Portland - Day 4

Our day in a nutshell:

We saw:
The Multnomah County Library. A library? Yes, we're big fans of reading! More about the library here - Plus, it's the oldest and biggest library west of the Mississippi!
The library also houses the Beverly Cleary Children's Library . More about the author here, and here . Remember Beezus and Ramona? Henry Higgins and his dog Ribsy? She was one of my favorite authors while growing up and she's a native Oregonian.

Portland State University, More about Oregon's largest University here . Their mascot is the Vikings. It's OSU that are the Beavers. Heh heh, I said Beaver.

We had lunch at:
the Food Carts on SW 10th & Alder . More about the food carts on this blog.
(particularly Asia Station and Ziba's Pitas)

After a brief rest at the hotel, we headed out again to:
Another location of Stumptown Coffee Roasters(for Bert's coffee fix)
Pioneer Courthouse Square. Unfortunately the Courthouse is undergoing renovation and we couldn't get in. There's supposed to be a spectacular view of the city from the cupola.
The gal at Cosmic Monkey recommended visiting Floating World Comics (more info here ).
We passed by the 24-Hour Church of Elvis (MUST visit it TOMORROW!!!)
which is next to Floating World...(a very cool comics shops I must say)

Had dessert at:
Mio Gelato

Lots of walking and also wandering around the neighborhoods. Took the streetcar a few times as well. It's free too, which is awesome. This city is pretty much pedestrian friendly, unlike San Diego where people will run you over in a heartbeat no matter where you're at, especially downtown.

Portland is divided into quadrants, each with their own unique flavor and identity. Our hotel is in the SW area, which is downtown. We're a block away from Powell's and a few blocks away from the Pearl District (aka the NW), which is the chi-chi, yuppified, La Jolla'ish area filled with lofts and art galleries. Not really fun or interesting if you're with an 8 1/2 year old. Our dinner and dessert destination last night was in the SE, which is also where Knitting Diva's brother lives. We went to only to one place in the NE (Cosmic Monkey) and plan to see a few other spots tomorrow. We're not sure yet all we want to see and do. We're trying to hit up several places suggested by friends, readers, and things I saw in this book, The Zinester's Guide to Portland (this is one of the top sellers at Powell's). I really love this book because is a cooler alternative to the other guidebooks out there that are pretty run of the mill. No offense to Portland natives, but do I really need to see the Zoo? Or their museums when there are other off beat things out there that San Diego doesn't have? C'mon, how can one pass up on the Velveteria and the 24-Hour Church of Elvis? One cannot.

In addition to the Zinester's guide, I also consulted Insider's Guide to Portland, 5th Edition, and received Kirk's older copies of Best Places - Portland and Walking Portland (thanks!). We have one more day tomorrow and we head back home Thursday morning. Out of all of our trips, this one has been the most fun and most relaxing...

Can't wait to post my photos!

Portland - Day 3

I'm so FKN tired! It's almost 9:30 pm.

Bare bones of what we did:

Drove on the Historic Columbia River Highway.

One thing we noticed is that's it's very relaxing driving on the freeways here. We encountered NO TRAFFIC PROBLEMS at all. Nice. Unlike driving in San Diego or LA.

Vista House in Corbett. Here's the official link to Vista House and more info here. Very windy here! Our faces nearly froze off!

Beautiful views of the Columbia River Gorge from there...Yes, there's that sweeping view of the Gorge, as seen briefly in the "Twilight" movie trailer and also in brief spots in the movie...Simply breathtaking...

Latourell Falls

Bridal Veil Falls

Multnomah Falls (and ate at the Multnomah Lodge)

We just drove by the Wahkeenah Falls and Horsetail Falls)...

Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery (fascinating, actually)


Dinner at Pok Pok with my Knitting Diva's brother, who lives in the area which is in Southeast Portland. He is going to nursing school here and will graduate this June. Other than seeing him in my friend's photo albums and seeing him once at her wedding, I didn't really meet him until today. His suggestions on places to see and visit were quite helpful. It was also nice meeting someone whom we had a tiny bit of a connection with in Portland. Yelp reviews here. Pok Pok was also a suggestion from Kirk (thanks!) and a place I really wanted to try based on local Portland foodblogs. We ordered about 5 different things here. Mine had "boar collar". That's all I can write about that for now.

Dessert at Pix Patisserie. Reviews on yelp here.

Fkg A! - Macarons.

One thing I have to say is the people we've met so far have been so friendly. Really. For example, the owners of the Velveteria, Carl Baldwin and his girlfriend, Caren Anderson - super knowledgable! And the two people we met while waiting for the Red Tri Met streetcar - an elderly man from Jordan who only needed to go up one block (he ended up walking) and a cheerful woman from Iran who had a picnic basket laden with goodies. She was on her way to a local park to meet some friends to usher in the Persian New Year. It's meeting people like those folks that make visiting a new city so much more memorable. Turns out one of the streetcards had an accident, so it was quite late. Normally the wait isn't more than 10 minutes. It was about 30 before another car was sent over to replace the messed up one.

