When I was a kid, I hated sweets. My mother would offer me a piece of candy, and I would ask if I could have a few slices of cucumber instead. People don't believe me when I tell them this, but it's true. And, maybe coincidentally, I've only had three cavities my entire life( and I'm old!) But, alack and alas, over the decades , unfortunately, I've developed a taste for sweets. I still don't like candy, or cake, or macarons, or anything with icing or frosting on it. But cookies, pie, cinnamon rolls, baklava,strudel,  tarts, etc, bring it on! Except nowadays, for health reasons, I'm mostly supposed to avoid sweets, which I mostly do. Anyway, to make a short story long, we were on our way back from walking the dog in Seward Park, and saw the Beach Bakery, at 7820 Rainier Ave S.Seattle  206-721-2225. I'd heard good things about it, but I was skeptical, because some people who like sweets like any kind of puffy white flour/white sugar sweet thing, and the...

                                      A few things worth knowing about 1. Livability.com recently came out with their "Top 100 Best Places to Live in the US" for small to medium cities( which they define as having between 20 to 350 thousand population.)  Fourteen of the top one hundred were in California. Five were in Washington State, including Renton. Olympia was rated number four, Bellevue number six, and Renton number fifty one. I happen to live within the Renton city limits, and I like the place. But one of the top one hundred in the US?  It's a friendly place, and the downtown area has a gritty charm, and feels like a small town. It's got deep working class roots, was a coal mining town, and has a big airplane factory. It is a place that people from nearby Seattle used to make fun of, for being full of uneducated yokels. It's also much more ethnically diverse that increasingl...