London notes

IN GENERAL

- Just put your phone on battery saver to begin with. Buy a prepaid sim at the vending machines at Heathrow. This is mostly important for data, because maps. London requires maps.

- Take the tube. Get an Oyster card from the machines at Heathrow. They actually have people on staff to help newcomers understand what to buy and how. (Imagine if they had people on staff at the BART machines at SFO.) Treat the tube like any major urban subway system, with the required fast walking, swift card-scanning on entry and exit, and standing to the right/walking to the left on the escalator, and you'll be fine.

- There are more than enough free museums to fill up an entire week without paying to enter anything. I went to the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the Museum of London, and Sir John Soanes' Museum. Other good candidates include the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain, and a variety of smaller and more esoteric things like the Wellcome Collection.

- Don't buy coffee from the carts at the British Museum. Go around back to the Senate House shop for much cheaper coffee, plus reasonably student-priced sandwiches and etc.

- "Coffee" means "basic espresso drinks." If you want an actual drip coffee you can go to Starbucks, which remains everywhere. Otherwise, Costa or Nero are the main chains.

- London is under construction.

- Expect large flocks of schoolchildren near any tourist attraction.

- For long flights, noise-canceling headphones are more or less miraculous.

- If you hate crowds, do not go to Covent Garden or Soho after 5:30 pm. Consider what NYC's Soho is like and plan accordingly. If you want to eat dinner in a busy area, make reservations.

- It was harder than I expected to keep track of exactly how much I was spending, even with a reasonable grasp of the exchange rates and mental math skills.

- Searching out cheap food isn't necessarily easy, but it's doable. London obviously supports a huge community of commuters who need lunch every day. There are boxed sandwiches at grocery stores and Pret a Mangers on nearly every corner. Tsuru Sushi behind the Tate Modern has $5-ish prepacked small sushi boxes. St. Giles in the Field church has food trucks in the yard.

- There are public gardens everywhere and you should go to them, especially after buying one of the aforementioned sandwiches. Find a bench or a spot on the lawn and relax.

- If it's sunny and warm outside, the entire population of London will also be in the nearest public garden.

- You thought California allergies were bad, but London spring allergies are even worse. There are piles of fluffy flowerheads falling off the trees constantly and lying in drifts in the gutters. Bring your meds.

- On the other hand, I managed to sit directly on various garden lawns (flowerheads notwithstanding) for longish stretches of time without getting any bug bites. This seems nothing short of miraculous.

- English roses have a far stronger scent than the American varieties.

- Some gardens have cafes with seating. This is an excellent plan for a lazy afternoon. Bring your book and have a pint of Peroni or an americano.

- UK open container laws are far more permissive than those in the US. You can drink in the park and no one will bat an eye. This also explains the massive amount of people standing OUTSIDE pubs with their pints.

- Somehow we managed to do this whole trip without even entering a pub. On the other hand, drinking a refreshing beer in the park while people-watching (and dog-watching) was definitely worth it.

MUSEUMS

- The British Museum, while definitely worth a visit, is just as problematic as expected. They know they have a lot of imperial plunder, and they're never going to let it go. Even the text accompanying some things (especially the Elgin marbles, aka the looting of the Parthenon) is super defensive. It's especially fun when you go up to the neoclassical section and see pieces of early 19th century British art directly copying the real thing you saw downstairs. There was one piece in Greek style, with neoclassical figures in the middle, two Egyptian painted sarcophagi on the sides, and a giant rampant gold eagle on the top -- SO bizarre.

The gift shops are a trove of cultural appropriation. Do people really still think that a scarf or tote bag printed with a pattern of another culture's coffins is a good plan in this day and age? Really?

Yes, there's the argument that the Parthenon panels would have been destroyed (or at least in much worse shape) if they weren't shipped over to England when they were. Well, while that is likely true, here's a counter-observation. I've never heard anyone make a similar argument about the Saxons and Danes and Normans who used the Roman ruins in Britain to make the foundations of their buildings. And it's not as if modern London hasn't been seriously damaged in war anytime recently.

The museum also clearly relies on the vast array of artifacts they own, and spends comparably little time and effort on education and sensical presentation. It was not easy to figure out the proper order to go through rooms, and the significance of different items frequently wasn't clear. Now, it's obvious that the museum wants to make money off selling guidebooks and maps, but still. This is a problem when you're trying to learn.

So, yes. There was certainly a lot of really interesting stuff to see, but that doesn't make it any less problematic. I liked the Assyrian section very much. For instance, the king above is claiming that he, being blessed by the gods, personally has conquered the entire world and made it great, including things like personally raising all the food in existence. It certainly raises some interesting questions about the concept of kingship, ownership, and agency at the time. Plus you have to love the idea that text can just go anywhere. Why not put it right on top of a fantastic stone panel that your best masons have been carving for the past year?

- While we're talking about collections of other cultures' things, let's talk about Sir John Soanes' museum. This is the home of the architect who designed the houses of parliament and his own house as well. He was a collector and essentially made his house into a museum while he was still alive. Phones aren't allowed on inside, so no pictures here.

The basement is called "the crypt," and is designed around the stone sarcophagus of Seti I. Evidently Soanes had an argument with the British Museum over keeping this. Above the sarcophagus there are a few stories of overlooking balconies, culminating in a elaborate glass cupola that lets light all the way down to the ground. And the entire place is filled with figurines and fragments of statuary. FILLED. Rooms and rooms full of every last piece of Greek, Roman or Egyptian artifact he could get his hands on.

And that's not all! There's a room filled entirely with paintings. One side of the room is a very shallow cabinet, which opens out to reveal ANOTHER layer of paintings. Hogarth's whole Rake's Progress is here, locked securely into the cabinet until a guide opens it out and explains the entire story from painting to painting. There's also an architectural drawings room and several other rooms being restored.

The front of the house has two stories of intact 18th century drawing rooms and salons, which I actually thought were the most interesting part of the museum, and certainly a lot less problematic than the hoard of statuary. Next time we are in London I want to search out more sites that specifically preserve or focus on that kind of everyday history.

- On that note, the Museum of London. This was the best museum of the trip, hands down. It was arranged in a reasonable progression, with lots of actually useful educational information, and it certainly helped a lot that they were tackling the history of the city of London itself. No cultural appropriation involved.

So, did you know that before London was founded, the people at the time constructed rush bridges from the south bank of the Thames (such as it was; it was really a big marsh) out into the river, and that from there they would, presumably for religious or ritualistic reasons, throw not only valuable weaponry but human heads into the river? And also clay pots that we now suppose were symbolic of heads? YEP.

I got to learn all about which buildings there were in Roman Londinium, and how they were laid out, and why they prioritized which ones. The museum is presumably built where it is because you can look out a window at a strategic point and see the actual Roman wall of an administrative building which is just still there. (There's another Roman wall near the Tower, which I didn't go see.)

And then there was the rest of the history of the city, all laid out in order. By the time I got to the late 17th century stuff, I had to cut short my visit and go meet John while simultaneously avoiding rush hour as much as possible, so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked. Future visits: yes.

- Finally, on a totally different note, the Tate Modern. This was a great choice, even though I found all the historical museums more interesting overall. The collections are certainly impressive. For instance, there was a whole roomful of Rothkos, presented in low light so you could stare at them and get the optical-illusion effect of the center squares growing outward.

It was really difficult to take any pictures that remotely approached being decent, but here are a couple.

THEATRE

- I don't know why I'm presenting this as an entire section, because we only saw one thing, and that was King John at the Globe Theatre. This was on because this summer is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. (The British Library actually had the document itself on display, but I didn't end up getting there.) Of course, the subject of the play is not actually the signing of the Magna Carta, but still.

Needless to say, for two dorks with graduate degrees in writing, this was a non-negotiable.

The Globe still sells groundling tickets for standing room on the main floor for cheap publicly accessible theatre. We considered this, but my ankle was still sprained (on a side note, let me just mention how exciting it was to stomp around London in a boot all week), so we decided it was a better idea to actually get seats. So we bought two tickets to the highest tier and tromped up the stairs to watch the performance from there.

This was our view of the stage:

Overall, an excellent vantage point for the entire performance.

The play itself was well acted, but it isn't performed very often, because it is just not one of the best Shakespeare plays out there. In some ways it combined the slapsticky humor of some of the comedies with the actual historical events that you'd get in most history plays. That's not a combination you get a lot nowadays, but it shed some light on what the typical plays might have been like at the time. You have a performance with a narrative that pleases your rich and powerful benefactors and sends a clear message to the crowd, but also entertains that crowd and makes them remember your story or characters in a particular way. In this case, you get King John as a temporizing figure who really, really wanted the crown, to the point that he basically immediately jumped into war with the French, but you also get a clear picture of the succession being passed down to his heir etc at the end. Super interesting.

That said, OH MAN could some scenes have used some editing.

RESTAURANTS

- I know you guys were waiting for this part. The thing is, I definitely didn't feel the need to eat a big fancy lunch by myself every day while John was off working. Instead, I ate a good selection of sandwiches in Russell Square and various other parks, and that was great. That said, we did go out to dinner quite a bit.

- First, we went to Veeraswamy, the oldest Indian restaurant in London. I don't know that I've ever taken an elevator to enter a restaurant before, but I certainly have now. The food here was good -- especially John's drink, which was a delightful and intensely colored green apple juice -- but it was disproportionately expensive for what we got. I guess that's what happens when you're in a historic restaurant in a very expensive city.

Indian food in London is a bit sweeter than you might expect. This was surprising (even though we were warned about it), mostly because a lot of American food is also already pretty sweet. John prefers the Indian food we get in our very Indian-heavy part of California; I like the London Indian food just about as well, which is saying a lot, because I LOVE Indian food of all kinds.

- Tas. This Middle Eastern restaurant has several locations around London, and they are worth going to. We actually went to two of them, because one was next to the Globe, and the other was very near our hotel. The other reason is that it was just easier to make sure we could get good, serious, protein-oriented vegetarian food if we ate Middle Eastern. Lentil soup and hummus and grape leaves and lots of delicious puffy bread! And it was fairly reasonably priced as well.

- The Salt and Pepper Cafe. This little nook was around the corner from the British Museum. I had some very nice, very fast, and relatively inexpensive breakfasts here. You have to love a spinach omelet served with salad for breakfast. If you want a bowl of oatmeal with fruit and plenty of cream, this is where to go get it. Also: all the coffee!

- Pierre Victoire. This French bistro is smack in the middle of Soho, right around the corner from Soho Square. We ate outside, which is not a normal thing John and I ever do, and watched people walk past with their dogs on an expedition to an evening nose around the square.

I had the massive slab of fish with clams in the picture, and it was just about exactly as fantastic as it appears. The food was really, really good, the people were friendly and good at their jobs, and I would go here again with zero hesitation.

IN CONCLUSION

- I like London quite a bit, and would absolutely go back. In the future, I think it would be great to get out into the more normal neighborhoods -- we were certainly in a very expensive part of a very expensive town -- and experience everything more like an actual Londoner would.

- Finally, I found £1.60 over the course of the trip. Finding money is always super satisfying.

At home

We came back and were totally shocked to see how much clothing we still owned, how stupidly full our pantry, how empty our house without four more people.

I am a whole lot more inclined to just go with whatever we have and do what needs to be done. Eat that freezer. Lighten that shelf.

The first night I was hungry at 9 pm, so I made macaroni with olive oil, garlic, and broccoli, with a lot of cracked pepper and some grated parmesan on top. It was an excellent plan. With some chickpeas, it could have been a full dinner. It took maybe ten minutes from start to finish, including peeling broccoli stems.

Sandwiches are definitely a larger part of the menu. Mustard, turkey, butter lettuce, homemade pickled peppers & cucumber slices. Our usual grocery store has even just now started carrying the Dave's Killer Bread we've been eating for the past month. The components are a touch fancier, if one can claim that homemade pickles are fancy, but the results are almost exactly like the many sandwiches I crammed down to make sure I wouldn't fall flat on my face while biking 5 miles up the hill home.

I want salad. The one I ate all the time in Portland was spinach with chopped apple and almond, topped with some storebought honey mustard dressing. I could go for another one of those right this second. It's not a shock to find I bought all three main components as soon as we got back.

I really missed soup. The night after we came back I made a pureed carrot soup with a mix of pinto and chickpea broth, spiced with cumin seed, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne, and stirred in some garam masala at the end. We ate it with half a loaf of sourdough and I for one would not have minded more.

