Batter-Splattered

Portland fast-forward

So if you ever find yourself in Portland, here's my list of highly recommended spots to go, culinarily-ly speaking (it's a word, look it up):

Papa Haydn for dessert:

We had a really good salad there too, but you should go for the dessert -- I mean, look at all those accolades slapped on the front door in the photo above. We had the cossata -- a many-layered kahlua and espresso-soaked sponge cake with bittersweet chocolate ricotta filling.

Did I mention we ate like kings in Portland?

Plus, Papa Haydn is on 23rd. Excellent shops.

And there's some sweet thrift stores there too, including one manned by what I decided to call the 'thrift store trollops.' These two 20-something girls were working the front counter and there was quite the line ahead of me and in the line were all these 20-something guys who, I'm pretty sure, had heard tell of the thrift store trollops. The young men's fumbling attempts at conversation were met with the hungry eyed gaze of said trollops. Those girls would stop what they were doing to toss their dreads aside and fix an undressing-you-with-my eyes gaze upon those boys. It all made me want to impatiently call out, "Get a room!"

Go to Trader Joe's for just about anything -- everything is SO cheap and SO good -- including $5 wine that's good enough to make you cry because you know you'll never be able to find anything like it for anywhere near that cheap when you return home.

As we sipped, we were torn: on the one hand, such good wine, and on the other hand, growing more and more resentful knowing it can't be found at home. This Trader Joe's is a mere few blocks from Kelly's place, that bitch. Great. Now I resent her AND the cheap and wonderful wine.

Breakfast, courtesy of Trader Joe's:

We also got this great yogurt there. It's by Spega in Italy and it comes in these darling little jars that I packed home to use as little bud vases. It was so good it also made me a little resentful about having to come home to my regular old mix-it-yourself yogurt.

Trader Joe's, if you move to my neighborhood here in Alaska, I swear to god, I will throw my panties at you.

You have to go to Simpatica Dining Hall for Sunday brunch. Don't even ask me why. Just go.

Here's my fried chicken and waffles:

And other brunch shots:

You should also go to J & M Cafe in Southeast. That's where I had my first of many brunches and it was oh-so-good. You get to choose your own mug from the mug tree and help yourself to bottomless cups of Stumptown Coffee and should you decide to sit for a couple of hours and catch up with an old friend (hi Kelly!) and a new friend (hi Kristi!), the waiters will not care in the least. And the food's good too.

Oh yeah, and I went to Sur La Table, which is like my idea of heaven on earth.

power of voodoo

You remind me of the babe

What babe?

the babe with the power

What power?

power of voodoo

Who do?

you do

Do what?

remind me of the babe

David Bowie rocks. Didn't Cary Grant and Shirley Temple sing that song too, or some version of it, when she was teenager-ish?

Hey guess what? When I was in Portland I made a trip to Voodoo Donut on a Saturday morning, a hallowed place revered by those in the know -- a source of Swahili lessons, weddings by ordained ministers beneath a Holy Doughnut sign and a velvet painting of Isaac Hayes, and best of all, donuts with names like Grape Apes, Butter Fingering, Triple Chocolate Penetration, and glazed with things like nyquil and filled with pepto-bismol (if only the FDA would let them continue making those particular drug-laden delicacies) (but I don't think it'll happen anytime soon considering you need a DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION to get Advil Cold and Sinus in Oregon -- a lesson I learned the hard way when stricken by spring allergies because everything but everything was blooming there) (sweet, sweet Advil Cold and Sinus. I will battle the meth-heads to the death for my right to pop your sinus-clearing, non-drowsy formula. Don't ever change, my sweet).

But where was I?

Voodoo.

It was awesome.

My friend and I shared a maple bacon bar and a voodoo donut -- it only seemed right to order the signature donut.

While standing out front wolfing them down, my friends were trading tales of people trying to steal the voodoo signs and a girl who worked there was standing about on a break and she happily regaled us with tales of sign stealing escapades including one, if I heard right, by a person dressed as Homer Simpson. I think that's what she said. I was so consumed with consuming my maple bacon bar that I only listened with half an ear. Sometimes my tastebuds take over and my other senses suffer for it, if only temporarily.

I thought it was funny that every young guy in line wanted the cock and balls donut. Just because of the name. There was lots of young-guy-snickering happening in that line. According to the website, that one's also popular by the box for bachelorette parties.

