Signs of Fall

Looks likes fall has officially arrived in Portland. Not sure how we feel about its return yet.

Bachelorette/Bachelor Blow Out

This last weekend we celebrated our friends' final moments of non-marital status with a full day of celebrating. In typical fashion the bride was showered with a nice calming day at a hot spring spa complete with soaks, wraps and a massage. It was nice to get out of town, see the beautiful scenery of the Columbia River Gorge and the Resort was rustic and grand.

A few hours of pampering later we headed back into Portland and enjoyed a great southern feast at the Delta Cafe. We had plans to meet up with the boys for a Zombie Rock Show downtown , but had an hour to kill so a little kareoke was in order.

We finished off a pot of coffee and headed downtown in the warm fall night. We arrived in old town, decided the cover cost for the show wasn't worth it and ended up at a cozy bar enjoying more cocktails and gross bachelor/bachelorette themed shots, before heading over to the adult arcade Ground Kontrol for beers and old school arcade games and pinball. The evening ended with sidewalk photoshoots and more fried foods. With a groom/bride/group of friends like this, the wedding is going to be crazy fun!

Autumn Colors

The deciduous tree leaves aren't the only ones giving us glorious autumn color right now.

Taken from the window of my office building.

Harvesting and Preserving Our 2011 Garden

One of the quincessential Pacific Northwest things to do is have a small garden and spend the summer months growing your own food. This year with our mid-summer wedding we decided we'll still have a vegetable garden, but select vegetables we could harvest at once in the later part of summer. For example we decided to plant an Heirloom Goliath Tomato verses a prolific constant ripening cherry tomato. This beauty grew large over the months of July but only started to bare large green tomatoes in mid-August into late September.

As the green fruits grew and grew and grew, but didn't turn red we started to think we'd have 100lbs of green tomatoes to deal with, but with a couple hot September weekends our tomatoes started to turn red and our plan to can and preserve for use in the winter was back on track.

Our decision to attempt canning our tomatoes was solidified with this bad boy. A pressure cooker/canner purchased with some wedding money.

Sure we could have easily purchased a simplier water bath canning pot, but this 23-Quart Pot is also a pressure cooker. We could easily make a pot of beans for a huge group of people in less than an hour or cook a whole chicken in under 40 minutes! We also heard it's the safest way to can tomatoes which was our main objective. We started by sorting our fantastic harvest of tomatoes by size and whether they had an blemishes.

We were really surprised by how beautifully round and picture perfect the Goliath variety was. The largest firmest tomatoes were saved, later sliced and dehydrated into little round disc that we reconstitute in broth or water for our spanish rice, soup and flavoring bases for just about anything.

All other tomatoes were then prepped to be skinned and prepared for stewing or tomato sauce.

We quickly dunked the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water. After 40 seconds most the skins would visibly split and we would scoop them out and immediately dunk them in a bowl of cold iced water. 5 seconds later the skins easily peel off. Half the tomatoes were cut into quarters for stewing and the other half were roughly chopped for tomato sauce.

We cooked the tomato sauce down for two hours and immediately poured the sauce into the canning jars.

The pressure canner had weights and gauges and initially seemed very scientific and dangerous, with the boiling pressurized air/water situation, so we didn't document watching the pressure build and maintaining the heat so the pressure remains within a certain zone for safe canning.

We can tell you the tomato sauce was alot sweeter than we imagined, the stewed tomatoes had a smokey kick due to some roasted jalapenos we added and we were able to capture a little bit of summer with ingredients grown in our own backyard or within biking distance. We think even our cat Cleo approved.

He's Done It Again

We were invited to a tapas themed special birthday celebration and we brought this tuna tapa bites. Yes, they were as good as they looked.

Honey We're Home!

Although we live in a quaint older part of the city we do dream of living in an open industrial space like this one found in Chicago. The subway tiled kitchen wall, the railed barn doors, the open space, concrete floors, full glassed kitchen pantry wall and an elevator that opens right into your living room. This is a space we'd be happy to call home!

Tribute to Tributes

On a rainy Sunday afternoon we braved the NW shopping crowds in search of some new kitchen appliances and furniture. To reward ourselves we decided to get some fries from one of our favorite spots in town, Tribute's. We've been going to Tribute's for their Philly Cheesestakes and Hot Pastrami sandwiches for ten years now. They have great thick crust pizzas too.

We were hit with two sad pieces of information upon ordering. One: the deep-fryer was not working, so we weren't going to be rewarded with the crispiest fries. Two: Tribute's had recently lost their lease and will be closing on October 9, 2011! We were told a new location is in the works and they will be back. Let's hope so! The Hot Pastrami we got was fantastic! Come back soon!