Now that we have our toaster oven, I want cheesy toast all the time. Top a slice of bread with cheddar. Put it in the toaster oven. Toast until the cheese is bubbling. Eat. Mustard is optional and I think not necessary. Simple is nice.

That said, I am never going to be that into peanut butter toast.

Portland restaurants!

Man, I am falling super far behind. So let's talk about some of the best restaurants we've eaten at over the past month, and then we'll wrap up all the Portland with one more post. Good? Ok.

BEST TOTAL EXPERIENCE (and pizza besides): Lovely's 50/50, 4039 N Mississippi Ave.

This was a total surprise, as we had not planned to eat here even a little. Here's what happened: we went to Emily Blackapple's art show, which was excellent, and is running until sometime in November at the Land Gallery. You should go if you're in Portland. Sea creatures! I'm just saying.

Afterward we meandered up & down Mississippi deciding where we wanted to eat. Lovely's was not even on the initial list, but reading their menu of wood-fired pizzas was more than enough to get us in the door anyway. At that point we saw the house-made ice cream cooler, which included both basil and salted caramel flavors, and settled down to wait the ten minutes for a table quite happily.

We knew we'd made the right decision when our appetizer of marinated olives came out...and they were warm. I don't think I've ever eaten so many olives in a row ever in my life.

And then: PIZZA. John got lacinato kale with calabrian chilies, provolone picante, lemon & ricotta. I got housemade fennel sausage with red chard, kale & rosemary. And holy shit, you guys, they were so good. I haven't had pizza that good since we were last in Brooklyn and spent an evening at Franny's. OH. Why is there no pizza like this anywhere near where we actually live? Also, in case you were wondering, kale is a fantastic pizza topping. You should absolutely try it.

We finished the night with a scoop of miso toffee ice cream--very much in the salted caramel family. This was the only slightly off note in the night. It didn't actually taste of miso--just salt. It was certainly good, but it just wasn't miso. Maybe that's actually a good thing, but it was a small disappointment nonetheless.

But you know what? I don't even care. Everything else was so amazing that I have no complaints, and will certainly be back at some point.

BEST FOOD CART: Tabor, SW 5th & Oak pod

We had lunch with Michelle of The Hoot Eats at Tabor, home of the evidently famous schnitzelwich. How can you not eat something called a schnitzelwich? I got classic pork, because I knew there was no way I would be able to eat another one during the trip, considering how many other food choices are everywhere. Why not go with the most heritagenous version?

It was pretty amazing: a huge breaded fried pork cutlet on a ciabatta roll with crunchy lettuce and a roasted red pepper/eggplant? sauce. The texture of the pork was excellent: tender and delightful and not at all stringy or difficult. And I could barely even eat half of it. Next time I would definitely get a half schnitzelwich, which they also sell. SO GOOD.

Plus we got to eat outside on a bench and people-watch and hear all about Michelle's trip to Thailand and Cambodia. You can't argue with that!

Obviously there have been PLENTY of other very good food cart experiences, considering Portland, but still.

BEST RANDOM PLACE ON HAWTHORNE: Zach's Shack, 4611 SE Hawthorne

Here they have an assortment of hot dogs, including veggie dogs, that are all fancy and have many delightful toppings. John got two tofu dogs piled with jalapenos and sport peppers; I got one actual beef dog with cream cheese,tomato, and chopped onion. DELIGHTFUL. There is also beer and a full bar and ping pong! ZOMG.

It's very divey and comforting and relaxed, and of course you get to stuff your face with the dogs of your choice. I don't know about you, but I have a slight obsession with hot dogs--I mean, what person who's worked within a couple blocks of any NYC park doesn't?--so this was the best possible plan.

BEST BAKERY: Tabor Bread, 5051 SE Hawthorne

I got a loaf of their special wood-fired blueberry hazelnut spelt bread for Bethany's birthday, fresh out of the very smoky wood-fired oven at 8 am, and dang. There's definitely some actual bread happening here. The loaf was super tangy and a bit damp, almost like a sourdough. Do they use a poolish? Something like that. It wasn't a cake like banana bread; it was BREAD. We discovered that a quick toast and a whack of butter are an exceptional plan. I am also very interested to try it out in french toast form. This will probably not happen, since we've eaten most of the loaf, but hey.

I seriously regret being unable to eat more than a couple slices of bread at a time, is what I'm saying. Otherwise I would have bought several more loaves.

There is also a carafe of almond milk just out on the coffee bar. I'm just saying.

BEST DINER: The Cameo Cafe, 8111 NE Sandy Blvd.

John and I are definitely diner enthusiasts, which means it is especially unfortunate that we live in Silicon Valley, where the diners certainly aren't. What I would not give for a good diner within walking distance of downtown MTV! UGH.

Anyway, this means that when we're out of town we are always, always on the lookout for diners, and this time we found a doozy. The Cameo Cafe's menu is part very breakfast-oriented diner standard, with pancakes bigger than a plate and a massive slab of hash browns in process always covering half the grill top, and part Korean food, with things like pindaetuck (veg-stuffed pancake with rice) and kimchi ramen stir-fry. And it's all in this little oddly shaped building on one of Portland's many weird triangular blocks, filled with a long, angled bar, a bunch of little tables with wire-frame chairs, and a whole bunch of decorative paraphernalia everywhere.

Everyone is nice and the coffee flows freely & often, and if you order the french toast special you get a full three tablespoons of butter with it. There is also a coconut waffle filled with shreds of coconut, and homemade raspberry sauce to squirt across the top.

Every item at the Cameo Cafe is too big for me to eat, but that won't stop me from trying.

HONORABLE MENTION: Produce Row, 204 SE Oak

I ate my first banh mi ever here just last week. We're going again tomorrow night. Hooray!

Portland bars and the drinks thereof

Ok ok! I am catching up with what we've been doing in Portland. One thing is visiting bars and drinking delicious beverages. Here are some of them.

Most of the time I've been drinking beer in dark shadowy places, which means I have very few pictures. Oh well. We all know what a pint of beer looks like anyway, right?