I'm already thinking about where to go and what to see and most importantly, what to eat tomorrow!

Portland - Day 2

I'm still blogging without pictures for the time being...

Today was filled with things to do and see.

We took the Tri Met today. Here's what we saw:

(parts of) the Hoyt Arboretum
The Japanese Gardens
The Portland Saturday Market
The Duck Store (U of Oregon stuff - Bert's request)
Voodoo Doughnuts
Stumptown Coffee Roasters
Velveteria (an awesome Velvet painting museum)
and Cosmic Monkey Comics

We ate:
Himalayan food as well as food from the "Horn of Africa" and
Doughnuts. This was at the Portland Saturday Market (which is also open on Sundays)

To tide you over, here's a link to Portland's Food Carts here.

Portland - Day 1

Hey now! We're in Portland, Oregon. We spent the night last night at Bert's bro's place in Aliso Viejo. Our flight wasn't direct from San Diego, but from LAX, hence the night at bro in law's. Man, the shuttle picked us up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m.!

Dinner was take out Fish and Chips from a British place in their neighborhood. Pictures to be posted later. Although there is a free Wi-Fi connection here in our hotel, it's pretty damn slow. I tried to download my photos to the blog and it took forever to do just one, so I'm just going to do it when we get back home.

We were able to check in our luggage early at the hotel. After that we drove to...

Beaverton.

WTF is there in Beaverton you ask? Well, besides being the headquarters of NIKE (Uh, like I care or wear their products), it is also one of the locations of Uwajimaya, a huge Seattle based Asian supermarket.

Lunch was at the Japanese deli/take-out sections of the market. Then, we went snack/grocery shopping. Yes, snacks galore. There were also these Geoduck clams in the seafood area. Very phallic looking. Lovely.

Our place is just a few blocks away from Powell's Books and a few of the famous food carts in Portland. We were able to sample a couple of crepes. Most of them were already closed for the day, but we eyed a few of them for good eats later this week.

Man, this kind of sucks for me - blogging without pictures.

Tomorrow, we hope to check out a few more sights...Stay tuned.

Nuyo revisit

I'm actually posting this while in Portland...Last week (as I write this) we did a few errands in the Otay Ranch mall area. Bert had never gone to the Eastlake Nuyo, so we went today...This is in the same little shopping area with Rubio's, Pick Up Stix, California Sushi (which is Mexicanified sushi - not really good), Fed Ed and Wal-Greens.
Even though the Telegraph Canyon Nuyo is closer to our house, TC and I really like the Eastlake location because it's bigger and has more flavors. They have the regular flavors like Chocolate, Vanilla, Peanut Butter, plus the No Sugar versions. There are also tart flavors like Strawberry, Green Tea, and Mango. They also have unusual flavors like Ube. I love the fact that they have Ube!!! My favorite and not just because I'm a purple freak.

Check out the cake batter flavor - which I didn't get. I don't think I'd like cake batter as a yogurt flavor. The flavor next to it, Lychee, was really very good! It tasted fresh and shall I say crisp? It tasted like real lychee. This flavor should be a keeper.

Pistachio was also another flavor I hadn't seen before. Bert ended up getting the pistachio...

Last time I was here, I didn't take pictures of the toppings because I didn't want to look too conspicuous. I'm at the point now where I don't really care. The teenage girl working there didn't seem to mind. She was busy cleaning up after ringing us up to care. These toppings are the candy pieces, like mini sno-caps, mini chocolate chips, sour gummi-worms (which TC loves, but I think are gross), regular gummy bears, Reeses Pieces, Mini M & M's, crushed Oreos as well as Butterfingers, chocolate Jimmies, and some other stuff I can't recall.

The middle part of the self-serve topping bar are crushed nuts (walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pecans) and cereals (Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, Captain Crunch) ...

The left most part of the toppings bar are the fresh fruits like chopped mangoes, kiwis, strawberries and whole berries (blue/rasp/black) as well as mini mochi balls, cookie dough bites (kind of gross to me) and cheesecake bites. They also have halo-halo (or shave ice) ingredients like coconut strings, coco gel cubs, lychees, longans, and some other stuff. Pictured below are the squirt bottle toppings you can squirt on your yogurt creation (to add more calories).

You serve yourself at the yogurt dispensers, get your toppings (if you desire) and pay by the ounce. I think this is a better setup than the highly overrated Pinkberry,where you have to pay a set price for a bigass serving of yogurt. