnamon in softened butter. Poured into the molds and wrapped in freezer wrap, not only were we able to take out what we needed, but we have some left over in the freezer to keep for the next pancake splurge. Yum!

Celebrate Colorfully  

For a special birthday celebration, I have always wanted to experiment with fondant. The Sillycone trays made shaping the fondant easy and fun to decorate our three layer chocolate decadence cake. Make a wish!

Not too long ago, my nose led me to a very aromatic booth where coffee beans were being canned at our local Farmer's Market. There was a substantial line to find out more and I was intrigued by some shoppers who actually were handing back their coffee tins for more. Once I got to the front of the line, I learned all about Pachamama Cofee Co-Op, a very unique farmers-owned co-op that was incorporated in Davis, California in 2001 and spans from Ethiopia to Peru.

Choosing a French Roast Premium blend to try, the sales team also told me about their "refill" tin program, which reduces the number of tins wasted and encourages customers to bring back the specially designed steel can to preserve freshness.

Pachamama Coffee Co-op is very impressive on so many levels - the family farmers and their stories, the 100% organic farming practices, the unique coffee beans themselves, and their mission to provide customers with premium coffee in the most direct manner possible and, in doing so, improve the lives of small-scale farmers and their families.

This cooperative is democratically-controlled and owned by its members, producer-groups of representing small-scale coffee farmers around the world.

Pachamama's member-owners ship their finest, organic single-origin coffee to the USA from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua and Mexico. Pachamama Coffee Co-op hand-roasts in small batches in California and ship direct to customers.


Extraordinique!
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Gelato has to be one of those desserts that makes everyone "melt" year-round. As founders of Capogiro Gelato Artisans, John and Stephanie Reitano understand this. Capogiro offers flavors of the season, which reflect local harvests from nearby farms around the great city of Philadelphia. Capogiro strives to impress with both classic and unique flavors that will have you paying $60.00 for six pints shipped to your door. Today's flavors of the day include:

• Ananas Con Menta
  Golden Pineapple with Lancaster County Meadow Mint
• Fior Di Latte
  Milk gelato. Milk from an Amish family's single herd of hormone free, grass fed in Lancaster County. Crazy good.
• Quince
  Lancaster County Quince Poached in Lemon and Ginger
• Rosemary Honey Goat Milk
  Lancaster County goat's milk infused with Lansdale rosemary sweetened by New Jersey buckwheat honey

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We are popping the cork here at Extraordinique in celebration of our first review published on September 21, 2007. With close to 150 reviews since that day, we have enjoyed sharing our favorite finds with you. Taking a look back in the Archives, we revisited some of our top favorites. The team worked to identify a Top 10 list for Extraordinique - A Year in Review, but we all agreed if they are in the Archive, they are all Extraordinique in our view.

For 2007-08, revisit these favorite finds and let us know what you think.

Vibram FiveFingers
We first started Extraordinique with Vibram FiveFingers footwear, making one of Time Magazine's best inventions in 2007. Since our first post, it also looks like FiveFingers has come out with two more lines - KSO and Flow. Vibram FiveFingers was catalytic in our concept for Extraordinique. In an era of innovation and "smart" technology, footwear has been taken to a whole new level with Vibram FiveFingers.

Vosges Haute Chocolate
Vosges is a fun one because a year later, we still find family and friends talking about Mo's Bacon Bar or the truffles we brought home, which included a symphonic blend of sweet and salt. Muah! Delish!

Christine J. Brandt
Another artist bringing elements together in an extraordinary way is jewelry designer Christine J. Brandt. Her jewelry collection is beyond words - setting stones and minerals in rich wood carvings for rings, necklaces, and cufflinks. The color, shape and texture of all of her pieces embody the word - Extraordinique!

Ego
There is no such thing as "check your 'Ego' at the door" if you own one of these artistically and fashion-inspired notebooks. Winner of this year's Microsoft Fashion PC Award and nominated for the 2009 German designprize Ego will be competing with brands such as BMW and Porsche for uber design excellence.

SIGG
Eco-friendly SIGG bottles became our favorite functional, go-anywhere water bottle for the car, the gym, and our weekend bike rides this year. We found them to be ultra durable and kept our drinks cool and refreshing.

Stokke Strollers
Over the past year, Stokke seems to have had a major influence in the design of baby strollers and it doesn't stop there. Now, Stokke is featuring the Tripp Trapp - designed to "invite your child to the table" like no other high chair can. Again, Extraordinique!