The Old Gold, 2105 N Killingsworth

We went to meet friends here for not only drinks but, as it turns out, also a giant plate of kale with bacon and a platter of house-made pickles including cucumbers, beet, and even pears. SUPER interesting. I had a red ale, which was excellent, and then a cocktail called the Birds & Bees, which is "Aviation Gin, Aperol, grapefruit juice, fresh lemon juice, grapefruit bitters, served up." DELIGHTFUL.

The Old Gold is actually a whisky/ey bar and has an entire blackboard full of options, if that's your thing. It is actually my thing, but it was a gin night. It's all good in any case.

bottles, 5015 NE Fremont

Possibly my favorite new discovery of this trip. bottles has both a multi-roomed, multi-purpose bar, with a variety of both indoor and outdoor nooks, and an array of cases filled with bottles available to drink there or take home. It's super relaxing and neighborhoody, and you can easily escape the drone of tv sports with a simple change of room. Win win!

Bar of the Gods, 4801 SE Hawthorne Blvd

"Darker than Plato's cave, but only in terms of lighting." BA HA NERD JOKE

I love a good dive bar, and one called Bar of the Gods definitely deserves a visit or two. There's a double-sided bar with booths along one side and a couple of pool tables down the other: good for all your beer-drinking and socializing needs. Bonus: faux-Olympian gold columns flanking the door and sparkly grape lights hung from the rafters!

We were thinking we'd go a second time last Friday, but we discovered a quite loud band was playing. While this is probably what a lot of people want out of a bar, I'm not really at that place anymore. Be aware! Instead, we decided to go back to our airbnb with a couple bottles of our own, and spend the evening accidentally about forgetting said beers in favor of code. Yeah.

The Sapphire Hotel, 5008 SE Hawthorne Blvd

This place was dark--dark red, to be precise, with a cascade of philodendrons curtaining the doorway--and crowded, with many carefully dressed hipster customers and a substantial menu of fancy cocktails with fancy names to match. It was loud, but not unbearably so, and the drinks were certainly delightful.

The highlight of the evening was a cocktail called the Retrosex, because of course. It's the drink at the top of the page with the gigantic basil leaf: gin and basil and grapefruit, served in a freezing cold copper tumbler full of ice. Hey, did you hear that metal conducts heat? Yeah. The cup was cold, and that absolutely added to its charm. I wouldn't spend every weekend here by any means, but if you want a fancy cocktail or two--and maybe dinner besides--it's definitely a good candidate.

We still have awhile, so I'm sure we'll go to some more exciting places in the future.

In conclusion, the Portland bar scene is numerous and worth it. Hooray!

A NE Portland mini coffee tour

Man, I am really falling down on the foodblog front this week! But I guess that's what happens when you're essentially learning a new city, working full-time, suddenly increasing your biking from near-zero to 10+ miles per day (with HILLS), hanging out with multiple groups of friends, celebrating multiple birthdays (I am now a power of six! A really small power, but still) and living in a house with two kids under the age of seven. And did I mention I fell down the stairs yesterday? I'm fine, but it's just another thing to tackle--not to mention another dimension to my already existent biking soreness.

So why don't I start by talking about all the coffee I've drunk over the past week or so?

I generally start off my workdays with a trip to the coffeeshop, a regular coffee with milk or cream, and a lot of laptop work. Portland, if you were unaware, has all the coffee everywhere, so I have been having an excellent time trying out all and sundry coffees in the land.

Barista, 1725 NE Alberta

This is the only shop on the list that I've been to before, and the only one at which I ordered anything besides just plain coffee. Although I suppose an Americano could be considered plain coffee...but regardless, it was delicious. My favorite thing about this place is the bar that curves around the back of the barista stations: beautiful wood with plenty of stools for all your coffee-and-work needs.

It can be a little tough to get a seat in the crowded front of the shop, but isn't that the case at all the best coffeeshops? Frequently, yes.

Half Pint Cafe, 537 SE Ash #108

We've been working in the same space as our friends Danny and Bethany, the founders of Beeminder, and this little coffeeshop is just up the street from their office.

We had a marginally hard time finding it because both their site and Maps list them as "Mudd Works Roastery," but everything worked out perfectly once we went inside. There is indeed Mudd Works coffee available approximately one step from the front door, in a totally charming, narrow space. We got our coffees to go, so I can't comment on the working-there situation, but the tasty caffeine experience was all it should be.

Case Study Coffee, 5347 NE Sandy

I really like working here because of the long library table that runs down the room. The smaller tables are copper-topped, which is super appealing as well. The excellent coffee doesn't hurt either.

This is the only place I've gone back to more than once so far, which definitely says something about what a great space it is for work. There's just something about a big library table.

Heart Roasters, 2211 E Burnside

I picked this shop to visit because it's at a good location to take a break on the bike ride to or from the office. Coffee: delicious. Their roaster is right out in the middle of the shop, looming with the delightful promise of more coffee, more, MORE. My shop of choice at home has their roaster out in the shop as well, so this made me feel extra at-home.

This was the most crowded shop I've been to, but it was still totally possible to grab a seat and get some quality work-doing and coffee-drinking done. Hooray!

These shops have a couple things in common.

1. Good coffee. I mean, I am not a connossieur by any means--I will totally mix different blends of self-serve to make a half-caf in my normal shop at home--but I still know what tastes good. These coffees definitely taste good.

2. Communal tables. I'm not sure about the Half Pint, since I didn't go back to the actual seating area, but every single other shop has some kind of communal seating arrangement. This makes it a bit easier to find a seat while also giving you the chance to easily meet people if you so desire. However, nobody was pushy, either, so it's a win-win situation all around.

Obviously we've mostly been in one quadrant of Portland so far, but never fear--there will be more exploring in the future!

Next up: food. Or bars. Maybe both? We'll see.

PORTLAND

We had a most excellent time.

Traditionally, I am alternately stressed out and bored out of my mind on vacations. This was entirely different. I don't think I've actually relaxed on vacation in years. It was spectacular.

I took almost zero pictures. Go team!

Food highlights:
- Eating an entire double carton of raspberries while watching fireworks over the Willamette.
- Evil Prince curry with tofu at E-San Thai.
- Coffee: Stumptown, Public Domain, Barista. Like you do.
- Rye (beer, not liquor) at Tugboat Brewing Co, where we would totally have pints and play anagrabble every week if we actually lived in Portland. There are Zero bars like this anywhere near our house and that is a travesty.
- BBQ brussels bowl at the Bye & Bye.
- Salt & Straw ice cream; I wanted John's salt ice cream with caramel (although my coffee-bourbon was very good too).
- Massive Lebanese feast at Karam, including perfect cauliflower fritters with tahini and eggplant stew with lamb kibbeh.

