Mmmm... Christmas-y...

Pretty sweet Christmas holiday for me. It started off with a nice Christmas Eve breakfast with Maggie at Helser's on Alberta. They have a pretty cool $5 brekky special before 9am, but I was lured away from the special by my inability to refrain from ordering Eggs Benedict. This version was made with Zenner's Ham and served with kick-ass Yukon Gold Hash. It was the bomb.
The rest of Christmas Eve was family time... Beating the parents at Scrabble, watching a movie, hanging out, then having the traditional Christmas Eve night present-opening. (When we were kids, we always got our main presents from our parents on Christmas Eve night, then Santa came and filled our stockings with smaller things Christmas morning... In hindsight, it seems only fair for parents to take credit for the good gifts, rather than giving Santa all the credit... and when you know it's your parents and not Santa who buy the presents, you are more likely to understand when you don't get a pony...)
Christmas dinner (above) was possibly the best we've ever made, and confirmed our suspicions that we are in fact quite awesome. And, of course, the second best part of cooking a standing rib roast for Christmas dinner (after the dinner itself) is bomb-ass French Dip sandwiches for Boxing Day lunch. Mmm....

Quest for (Awesome) Trashy Mexican Food

So, as I've lamented before, there is a dire shortage of awesome trashy Mexican food in Waltham. It's almost worse than when I lived in Melbourne. In Melbourne there was no (remotely authentic) Mexican food at all. In Waltham there are a few places that come recommended as being good, authentic Mexican food and get my hopes up only to leave me disappointed with their lame bland white rice and lack of the flavors I'm craving. Thus, as promised, I'm working on fitting as much trashy Mexican food into my weekend in Portland as possible. First up was take-out from Ole Frijole with my parents on Monday night when we got home from Seattle. They've actually spruced the place up quite a bit since I was there in July, including the addition of a nice hot sauce bar. (The hot red sauce is AWESOME.) We went with a variety of items to share, and I sort of panicked while ordering (I don't do well under pressure), so we ended up with more than was strictly necessary for one meal... but I'm not complaining.
First upwas a Carnitas Quesadilla (because I have a carnitas obsession, and "Mmmm... Cheese..."). This was pretty darn awesome. (It's not on the picture of the plate above because we enjoyed is as an appetizer... and I'll go ahead and throw in the apology here for the fact that I only have the crappier of my two cameras with me on this trip...)
Next we went with a Chicken Chimichanga in honor of Stanley, which we'd enjoyed before and enjoyed again this time.
The Carne Asada Torta has been haunting my memory since I first tried it, so we ordered that again,
as well as a Carnitas Torta (again: carnitas obsession + "Mmmm... Torta...").
Then I panicked and added a Chorizo Burrito to the order. This turned out to be a good call, both because it ensured that there would be ample leftovers for brekky the next day and because it was delicious.
I met up with my friend, J, on Tuesday for lunch. We were hoping to hit Autentica, but our suspicions about their phone message ("We open at 11am for lunch!") were confirmed and they were indeed closed. Not having a real back-up plan and working with only my 12-year-old memories of how Northeast Portland works, we decided to head to Alberta, where I remembered there being restaurants, and we ended up outside of La Bonita (which is two doors down from La Sirenita). J ordered an awesome-looking Carne Asada Tostada (at rear in the picture below) while I went with a Chile Relleno platter. We also both ordered Horchata (J because she loves it, me because I was curious and wanted to seem cool). The tortillas with my platter were lame, but it was a pretty good relleno so I was happy. The Horchata was also totally awesome.
Last night I had plans to go out for Trashy Mexican with Max, Midge, and Micahoe. We headed out towards 42nd and Killingsworth, thinking we'd hit either Ole Frijole or "that place across the street from Ole Frijole," aka Santeria Domingo Taqueria Oaxaca (Yes. I was willing to go to Ole Frijole again...) At the last minute I made the call that we should hit Santeria Domingo Taqueria, since I'd never had a chance to really explore their menu beyond the awesome burrito they once made for me, and I'm really glad that's where we ended up. I ordered the Carnitas Plate (the thing I order to compare Mexican restaurants to my favorite place in Santa Barbara), and it was the bomb.