Flip Video
The best in plug-in-play digital video recorders, we flipped for Flip Video. End of story!

Easy Glider
Taking "people mover" to a whole new level, we found EasyGlider to be the ultimate mash up of inline skating, skateboarding and surfing melded into the design of a "scooter."

Coal
As Fall is upon us, Coal is still the first company I think of for super cool (or should I say toasty) knitted caps and scarves that we love. Debuting their latest 2008  Winter collection, you gotta check them out.

Pi
In a year of outrageous gas prices, Pi took electric mobility to a whole new level with a highly functional and beautifully designed electric bike.

If you have a favorite, please comment and let us know what enjoyed the most from Extraordinique - All Things Extraordinary & Unique.

Now, to celebrate, if only we had some Bling H20!

The ice cold beverage isle always seems to draw me in during the summertime at our local market and what I've recently noticed is that the beverage isle is kinda a "cool" place to be!

Our local Nugget Market carries a wide selection of really great drinks, including my favorite GT's Kombucha, and now a new line of drinks, call Function. Function, on the shelves caught my eye, because I had recently read an article on a line of physician-developed drinks with concrete science behind them.

Stocking our Extraordinique fridge with Light Weight, I've got to say the Pink Grapefruit and Acai Pomegranate are a guilt-free, calorie-burning, preservative-free alternative to diet soda and other sugary juices and "sports" drinks.

Function Light Weight includes EGCG, a green tea extract to help increase calories burned and gymnema extract, which limits the absorption of calories your body takes in from fat and carbs. Light Weight also includes reservatrol, which if you've been to any health store lately, it's all the rage. Reservatrol is a red wine extract that has found to increase energy and overall calorie burn.

Now, with all of that said, I will also say you don't get the caffeine jitters or that amp'd feeling on this drink. You just get a sense of "upbeat" energy, which I can always use by mid-afternoon to gear up for exercise at the end of the day.

In addition to Light Weight, Function also has drinks to boost your immune system, improve your mood, and ease sore muscles after a workout.

I haven't tried these others yet, but I'm thinking this weekend, I may try a Vacation.

Cheers!

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This weekend we enjoyed a new creation from TCHO chocolate fondly labeled "Fruity." Pairing our sampling with a nice cabernet, some summer fruit, cheeses and nuts, TCHO's Fruity is a very smooth dark chocolate that has a bittersweet "fruity" undertone, like berries and a hint of cherry. It was delicious with the sweetness of pear and strawberries and rolled beautifully on the tongue with the cabernet.

We also sampled Chocolately, which mixing the two, you could richly taste the difference making each one distinct in flavor. Fruity was the fan favorite for the evening, particularly as a nice addition to the summer fruit and cheese tray.

TCHO has an unparalleled commitment to making fine chocolate. TCHO goes as far as saying they're "obsessed, very obsessed" even. Their passion for finding and selecting the best ingredients takes them to all corners of the world, then back to the "lab" in San Francisco. With their latest release, be sure to read how Fruity became a labor of love and an extraordinary journey "from pod to palette" creating this amazing new TCHO chocolate in "beta." It is Extraordinique!

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I must confess... I am addicted to tea. I drink tea hot, cold, fermented or sparkling. I love rich, strong teas. Green tea, white tea, flavored tea and herbal tea. I drink it as a pick me up and also to relax. I drink tea for digestion, to get a good night sleep and I always reach for tea to help fight a cold.

As you can imagine, when I was introduced to Teality by one of our Extraordinique readers, I was surprised to find my absolute favorite tea on the first sampling, called Dragon Pearl Jasmine by Teality.

This beautiful white tea is fascinating to look at in its dried form. Each "pearl" is hand-rolled to form a small compact bead that unfolds and unlocks the flavor of sweet jasmine and white tea as it steeps. This tea is unlike any tea I have ever tried. It was rich in flavor with a smooth and aromatic essence of jasmine.

Teality has an amazing selection of teas, including green tea, flavored tea and herbal teas. I have tried and especially loved the Yuzu Green Tea and the Silk Empress Oolong.

When looking for an exceptional tea to call your own, Teality has a cool online Tea Finder for you to select the characteristics you like most in a tea and a recommended tea selection will be returned to match your preferences. Teality also provides a Tea 101 section as well as brewing instructions for every tea to experience the finest flavor.

Teality looks to serve tea enthusiasts by informing, enlightening, and inspiring others about teas. There's my teapot whistling now. I think I'm going to try the Kuchicha next.

Extraordinique!

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