Non-food highlights:
- Long conversations with friends; yay!
- Wandering around by myself in the early mornings.
- Alberta Park: full of old-growth cedar trees and PUPPIES. Actually, all the parks were pretty great.
- High-stakes mini-golf tournament!!
- Soaking our feet at Ashiyu foot spa after walking around all morning. Bonus: it was hot enough out that nobody else was there.
- Portland is so much friendlier than SV. The amount of random people I talked to went up really dramatically.
- Near-complete shutdown of all my CA-based allergies. This seems weird since I have heard many tales of Portland instead inducing allergies, but no! I am evidently only allergic to CA plants!
- Actual public trans that works.
- Cool air, less direct sun, and northern trees. I miss them so.
- Oh yeah! POWELLS.

In conclusion, yay Portland!

Vacation! Or: Oregon is wet.

So for our birthdays this year John and I rented a car and escaped from blindingly sunny California to green, wet, and cool Oregon. It's always kind of surreal to have our chilly midwestern heritage birthdays supplanted by what passes for early fall in NorCal--that is to say, more summer. It never feels like my birthday here. So escaping to a place where jackets might feasibly be required seemed like an excellent plan.

We started off the road trip with lunch in Davis, home of roughly one million bicyclists. We went to Delta of Venus, a very hippie-student-relaxing coffeehouse in an old run-down Victorian, and had pesto, cheese, and red onion sandwiches with big cups of fortifying coffee. Everything appeared almost instantly and was delicious. Afterward we wandered through downtown to buy honey at the Davis Food Co-op, which was large and clearly excellent. I totally want to spend more time in Davis in the future.

We spent our first night out in Weed, where I ate possibly both the biggest and meatiest sandwich of my life at the Hi-Lo Cafe. This thing was terrifying: roast beef, bacon, and onion (or onion rings? I think it may have had onion rings) on a giant bun with a pile of fries and a big cup of jus for dipping of all kinds. There may have been pickles as well. It was truly massive and deeply satisfying, if also grounds for my arteries to immediately close up shop and declare a a strike.

For about half the trip, we rented a little cabin in the middle of nowhere outside Bend. Evidently Bend is the closest jumpoff for skiing at Mt. Bachelor, which means there are a million rentals available. It also means that early October is off-season, so we could pretty much take our pick of places.

So for a good chunk of a week this was my view.

NICE. I kind of want a woodstove now (not that we need it even a little bit in our current house). That black iron thing on top of the stove is a humidifier, incidentally. You pour in water and it steams off as the fire burns. And it is totally necessary, since woodstove heat is extremely dessicating.

You will also notice the excellent craft beer I was drinking. Yay, beer! I don't think I can make a list of all the different Oregon beers we tried--we just went to the store and picked out individual bottles of everything that looked interesting. However, I can say that every single one of them was great. When we came back home, we went to see which ones we could find locally, and I'm happy to say that the Ninkasi in the picture made the cut. Beer!

On my birthday we went for cocktails at a downtown Bend bar called Velvet (watch out: sound).

Let me just say that had we been staying within walking distance, we would've spent quite a bit more time here. I got the Figlet, which is made of fresh figs (or maybe semi-dried, at least in October), pear puree, and vodka, and nicely made up for missing a week of farmer's market figs at home. John got the Stimulus, which is Bulleit, ginger beer, and lemonade, and which was also very good.

The birthday dinner we went out for afterward was kind of appalling, but let's just draw a veil over that unfortunate incident.

Ahem. Anyway, though we ate and drank at a few other places in Bend (Common Table: excellent vegetarian food; Thump Coffee: excellent coffee; Deschutes Brewery: excellent beer), we spent most of the week cooking in the cabin itself.

The kitchen was stocked with Le Creuset pans.

Wait, what?? But there they were. This was a prime reason to cook me a salted and peppered filet of fish one day. Just look at that sear! It's better than anything I could do at home. I didn't believe Le Creuset pans could actually be worth it, but I may now be changing my mind. Maybe I'll at least get a starter cast iron dude, if nothing else.

On the way out of Bend we ate breakfast at the excellent, friendly, and amusingly named The Breakfast Club. What did I eat? I can't remember. Probably an omelet with lots of vegetables. I know there were definitely some hash browns and coffee, though. It's interesting to see how the hash brown style changed as we went north--all the far northern California and south central Oregon diners used a wide grate on the potato, which I haven't seen before. Yay regional food!

Next we headed through the deep green mist of Mt. Hood National Forest to Portland, land of copious books and great food. This is the point in the trip at which I totally stopped taking pictures, but that's ok! We ate yet another diner meal at a tiny place called John's Coffee Shop, where 90% of the main room was filled with a counter and stools, the people working were Super nice, the menu was classic diner, and the prices were astoundingly cheap, especially coming from SV. Would Eat Again. Then we spent exorbitant amounts of time in Powells and drank lots of coffee before running off to NE Portland for dinner and beer with friends at The Bye and Bye.

Ok, so you know how most bar food consists of, like, food-service chicken wings, overpriced burgers and fries, or faux-British bangers and mash? Yeah, that was not the case here at all. I had the barbecue brussels bowl: brown rice, brussels sprouts, tofu, and a shockingly good barbecue sauce. I now really, really need to replicate this in my own kitchen. I have the brussels sprouts ready and waiting; now all I really need to do is make up a batch of our standard barbecue sauce and give it a try.

By this point we were getting pretty exhausted, so we made the call to head back south, eating merrily at as many diners as possible along the way. We stopped in Corvallis at The Broken Yolk. I got a "skillet," which I expected to be a scramble, but which turned out not to be a scramble at all! Instead, it had scrambled eggs on one side of the plate and a big bowl of red pepper, spinach, feta, potatoes, artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives on the other. Don't get me wrong; it was still great. A big bowl of vegetables was certainly welcome, even if it was a surprise.