The Carnitas were delicious, crispy, and not at all greasy - by far the best I've had in Portland, and probably better than Super Cucas, too. This is definitely going to be my favorite place in Portland for what has become (through deprivation) possibly my favorite cuisine these days... And they even put up slightly tacky decorations for the season:

Here's hoping everyone has an awesome extended weekend, whether celebrating holidays or just happy to not be at work...

A New Kind of Awesomeness

Times have been pretty hectic for the last week+, so I'm just now getting a chance to post about the awesomeness of the Thursday before last (that would be July 2), when Priya was kind enough to cook us an amazing Indian feast (with a tremendous amount of prep help from Stanley and Alicia). After searching the markets of Portland for the right ingredients (or a close enough approximation) on Wednesday, Priya, Stanley, and Alicia spent the better part of the afternoon hacking, peeling, and chopping an assortment of vegetables. Priya began work on a few dishes that day, then spent the entirety of Thursday in the kitchen, slaving away for us. (I actually stayed completely out of the kitchen during pretty much this entire trip, mainly trying to avoid being in the way...) When dinner time rolled around on Thursday, we cleared out the living room, laid out banana leaves for our group of 10, and watched as Priya dished up her amazing creations.

The initial food layout looked like this:
After we finished our lentils (the yellow stuff on the rice), we were allowed to have the final curry added to our "plates":
...and the final configuration of the "plate" looked something like this:
Everything was absolutely fantastic, and really different than Indian food I'd had previously. My favorite was probably what we've been referring to as "the cabbage thing," with "the squash thing" running a close second... Being Americans, we were fairly uncomfortable with Priya serving us throughout the meal rather than sitting down to enjoy her food with us. Once we talked her into joining us and worked out a self-serve refill policy, I couldn't help that notice that almost every single bowl ended up with Mr. Max Power:
Priya has cooked a meal like this for her friends and family (including Stanley and Alicia) in Dubai, and I thought it was pretty amazing that she would put in all this work for us people (most of whom were at least relative strangers) during her vacation. She's the best.
As long as I'm catching up on Portland happenings from last week, I'll briefly add that we took Priya out to experience her first karaoke bar on Friday night, followed by a trip to Portland City Grill for a view of the city at night (above). Saturday afternoon featured a fun and delicious ping-pong-tournament/BBQ hosted by Max and Midge. Lamely, I had to take off early to wake up at 4am for an early flight back to Boston, sadly missing out on the late-night shenanigans that I'm sure ensued... Oh, and, apropos of nothing, below is the totally kick-ass chicken sandwich I made for myself as a pre-karaoke dinner (which I show you just because it is so pretty, not because it's super-exciting). I do love me a good sandwich.
This work week has been hectic, as I'm still recovering from the jet-lag, head-cold, and sleep-deprivation that vacation brought with it, but I'm looking forward to one of the most uneventful weekends in history in order to help me recover... If all goes as planned, I will have absolutely nothing interesting to report.

Maybe I'm Not Broken After All... (Updated 7/3)

Wednesday started with about 6 hours of tennis-watching. Even if things didn't go my way thanks to stupid Andy Roddick not choking down the stretch, it was nice to not be at work on a day when such awesome tennis was being played... For lunch I met up with Maggie for another trip to Kennedy School. It was another beautiful day out on the restaurant's patio:and I decided to mix things up by ordering the Ahi Steak Sandwich featuring "wasabi mayonnaise":For the fourth straight time at a restaurant on this trip, I was... disappointed. The Ahi was actually cooked perfectly, but the wasabi mayonnaise was non-existent and when I asked for a bit more, I was brought a slightly green mayonnaise that tasted... like mayonnaise. I realize the average American restaurant-goer doesn't like spicy food, but you should be able to taste some wasabi if the word appears in the menu description of the item... I make a pretty awesome version of this at home, which was maybe also part of my problem (since I knew my version is better and cheaper), but it still made me sort of cranky. This streak of disappointing experiences was starting to make me worry that I was becoming too much of a food snob to go to lower-end restaurants anymore. I didn't want to think that this was the case, but damned if I wasn't finding myself constantly disappointed when I ventured out to eat...