Summer Staycation, Part II

A prime example of summer in Portland is having late night dinners. We made plans to meet up with friends for dinner on the south side of town and with plenty of sunshine before we decided to make a day of it and tour around town exploring. Portland was hit with a late summer heat wave and we wanted to be near the water, we had no idea we'd have a near deserted riverfront beach area to ourselves!

It may have something to do with the long bike ride back up.

Since we were being adventurous we decided to try a local taqueria in their new industrial location. We've been visiting Cha Cha Cha (Ole Ole) taquerias for ten years and we were skeptical of a possible "starbucking" of this family owned chain popping up in every hip neighborhood across Portland, explaining the two years we waited to try this one. We were pleasantly surprised that the prices weren't any different from their other less glamorous locations and decided to test the consistency of their menu by ordering our 'usual' - potato taquitos and a fish taco. The taquitos were a slam dunk and the fish taco was substantial and fresh, but missing the spicy mayo that usually tops the bland whitefish.

We needed to find a possible gift or at least a card so we detoured through a couple of neighborhoods full of new shops we have yet to check out.

Before we knew it, it was almost time for our dinner reservations. We left with plenty of time to bike to yet another constantly changing Portland neighborhood. As we biked in the warm summer night we passed the PICA building lit up with a summer art installation. It was a near perfect summer day.

Summer Staycation, Part I

Spring started late and when summer started to show we were deep in wedding planning. With Portland's short summers, we were afraid we wouldn't get to enjoy much of it this year. We were completely wrong.

We like to stick close to home during the summer months, opting for vacations when the weather isn't so perfect. So on a random mid-weekday we decided to go be tourists in our own city, hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.

We had a couple things in mind, including a possible mid-afternoon cocktail at the top of this building, but we let the day unfold and ended up elsewhere.

Something we did plan on was to hit up two food carts we've been wanting to try. First was The Whole Bowl.

So healthy, so yummy. Wish we worked closer to one of their carts, it's exactly what a healthy lunch should be - filling and cheap. Everything was well executed from the texture to the beans and rice to the ripeness of the avocado. Only disappointment was the canned black olives. Another bonus was The Whole Bowl's cart concept - 1 item done well, an easy to decipher menu board and only 1 item served in only 2 sizes! Kudos to you Whole Bowl.

However, if we had known how filling it was, we might have taken it to go and gone a much unhealthier route and had a Hawaiin Loco Moco a couple of the other carts were selling. Hey, we're on a staycation, nothing healthy should be consumed!

One cart we did hit up that we wished was not only close to where we worked, but parked out front of our house was My Daddy's Sausage. Unlike the helpful, happy and well cared for Whole Bowl cart, this cart's menu was confusing, poorly displayed, had no prices listed and the girl was irritated we interrupted her game of Angry Birds to go fix us one of her Daddy's Laotian sausages. The minute she handed off the sausage we bolted for the riverfront and happily dug into this fantastic sausage.

The pork mixed with lemongrass, green onions and Laotian spices sausage was stellar. Topped with tangy green papaya, spicy mayo and a green chili salsa, it was delicious. We were now ready for a cooling cocktail and started walking back to where we locked our bikes when we spotted this beauty - Ono Shave Ice. Hawaiin Shaved Ice - Yes! Please!

We were looking for something refreshing and sweet and when we saw a father stop off for a simple snowconed shaped sweet for his daughter and when said daughter was handed a plastic flower boutique shaped cup with a mound of shaved ice covered in red syrup as big as her head, we were sold!

We ordered 1 Shaved Ice - Hawaiin Style with 3 flavors (Blue Hawaiin, Mango, and Guava). Hawaiin style includes topping the humungous pile of syruped shaved ice with adzuki beans, mochi bits, sweetened condensed milk and a scoop of ice cream. We opted for no ice cream, but everything else.

This thing was hard to share to say the least. We tried to alter 1 person holding and eating for 1 block and then the other person holding and eating for the next, but we soon just pulled off to the side and dug in.

Ono's shaved ice was so good we decided to forgo a trendy cocktail and instead met friends for happy hour at one of our favorite summer time patios at Bernie's Southern Bistro.

We enjoyed the summer sun and garden setting while sipping on Lynchburg Lemonades and Mojitos, snacking on cornmeal fried okra, deep fried pickles, buttermilk fried chicken salads and sweet potato fries. Ahhhh summertime.

Not yet in a food coma we decided to bike off our fried feast with a beer up the road at Prost, a German beer hall.

We contemplated getting something to eat at either the Mississippi Marketplace food cart pod connected to Prost or just order some German food from the bar, but we decided we wanted to continue snacking, so we hopped back on our bikes and headed for a late night of chips & salsa and some ping pong before heading home, not feeling full at all from a day of staycationing.