On the last day of the trip, we had breakfast at the Black Bear Diner in Yreka, where even the "a little less breakfast" section of the menu provided a ham and cheese omelet so big I couldn't finish it, plus a buttermilk biscuit as big as my two fists. (Note to self: this is now the last time you've had ham! I have no idea how long it had been before this, however. I almost never eat ham.) Then we drove hell for leather through the entirety of northern California, through the worst rain I have ever seen in-state, and finally home to our own bed.

So, to sum up:
- Oregon is awesome.
- We were both glad to have our birthdays somewhere cool and nice and green.
- Oregon craft beer is a great idea.
- I enjoy coffee.
- I think our diner quota is now fulfilled until at least the end of the year.

Hooray vacation!

Seattle food!

This weekend = whirlwind tour of Seattle, during which I took pictures of approximately nothing but the library.

Friday night we went to St. Dame's, a veg and vegan restaurant conveniently located off the light rail line I'd caught from the airport. John and I both had excellent takeoffs on the French 75, featuring fresh kiwi and crunchy seeds, before switching to stout and IPA. For appetizers, we ate beet and goat cheese bruschetta and winter squash quesadillas; for main courses John and his dad had vegan meatloaf and mac and cheese, while I had non-vegan butternut gnocchi with mushrooms, hazelnuts, and blue cheese. We'd been warned that "they really like kale," which was definitely true, as a huge pile of excellent tamari kale came with each. I actually think the kale was the best part. In conclusion, I clearly need to cook and eat more kale at home.

We stayed at the Ace Hotel in Belltown: nice. The ambiance seemed designed to attract urban youth, or "hipsters" as they are currently titled, but the guests we came across looked to be a little older. Seattle appears to enforce a "shut up after 10pm" rule, so even though we were staying right next to/over an obviously popular bar and restaurant combination, we had the opportunity for relatively uninterrupted sleep. In the morning, the common room featured Stumptown coffee of the Hair Bender variety and make-it-yourself waffles. Yay! Waffles have definitely been a theme lately. We didn't eat any right then, though, since we were planning on having full breakfast.

On Saturday we met John's dad at Pike Place Market. All the vendors were still hauling out their massive flats of fish and crab, so we bought some dried tart cherries and headed downtown for breakfast at Planet Java Diner, where we ate many omelets and hash browns and several cups of coffee apiece. Diners! California, where are your diners? They're definitely not in Silicon Valley. So sad.

After a tour of the Klondike state park visitor center, the exciting yet vertiginous library, and various International District markets, we had lunch at Phnom Penh Noodle House. We ordered way, way too much food. It was great food, however! This was my favorite meal of the trip. We ate piles and piles of rice noodles and broccoli and fried tofu and fishcakes. The best dish was John's dad's chicken sour soup, which was this massive red curry-mushroom-pineapple-coconut-kaffir lime creation. It was huge, even though he ordered the smaller portion. One noodle soup plus a single appetizer would be a totally filling lunch for two. I would eat that so hard.

For dinner, we went out to Mount Baker for various wood-fired business at Mioposto. The front of the restaurant was completely awash in small children when we walked in. Babies! That didn't stop us from ordering an array of exciting beer, though. For actual dinner, John had a margherita pizza, while his dad and I both got calzones. Since I got the veg calzone, with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and red pepper, my entire plate was pretty well filed with vegetables. We also got to choose off the regular salad menu for our side salads, which was fortuitous, because beet salad = great. We seem to have eaten a pretty large proportion of beets on this trip, actually. This probably means I should do something with the bunch of golden beets currently sequestered in the back of my vegetable drawer.

On Sunday morning, our trip was over. We got up, ate waffles, drank coffee, and went to the airport. Super Bowl Sunday is a great day to fly in the US, FYI. If you want to stretch out over some empty seats, that's the way to do it. Yes.

Conclusions?
- Seattle seems good, although such a short trip is not enough to form a real opinion. The food was definitely good. Would eat again.
- Apparently, it takes less than 48 hours out of state to completely throw off my tolerance of CA heat.
- I would really appreciate it if the new federal high-speed rail plan began by constructing a line all the way up the west coast, please. Seattle by electric train! Yes!

Serious blood orange

This orange was so perfectly ripe that I didn't even have to cut it; I just broke it in half. Have you ever seen a blood orange so dark? WOW.

I'm flying to Seattle for the weekend. Where should we eat? John's already there; they went to Carmelita, which was evidently excellent. What else?

What we ate when John got back from Seattle

CHOCOLATE.

We also had red wine.

You may have noticed that there is not a whole lot of product placement here, but I'm going to make an exception, because these Theo chocolates were way too good.

I'm not going to make a lot of tasting notes. Let me just say this: those chocolate-covered caramels contain both chiles and red sea salt, and the bar below is filled with toasted buttered baguette crumbs. You heard me.

Also, their blog says they're having a pre-valentine's event with, among other people, Babeland. Yes! You know you support that endeavor.

In the meantime, we still have half the bar and one caramel hiding in the cupboard. We'll see how long it takes before they mysteriously vanish.

It's venison roulade

Not to mention an awesome set of plates!

So yeah. We went to Michigan for holidays, and spent several days alternately playing with tiny children, trying desperately to do work at coffeeshops (the one at which I wanted to work is closed! no!), having wine with relatives, and eating copious delicious food. We managed to get to Travelers Club, El Az, Frank's, and Jerusalem Garden, although once again China Gate thwarted our endeavors to eat sesame tofu and dryfried green beans by being closed for the entirety of the holiday season.

But on the last night of the base 10 number system decade, I really want to talk about christmas eve dinner: venison roulade.

Look at that beet-red meat! This is what happens when you have a brother-in-law who hunts. The chest freezer in their basement is full of hand-butchered local game: mostly deer and fish. On christmas eve we had a venison tenderloin, and not for the fifty bucks it would have cost in NYC, but free. You heard me.

This was optimal dinner.

Ok. John wanted to try the roulade he made me for birthday with a whole tenderloin; we were just lucky the tenderloin in question turned out to be so awesome.


According to Kevin, hunter of the deer, venison cooks faster than other meat since it's much leaner. It also smells very gamy while cooking, being game and all. So we changed things very slightly to accommodate said leanness, only searing the meat on all sides in the pan and not finishing in the oven. We used kale for the greens and gruyere for the cheese and white wine to deglaze, and it was perfect: seared on the outside, rare on the inside.