For dinner we had been pondering trashy Mexican food, but Stanley suggested that we go for a sit-down meal at Chez José instead. We used to grab lunch there from time in high school, and it had been probably about 15 years since I'd eaten there, but my brother (quite the connoisseur of the chimichanga) said that they make the best chimichanga in town, and I was game to check it out... The chimichanga is indeed pretty impressive-looking:
and the margaritas are pretty darn tasty as well:
I went with a combo meal of Chile Relleno (one of my favorite foods on the planet) and a prawn taco:
The relleno was good (not quite as awesome as the version my mom makes, but a vast improvement over the last one I tried in Waltham), and the prawn taco was ridiculously delicious. As I ate my meal, I realized that I was thoroughly enjoying it, without any annoying disappointment creeping in to ruin the experience. So, maybe I wasn't broken after all... Maybe I just needed some good (semi-)trashy Mexican food to get back on track...7/3 UPDATE: For lunch before our insane Indian Feast on Thursday, Stanley and I ran over to Santeria Domingo Taqueria Oaxaca for a quick bite of trashy Mexican food. As you can see if you stare really hard at the picture above, this fine establishment is located across the street from Ole Frijole, of which I am also a fan, but which featured a very long line when we arrived, thus sending us across the street.
We were a little dubious, judging simply from the complete absence of customers (especially in comparison to the long lines across the street), but we gave it a go. Stanley went with a pair of soft tacos (chicken and steak), which he said were quite good:
I went with a carnitas burrito (carnitas being the item I like to use to judge trashy Mexican restaurants), and it was the bomb. Made with a really nice flour tortilla, the filling was about 90% perfectly seasoned, super-moist carnitas with a little pico de gallo and a bit of guac. Awesome.
This is my new favorite trashy Mexican restaurant within one mile of my parents house is now Santeria Domingo Taqueria Oaxaca. If only I had a few more days to explore the menu before heading back to Boston...

Kennedy School, Wine Tasting, and Corndogs...

A few more days of vacation under my belt, and I've managed to squeeze in a few more of the requisite activities (even if one didn't quite work out, as I'll whine about below). After an extended-family function on Sunday, Alicia and I headed over to Kennedy School for dinner. The service was pretty atrocious, but the beer was great and the food (my standard order of the Captain Neon Burger) was pretty damned tasty, too. The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous, so it was nice to get to sit out on the patio and enjoy it.

Monday was mostly spent lounging out on the patio with my book, making up a double-batch of Scorching Chile Chicken (one just a little scorching, the other scorching enough to make even Alicia's friend, Priya, from India have to fan her mouth...), and spending some quality time with the family (also out on the patio). On Tuesday we headed down south for a bit of wine tasting. Have I mentioned that the weather is gorgeous here? It really really is...
(A hat-tip to Stanley for taking the last two of those photos...) After a couple wineries, we stopped for lunch at The Dundee Bistro. Stanley, Alicia, and Priya all ordered pizzas, including one with blue cheese, grapes, and bechemel:one with potatoes, portabellas, and bechemel:
and a Pizza Margerita:I went with Alder-Smoked Salmon and Dungeness Crab Melt, served on a Ciabatta roll:The pizzas received good reviews, particularly the portabella/potato version, but my sandwich was a bit disappointing. That the smokiness of the salmon overpowered the crab meat shouldn't have surprised me, but I was surprised that they used relatively crappy cheese given that it was a high-end-ish restaurant and Oregon is pretty good cheese-making country... Wine tasting was a lot of fun, though, particularly since it was Priya's first time trying wines other than port. In the evening we headed down to Yur's for what we hoped would be an evening of video bowling and mini corndogs. The mini-corndogs and stiff gin & tonics were just as I remembered them:but, tragically, Stanley and Alicia were apparently single-handedly keeping Siler Strike Bowling profitable, and it had been replaced with a stupid golfing game after they moved to Dubai. Today I'm off to have lunch with Maggie, then Stanley and I are planning on intruducing Priya to the joys of trashy Mexican food come dinner time...

First Full Day in Portland...