I think I'm gonna try to make my own maple bacon bars using storebought maple bars and cooked-just-till-crispy strips of bacon. I'm so far away from the real thing but maybe my own creations will do. Till I can get back to Portland to have the real thing.

Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)

Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)

Put that magic jump on me

Slap that baby, make him free

portland

My goodness.

No, I haven't died and no, I haven't moved to Portland. But my weeklong vacation there has thrown me for a loop. I've been back for a week now but my suitcase still isn't unpacked (although it rather looks like it exploded all over the bedroom floor) and I simply cannot get back into the swing of posting posts no matter how hard I try. I haven't even tackled any recipes until this afternoon (more about those later).

I did, however, manage to clean both bathrooms, the refrigerator, and that rather neglected cabinet under the kitchen sink where we keep the trash and recycling bins -- if only we were the types to brew up all those coffee grounds I vacuumed out of there, we'd be in java for weeks! Oh and I bought some lovely arctic dwarf willows to build myself a hedge out front. I do love a hedge. Two lilacs. A mess of herbs and vegetables. That greenhouse is doing its job this weekend. And I had a million and one Portland photos to go through and touch up.

So you see, I haven't just been navel-gazing. I've been busy. And that's why you've been staring at that darned creamed woodchuck recipe for over two weeks. My apologies.

Maybe I'll ease myself into things gently by writing about one swell Portland restaurant per post, interspersed with photos taken here and there around and about town.

Here goes...

See those dark clouds? We got rained on alot in Portland. Thank goodness for Marmot, taped seams, and cinching hoods, that's all I can say.

So apparently, all the freaks who lived in San Francisco in the early 1990s have migrated north to Portland, Oregon. My fellow gen-X-ers during that period in San Francisco could have been summed up in one word:

Smelly.

I'm pretty sure I was the only one who'd showered recently. If loving a daily shower is wrong then I don't want to be right.

That's why San Francisco reminded me of Portland. So very many freaks. But not as smelly.

Part of the Portland freak problem was that I relied so heavily on public transportation: freak central.

Pretty produce in a market on North 23rd.

But I ate well. Oh, did I ever eat well.

We ate here twice:

That's Angie there at the end of the line, waiting with other devoted followers for Apizza Scholl's to open on a Friday night. This was our second visit. God bless you, Apizza Scholls.

The pizza there had a siren song we could not resist. Even though we had a long list of highly-recommended restaurants to visit in Portland, we couldn't get this pizza out of our heads. Once bitten, twice as hungry. Our first visit was so good it had Angie on the phone afterwards, sharing an in-your-face!, guess-where-I-just-ate? conversation with a friend who learned about this place on No Reservations and who really really wants to go. HA! In. Your. Face. Or something more gracious.

Between our two visits, we had the apizza 'margo'rita, the apizza amore (with capicolla, or cured pork shoulder) (yum), the sausage pizza (with housemade sausage), and best of all, the tartufo bianco, drizzled and dripping with truffle oil. It had me licking my fingers and my plate. When they brought that pizza out and we got a hit of the heady aroma of that truffle oil... Oh my!

I'd like to build some bamboo fences like these ones we saw at the Japanese Gardens.  In fact, I want one of everything we saw at the Japanese Gardens

Those were some lovely leftovers too. In fact, while waiting (and waiting and waiting) for my bus to show up so I could go home and dig into those leftover slices of heaven, I must admit I got rather impatient. And indignant. Freaking buses. Holding me up. Don't they know I have pizza waiting for me at home... all that may or may not have been muttered loud enough to make the bus stop freaks back away from me.

Aahhhhhhhhhh, Apizza Scholls. Your thin, slightly charred crust (both crispy and chewy) and lovely, simple toppings have ruined me for any other pizza on the planet. Seriously. I ordered some at Fletchers the other day and all I could think was: "Not Apizza Scholls."

An aside: I like that restaurants in Portland have rules. Some people might not appreciate that. They're more of that totally ridiculous ilk that believes the customer is always right. If I had a restaurant, there would most definitely be rules and any diner who didn't like them could take a hike.

For instance, at Apizza Scholl's you can only have three toppings. And only one of those toppings can be meat. They're the experts. Trust them. And they make their dough daily by hand from four simple ingredients, flour, water, salt and yeast, letting it ferment over 24 hours with a minimal amount of yeast. Once they run out of dough, they're out. As their website says, "Some days we may simply run out of dough... there is nothing we can do about that."

See what I mean?

Rules.