I had only just had venison for the first time the day before, in leftover stew, and while it was awesome there, it was exponentially more awesome in the roulade.

It was even better with the massive amounts of wine-deglazed grape tomatoes.

Meanwhile, for last dinner of the decade I'm having black bean and kale soup out of the freezer with penne, parsley, and hot sauce.

midNovember updateathon!

Oh! I am here! Still very busy, but here. Hey.

Back from California, great times, ate at lots of lovely restaurants and hung out with lots of friends. We took our friend Heather to Vive Sol and blew her mind with cheese enchiladas del sol--one enchilada with mole sauce and sesame seeds and one with awesome creamy guajillo sauce and thinly sliced almonds. I even managed to cook in CA, largely because John had the foresight to get a hotel room with a kitchen. Yay kitchen! One night I sauteed baby zucchini and green beans and tiny eggplant with garlic and olive oil and squeezed lemon over a big bowl of them for dinner: YES.

Then the night before we left I made us awesome sandwiches to take on the plane! John got this awesome non-crumbly black pepper-encrusted parmesany cheese and radish and cucumber and lettuce on sourdough; I got liverwurst and cream cheese and radish and mushroom and lettuce also on sourdough. Also we had six apples. Also IT WAS THE BEST PLANE IDEA EVER. We got to the airport and ate sandwich one while hanging out at the gate and watching these two rambunctious yet shockingly well-behaved on the plane tiny little girls run up and down the window. Sandwich two was on the plane (John) or after we got back and fell down all over our lovely comforting apartment (me). I ate British candy from the elusive unavailable in NY Cost Plus World Market on the plane instead. Yeah!!

Now we are back and doing work and being responsible setting up my new home office. I work here now! In our house! Ha ha! Granted, setting up the office will be easier when I, uh, buy a desk, but still.

Soon I will settle into some kind of normal schedule and actually edit a handful of the pictures I keep taking. In the meantime, here is a story. Before I went to CA, I was all "I will be responsible and boil a pot of black beans to freeze, so we'll have immediate supplies when I get back!!" So I boiled them and ate some of them the day before. Everything was fine until--you know it--I totally forgot to put the remaining beans and broth in the freezer before I left. Great! Fermentation ahoy! In conclusion, I had an excellent time cleaning out the refrigerator yesterday, why do you ask?

TGIF

We went to Las Vegas a week ago for my little brother's 30th birthday. In many ways, this was awesome, since everyone there was certainly awesome. We also ate a lot of delicious food, particularly at Bouchon for the semi-formal birthday dinner. Tear-off breadsticks set directly on the table; a 6-cheese tasting plate with honeycomb and apples; escargots in puff pastry with garlic butter; excellent bibb salad with lots of fresh herbs; perfect gnocchi that made me seriously regret my (also awesome) dinner order; a cauldron of mussels in white wine, bigger than my head, filled with about 50 tiny, perfectly steamed shellfish; massive amounts of thin-cut crispy fries cooked in duck fat.

It was thoroughly great, and the staff was super nice. If you happen to go to LV, Bouchon is certainly the place to go. Everywhere else we ate ended up subpar and overpriced.

But. It was 104F outside. We walked down the strip at one point in an attempt to see how realistic walking was/avoid paying fifteen freaking dollars for a cab to go a mile and a half/just get out of the massive amounts of flashing lights and noise and morons for a little while. We chose the side with shade, but still. Walking a mile and a half in 104F weather is not the best idea. When we came home, we got off the plane and into the cab and breathed a sigh of relief at the 74F air and the thought of wearing jackets against wind, not sun.

Now it's fall. Our CSA box is full of pears, mustard greens, winter squash. Tomorrow we're scheduled for rain. It's September and it's fall.

Yeah, so

In California we hung out extensively with everyone we know, celebrated at Heather and Tony's wedding, and ate at all the places we miss. We also brought home this giant fruit bowl of tiny, rock-hard avocados, one of which had ripened enough that I could eat it for breakfast this morning. It was pretty great.

On Sunday we went to the hot tub and sauna at the Tea House Spa, and ok, you should CERTAINLY go there. If you want a food-oriented excuse, they give you tea to drink in the tub. We always get jasmine. Also, there is no better tasting water than the metal pitcher you drink after sweating out all your body's moisture for 45 minutes. If you want to experience water, this is the way to do it.

Afterward: dollar store, farmer's market, beach. John bought me a tube of Necco wafers, which I proclaimed were disgusting yet continued to gradually eat until we got off the plane home. At the farmer's market we bought two baskets of strawberries and four huge cups of meyer lemonade. They were stunning and awesome. We stood around eating and drinking them outside the dollar store, where two different random people commented on our strawberries ("You guys are eating healthy! Those are full of antioxidants! But you know what really has a lot of antioxidants? Welch's 100% grape juice.") and the Necco wafers ("I'm probably twice as old as you, and I still had those as a kid!") Food: the great equalizer.

Then we went to Ben's house and picked a massive branch of the loquats growing on the tree in his backyard. So, really, I got to do every single thing I missed from CA, even down to urban foraging. Why not take advantage of the awesome spontaneous local fruit and Chrissy's juicer to create loquat juice explosion?

We did it. Well, mostly Chrissy and Ben did it, while John dinked on his laptop and I took lots of pictures. This one sets the tone for Chrissy's house pretty perfectly.

Loquat juice turns out to be fairly foamy. We mixed it with sparkling water and drank it out of exciting Goodwill champagne bowls in the middle of the afternoon. Yes: vacation.

In Brooklyn right now the local foraging seems to be all mulberries. I'm going to have to get on that. Yes: fruit.

It's New York!

Look at the stove I get to cook on until we find our real apartment!

A GAS STOVE. Not only that, but the fanciest of gas stoves. There are practically no gas stoves in CA, since people worry about severing gas lines in earthquakes, but here there are lots of gas stoves! I'm so excited. A stove on which I can control the heat! The pans that come with corp apartment aren't very good, and neither are the knives, but the stove is GREAT. If only we had our gigantic and perfect All-Clad sauté pan here, as opposed to somewhere in the moving truck. Everything would be perfect.

So far we've mainly used said stove for making tea and some standard pasta, but that is ok. I don't want to stock this entire kitchen and just have to move it, but I do want to make and eat delicious things. Hmm hmm.