I always think (fondly) of Portland as a place where it's always cold and rainy, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Portland in June is absolutely gorgeous... so much so that I ended up getting a sunburn while sitting in the back yard reading my book...
Because we had only one overlapping day between my arrival and her departure, J came to brunch with Alicia and I at a place in NE called Screen Door. The specialize in Southern food, and I realized something after this, my fifth or sixth experience of going to a Southern restaurant that everyone raves about: I don't particularly care for Southern food. I'm cool with BBQ, but all of these biscuits, grits, fried stuff, and gravy I find myself generally underwhelmed by... J ordered the Fried Chicken Biscuit "Sandwich," which looked pretty crazy (especially with the giant knife sticking out of the chicken), and by all accounts was delicious (if you like Southern food):
Alicia ordered up biscuits with sausage gravy, which were also well-received:
I went with the Fried Oyster Eggs Benedict, as I am a huge fan of both oysters and Eggs Benedict, and it was... meh. The oysters weren't as good as most that I've had, and the hollandaise was not particularly flavorful. I am seldom disappointed by eggs benedict, but this one was sort of lame. (Shown on 2 plates because they were having an "egg disaster" in the kitchen and had to bring out the second egg separately...)The company was fantastic, so I'm glad to have gone, but I think I'm officially giving up on trying to like Southern food... After picking up Alicia's friend at the airport, we all sat out in the gorgeous Portland sunshine to enjoy nice fat rib-eye steaks with grilled sweet corn and grilled asparagus for dinner, all of which helped to make my mediocre brunch just a small glitch in an otherwise lovely day. Off to take care of some seeing-the-extended-family business today, then looking forward to a week of seeing friends and checking out my old haunts...

Last Weekend in Portland...

So, I just finished packing up everything that's coming to Boston on the plane with me and sorting through everything that the movers will come to get in a couple weeks. Hard to believe my 19 weeks as a woman of leisure have come to an end, but as I look back over this blog (which started around the time that I left Melbourne and began this extended vacation) it definitely feels like time well-spent.

My last weekend here in Portland was a pretty good one. Maggie came over on Friday night for one last round of chick movies. We watched The Clique (produced by Tyra Banks! and pictured below, right), which totally wishes it was Mean Girls, and Another Cinderella Story (picture below, left), which was quite extraordinarily strange and cheesy and... strange. There was a heck of a lot more singing and dancing in that one than we'd anticipated... It also featured Moesha's little brother (who we had just enjoyed a couple days earlier in the fantastic Take the Lead) except that he was suddenly all grownsd up and his giant ears were seeming seriously (and oddly) adorable/attractive. Glad I got to share that one with Maggie. Very few people understand these things quite like she does...
Saturday (after I went out and got myself an awesome GPS thingy for my car, thus eliminating any preliminary stress about getting lost while apartment-hunting when I get to Boston) I went to lunch at Alameda Brewhouse with my parents. Probably the only stout I've ever tried that I like better than McMenamins' Terminator Stout is the Black Bear XX Stout at the Brewhouse.
We tried the herbed Artichoke Spinach Dip appetizer, which has a really strong rosemary flavor that is strange but good. Definitely a spin on Artichoke Dip that I hadn't seen before...
I went with Pan-Fried Oysters for my main course, which were served on a monstrous pile of fries alongside some very cumin-y coleslaw. Cumin is by far my favorite spice on the planet, but I'm not sure how I felt about it being in my coleslaw... It didn't taste bad, per se, but it didn't seem quite right, either... The jury is still out on that one for me. The oysters were cooked perfectly, but the oysters themselves couldn't really compare to the ones I used to get (and still crave occasionally) from Santa Barbara Shellfish Company, although the standard set there is perhaps unfairly high. Overall it was a nice lunch (and one that took away the need for much of a dinner, which was good since the rest of the day was dedicated to watching football...) and I'm glad I got over to the Brewhouse once before I left town.
On Sunday I made up some hummus and lamb kofta kebabs in the morning in preparation for a fantastic football-watching lunch. The NFL playoffs have been ridiculous this year, and only one of the 8 games over the first two weekends went sort of how I wanted it to (the Steelers (who I only sort of hate) beating the Chargers (who I loathe)). This is one of my very favorite football-watching meals and is super-easy to make, too. (Yes, the assortment of food on the table is strikingly similar to that when I make Grilled Leg of Lamb with Pitas, but I like this version because it's a lot easier to make for just one person when I'm on my own, whereas I can't make it through a whole leg of lamb by myself.)
After football I met up with Max, Midge, Micahoe, and Lucas at the Boiler Room bar in Kennedy School for one last round of beers before I leave town. The beer was great (as always), my Garlic Chicken Panini (picture below taken after we'd basically finished eating when Micahoe reminded me that I hadn't taken one yet) was pretty tasty, and the company was awesome.
And, with that, I guess I'm ready to leave Portland and get started on my new adventure in Boston (which, unfortunately, will involve having to actually go to work again)....