Woman in the Middle

Starbucks has a new loaf cake. It is chocolate and vanilla marble with a chocolate frosting on top. The texture of the cake is very fine, which I absolutely adore. When I first described it to my daughters I told them it was made from flour ground by fairies, the texture is so fine. That evolved into us calling it Fairy Bread. I highly recommend it. It is beyond delightful, in my humble opinion.

Photo courtesy Starbucks

My other favorite place in the world, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, has a Mexican Chocolate drink on their menu. Since I (ironically) do not do coffee any more, I get it as a pure ice blended. It is to die for! The chocolate and the cinnamon and magic combine into the drink of the gds. But don’t take my word for it. Get one and see for yourself!

Photo courtesy Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf

The opinions and calories consumed are my own. Unfortunately, nobody is giving me any of these wonderful things for free.

Near my house is both a donut shop and a Starbucks. Those two things along with Southern California weather make my little city the most perfect place in the world to live. I frequest both the donut shop and Starbucks way too much. However. this has given me the opportunity to compare the two and I have noticed several differences:

Donut shops have donuts. Starbucks have “pastries.”

If you ask for coffee at a donut shop, you get a cup of coffee. Boom, its done.  At Starbucks, you can get a cup of coffee, but that is a rarely seen thing. Instead you have a million choices and you have to wait 10 minutes to get your fancy drink.

Donut shop – coffee and a donut, less than $2.00. Starbucks drink and pastry….Unless you get plain coffee it will be over $6. Even with plain coffee, it will still be over twice the cost of the donut shop.

Donut Shop – The one by me sees quite a few people who work in the landscape maintenance industry first thing in the morning. My Starbucks, on the other hand, seems to cater more to office workers, teachers, students, and the like.

Donut Shop – I have never seen anyone at the donut shop that I know. Starbucks – I see someone I know at least 75% of the time.

However, the one thing they both have in common is that everything is full of calories and oh so delicious. Sigh. Now I really want a donut! And maybe a frappuccino….

Icy drinks make me happy. Too happy really, as the scale keeps telling me! But, in spite of that little problem, I wanted to mention Starbuck’s latest drink, the Salted Caramel Mocha. I am not a huge caramel fan and add the fact that it was salted and it didn’t sound like my kind of drink. Then my Eldest Daughter got one and I took a sip. Oh! Heaven in a plastic cup! It tastes just like kettle corn and I LOVE kettle corn! If you have one I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Yum!