Home Cafe - A Journey

So, if you've perused a bit, or you know me at all, then you know I have a habit of trying things that don't always work out for me.

If you're new here - you should know I have a habit of trying things that don't always work out for me.

Last year for my birthday I crashed and burned HARD. So hard there is still a crater the size of my failure marked on my soul. I shudder when I think about it.

What happened, you ask? Let me tell you.

I wanted to have a nice fancy dinner party with all my friends (this is pre cookbook club) and make them something delicious but fun. So I invited everyone over for Carne Asada fries - HOMEMADE, I said.

In case you don't know, Carne Asada fries are a popular Mexican dish (particularly very popular in New Mexico) where you take french fries and you cover them in cheese, guacamole, salsa, carne asada (specific beef cut which is grilled), and crema (a better version of sour cream).

So I decorated my house so cute, brought out my finest china, and candlesticks. We went out and got fresh flowers from the farmers market and I put them everyone. Hung up a Happy Birthday balloon banner - and all of my friends showed up with bells on.

But... it was not to be as lovely and wonderful as it sounds. Carne Asada Fries are surprisingly difficult to make. The meat is easy enough - but making fries from scratch for TWELVE PEOPLE is an insane task. Everyone showed up for dinner at 6pm and didn't even sit down with a plate until 8pm.

Needless to say, I ended the night feeling defeated, heartbroken, inadequate, and in tears (though I waited until everyone left to cry).

There were a lot of factors that led to this most heartbreaking endings - first my partner decided the day of the party that he had to have a grill in order to make the meat, so we bought one that morning. He then spent the next 5 hours building it - while I spend the whole time cleaning our house, decorating, prepping, and getting dressed. In that process I forgot about the chile con queso I was making and completely ruined it - unsalvageable - ruined it. When our first guests showed up I hadn't even started peeling and cutting the potatoes and my partner was still outside build a stupid grill.

Some more context? This wasn't even on my birthday. No this was the weekend after my birthday. On my actual birthday I spent the entire day completely alone reading a book in my pajamas because my partner didn't think he needed to take the day off.

"Sounds like you're really mad at your partner, they didn't purposefully ruin your birthday!"

No they didn't. You're totally right. But it was ruined, and they were 50% at fault for that. We both made bad decisions, bit off more than we could chew, and attempted something that blew up in our faces.

My partner did put their whole heart into making it special, I know that, even if their heart was guided in the wrong direction.

Some additional context?

My mom died.

My birthday is June 26th, my mom died May 19th. She wasn't a big fan of holidays, but she was a BIG fan of birthdays. Every year she made them a big deal, not through throwing elaborate parties but through showing elaborate love.

She would tell me the story of the day I was born, she would send a very sweet message about how lucky she was to be my mom, and she would send me a video she had of one of those animatronic frogs.

Not only was this my very first birthday without her - it was also the week after her funeral which was on June 17th.

June 17th also happened to be my partner and I's 1 year anniversary - so we didn't really get to celebrate.

Now do you see why I was so upset about everything being an absolute disaster? I had everything taken from me in a span of 2 months and those two months ended with my sense of ability being lit on fire.

I hope I painted a good picture of what this year, for my 30th birthday, I am also attempting something insane and with a great potential for failure:

• Princess Diaries themed party

• Followed by a Saturday Morning Cafe

Let's break down both concepts:

• Princess Diaries themed party - royal theme, delicious food, garden party, with a canvas we get to throw darts at to pop paint balloons.

• Saturday Morning Cafe - turning my home into a cafe my friends can come and hang out in for free

Sunday Morning Cafes are a concept I just recently started hearing about. Made popular on social media by Victoria Lauren (urgirlvic on TikTok). She posted on social media about turning her apartment into a cafe for her friends to come over and start their weekend. In her videos you see her create a hand written menu, set up home made pastries and prep an area for people to order lattes from the "home barista" (I assume her partner, or best friend, or kindly volunteer). As soon as I saw it I thought "I want to do that."

Here's what you should know about me, seriouly, at my very core I only truly care about people being loved.

That sounds SO CHEESY, but it's the simplest, truest statement I can make.

We can psychoanalyze me all day - but what matters is that making other people feel loved makes me feel loved (also when they like the food I make, that makes me feel loved).

My DREAM is to create a space my friends feel welcome to come into. Where they can be authentically themselves, where they can cultivate good conversations, have good ideas, share deeply and intimately with one another.

That dream I saw embodied in a cozy, living room "fake" cafe.

So I decided I wanted to do it. But if I was going to do it, it would take a lot of prep work. Work I would have to do over several months - this wasn't something I could just start next weekend when I had the free time.

Well... okay I could, but not if I wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it.

If I really wanted to cultivate an intimate cafe feeling, I had to cultivate a whole framework.

See, those space you get to be in, the ones where you have what feels like an effortlessly great time, are often the ones someone put the absolutely most effort into.

In one of my favorite book series "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman one of the characters, Elizabeth, explains how her very structured self has managed to stay so perfectly paired with her very free spirited husband.

She explains that she would secretly plan out their entire vacation - then when her husband wanted to go on a jaunty walk around whatever restaurant they had chosen to explore the neighborhood she was sure they would see a lovely street performance instead of a gange of youths ready to mug them - just as she had planned it.

Certain things require planning, cultivation, and forethought to give them that effortless feeling.

So I decided I would set the goal to host my first cafe for my birthday - that gave me a few months to work on it.

What I had to accomplish:

• Set up my home so it had that lovely cafe feeling

• Learn how to make croissants (my greatest nemesis)

• Make a menu

• Make invitations

• Learn how to make other pastries (probably not my nemeses)

• Make coffee syrups (well learn how to)

• Host it

I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to make sourdough croissants - largely because of Jesha Stevens (@ sourdoughjesha.com), a food blogger who taunts me with her Youtube shorts about croissant making. (I hate her because she is better than me and she knows it) <- (that is purely a joke I don't hate her, I look up to her, and she is better than me)

However, my attempts at making regular croissants has never gone well - I would say it's something that I have failed at the most. So I knew that would be my greatest obstacle.

I also knew I wanted emmulate my favorite Albuquerque bakery to the best of my ability (a bakery I will not name because I swear to all the is good if people make it popular and I can't get my coffee cake every again I'll come for all of you people Taken style).

This just means I wanted to have a coffee cake, a pound cake, a savory croissant, a muffin or two, and a salted caramel latte.

I also decided on a vanilla latte because my soon-to-be sister-in-law made the best vanilla syrup I've ever had and I had to make it for myself.

So I knew I really needed to start with trial pastries. And probably trial breakfasts?

It occurred to me while planning this out that people would be coming to this cafe (unfortunately on a Sunday this year since my party was the night before on a Saturday) post party. That meant some of them were likely to be hungover and in need of greasy, delicious carbs. (I don't care if it's good for you or cures the hangover or not - it makes the heart feel better when hungover to eat greasy, carbs, so I'm here to support it). So I probably had to include some type of substantial breakfast.

And finally, at least three things had to have green chile in them. Because I'm in New Mexico and I love it.

I've got my work cut out for me to say the least. But I think it will all be worth it - or I'll fail again.

Either way, here it goes. Follow along as I attempt to make my dreams come true - and feed all my friends pastries.