“It’ll be something different”, I said to Michael when we heard about the Yellow Bird coffee tasting. Not that he needed convincing. This would be a coffee and dessert pairing. Michael can be a coffee-and-dessert-a-holic (when he’s not too busy with projects, anyway). So we went out to Starfish Patisserie, Dennis Gribbons’ new pastry shop and bakery on Saturday evening and had a wonderful time. Yellow Bird Virgin Islands Coffee is the creation of Kangja and Roger Morgan.

I met Roger and Kangja shortly after they relocated to St. Croix a few years ago. It was at a rum tasting at the former Cafe Madeleine. That night, the rum was Cruzan Single Barrel, the island’s premier sipping rum. We chatted for a long time and shared stories about how we’d gotten to St. Croix, and life on our island, in general.

Anyway, we talked to Jenna and Tori about it and they were very interested. And when Meredith found out about it she wanted to come, too, even after her long week preparing for the Villa Madeleine Condo Association’s annual meeting. We didn’t have advance tickets, so Michael and I went early to get tickets and seats for the gang. We were REALLY early. Jerome and Viviana weren’t even in their official Yellow Bird uniforms yet when we arrived.

At a little after seven, shortly after Roger started giving us a history of Kangja’s dream to start a coffee company, the rest of our crew got there. Our first taste was of the Crucian Rainforest Blend. It was paired with a mini almond Danish topped with orange butter. Yummmm! The coffee is great. Some of the smoothest and richest-tasting I’ve ever had. Not being a caffeine user, I thought I’d be in BIG trouble later, but I persevered, drinking cup after cup of this delectable dark nectar.

The next round consisted of the Coral Bay Frangelico flavored coffee, paired with a fresh fruit tartlet and chocolate covered strawberry with strawberry coulis. Fantastic!

But I still liked the Cruzan coffee better. The last one would be the Frenchtown Roast. I love my coffee strong and thought this would be my favorite. It was paired with a chocolate and peanut butter mousse cake. Very good, but the desserts were starting to get to me. It was heavy for the last course and, while I enjoyed it, I could feel the sugar and caffeine coursing through my body and I felt heavy with the quantity of the last dessert. I was getting wired and tired at the same time. But I ate it all….

And then they had a raffle. Each of the prizes was a gift bag with a “thank you” card from Kangja and a package of Rainforest blend coffee! We’d put our names on our ticket stubs and Michael crunched them up before Meredith put them in the basket. The first name picked was…..mine! Then Michael’s, then Jenna’s! Crunching up the tickets had worked! We left with some major loot! Cool!

Afterward, we congratulated Roger and Kangja on their new venture (and on winning the battle against the “senators” wanting to shut down their radio station) and went outside to decide on our next step. We thought it would be fun to play miniature golf and Jenna wanted to come, but the others declined. So we set off in the rain to the east end where it had stopped raining, but the place was closed. The others all decided to go home, but we’d just heard that Danny Morris was playing at Chicken Charlie’s so we checked it out and it was true.

We saw Marg and Jim and Ethan and Robin, Millie and Tom, and a bunch of others. After all that caffeine and sugar, we needed something starchy and calming, so we drank a beer or two and had potato skins with cheese and sour cream (Michael ate all the bacon, and there was a LOT of it!). At the break, we paid Whitney , put a few bucks in Danny’s bucket, and headed home. Believe it or not, after all those stimulants, we were able to go right to sleep. I guess it was a burn and crash situation, or maybe the hops in the beer worked really well. But it was a fun and different evening. We’re going to stick with our regular Dean’s Beans organic fair-trade coffee (it not only tastes good, but it’s good for the planet and the people in the coffee-producing villages) but we’ll definitely be buying more Yellow Bird coffee occasionally.

It was because we didn’t have half-and-half for our morning coffee.

We had gone out two or three times on Saturday to do errands in Gallows Bay, but forgot to stop at Schooner Bay Market (who, by the way, has jumbo eggs in the “large egg” cartons now!) on the way home to get coffee additive. I’m not an addict, but Michael insists that anything else is inferior and unacceptable.

Besides, we hadn’t been out to breakfast in a looong time, so we decided on the Golden Rail since it was close to the hardware store. It would be our umpteenth trip to GBH (aka Gannet) in two days. Plumbing issues, land rover issues, and general household issues cause us to make frequent treks to see Phil, Mary and the gang. It would normally bother my environmentalist conscience to start the car that often, but with the “veggie mobile“, I am saved from sleepless nights.

Anyway, the place was packed! Only one person said Goliath was not welcome until I whipped out his card, and then we were no longer harassed. Patrick even mentioned that he was better behaved than most kids that come in there. (We knew that).

Breakfast was HUGE! Michael had the seafood omelet (too fishy tasting for me, especially in the morning), and I had the spinach and salmon benedict on a croissant. Only a little too fishy because there was sooo much salmon. But it’s easy to not eat too much of the fish and I wrapped up a lot of it to take home. It was yummy but large.

We were so full that we didn’t have to eat anything until dinnertime. The Golden Rail rocks!