So far I've ended up eating a lot of pitas. This one had a chopped hard-boiled egg and lettuce inside. Another one had hummus, carrot, green onion, and lettuce. I'm pretty happy about these. Among other things, the hummus we got--Sabra--was excellent.

One other thing we found: huge dried lima beans.

Fassoulia, you will be mine. Oh yes. You will be mine.

Home again, home again, jiggety oof

Oh man. John and I got up at THREE this morning to make planes on time. That's three central, which equals one California. I am pretty broken. I don't know if I even have the energy to talk about what we ate yesterday.

Eleven City Diner

John wanted diner food after getting restaurant burnout. Clearly we could have gotten on the train and found a more authentic greasy spoon experience, but we had plans later and in short ended up walking through the entire loop to eat here instead.

There was a pickle and green tomato plate on the menu: how awesome is that? I almost ordered it even though I was otherwise having french toast. The french toast plate was massive, covered in fruit and toasty coconut. It was really rich and yet I ate the whole thing. John had eggs and hash browns, like you do. We also had some really excellent coffee. Apparently in Chicago the good coffee is either Intelligentsia or Lavazza; this coffee was Lavazza. It tasted like grain. I meant to buy a pound to bring back to the office, but only remembered at 4:30 in the airport. Perhaps The Internet can help me.

Essentially, this was good brunch but too expensive to justify often.


Old Jerusalem

Later on we went with my friend Nicky and her person Trevor to the Old Town/Wells St. art festivals, where we mashed our way through crowds of drunk 20 year olds clutching plastic cups. Everything smelled sickly sweet and fermented with spilled cheap beer. It was kind of like I imagine the smell of the middle ages, but with less excreta. When fatigue set in, we decided to go to Old Jerusalem. This turned out to be a good plan: a plan full of falafel and pita and and yet more (unremarkable) iced tea.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the food here, since I was paying a lot more attention to hanging out with people I've barely seen in ten years. It was fine. The vegetarian plate was big, full of tabbouleh and a cucumber salad and falafel and clearly house-made hummus and baba. I also find that in Chicago you get pita sandwiches formed differently than most of the rest of the country: instead of rolling everything up in lavash, or cutting a pita in half and stuffing each half, they cut a strip off one margin of a pita and stuff it from there. It works pretty well as long as you have stable pita.

Afterward we had to plead stupidly early flight and go collapse. Boo!


Today I am home. I took a nap. I washed my face. My eyes are burning.

I walked in the door, unpacked, and had a glass of our iced tea. The best thing about this tea is how little you need to use: one cup needs only five or six pearls. Plus you can then reuse them to brew five or six cups. If this weren't the case, I don't know how I'd have ever justified buying them in the first place. Mm, jasmine.

Chicago food frenzy!!

We haven't had much access to kitchens, so here's the restaurant rundown:

My Thai

We went here for dinner our first night, after getting up at 4:30 CA time to catch the plane and etc. With the time change, this ended up sort of being lunch. So. I got panang chicken and John got tofu with pan-fried noodles. We also both got massive glasses of iced tea which turned out to be powdered. Besides that, I was pretty happy. The panang was more heavily spiced and peanut-intense than my normal panang at Siam Royal. It was also thicker. This wasn't a bad thing, though; everything was perfectly tasty, as well as reasonably cheap.

Brian's Juice Bar and Deli

This beats both California and NYC for a cheap falafel sandwich: $3.75. They do premake and microwave the falafels, though, so they're soft and not crispy in your sandwich. Oh well. It still tasted good. I also got a raspberry smoothie, which cost more than the sandwich. Normally smoothies are not my thing, but for some reason I've been all "hey, juice! Maybe I should get a juice. Is there a juice bar around here?" lately. Maybe that's why the smoothie tasted so great. It was also full of crunchy raspberry seeds.

Lou Malnati's

Obligatory Chicago pizza. We even got an obligatory deep dish instead of a thin crust, which I prefer. One medium pizza with spinach cost $14.45. That's more than enough for two of us, due to aforementioned deepdishedness of said pizza. Compare that to your terrible, scraggy, gross, really expensive pizza, California! The pizza itself was fairly sweet, thanks to the tons of actual tomatoes across the top. My only complaint is that the crust was too buttery. We also had gargantuan 32-oz iced teas.

Chicago Diner

I went up the train line to check out neighborhoods, but I specifically got off at Addison to come here for lunch. So ok, Halsted? I could live here just fine. For one thing, I found a massive thrift warehouse with a complete book section in back. Silicon Valley really makes me miss decent thrift shopping. ANYWAY. So the diner itself is a Chicago vegetarian institution, full of hipsters and apparently featuring a nice patio that I didn't see. The waiter dude actually looked me in the eye and was actively friendly! That was nice. I had a grilled cheese with avocado and a cup of pea soup. Here it's not only possible but expected that you might order such a sandwich with non-dairy cheeze, and they make sure to mention the option. I had dairy, but still. Nice! The sandwich was huge and slippery, full of sprouts and tomato and raw onion trying to escape from every angle. The soup was also really good, with a not-quite-smooth texture and a flavor suggesting not only split but also fresh peas involved. I also had iced tea: it was standard good brewed iced tea. Afterward I went up the street and tried on shoes.

India House
Perhaps we are totally spoiled by places like Shalimar, but I was only moderately impressed by India House. The naan was a little too fake-buttery, like a flat, homemade version of cardboard-tube crescent rolls. The baigan bhartha was nice and smooth and peanuty; the palak paneer was a little harsh. It wasn't too spicy, but the taste of the greens was a little aggressive and bitter. Maybe they were using some greens stronger than spinach? It could have been listed as saag paneer, I suppose. The iced tea, though, was by far the best all week. It was clearly some kind of fruit tea with floral tones. John guessed peach. It could easily have been peach. I don't really care though, because it was good.

Clearly it's been iced tea week, a.k.a. summer. On that note, tea ratings!

On a scale of 1=bad to 5=good:
My Thai: 1
Chicago Diner: 3
Lou Malnati's: 3.5 (the .5 is for gigantic quantity)
India House: 5

Fortunately, when I go home on Sunday it'll be to a squat little pitcher of iced jasmine tea. Thanks, foresight!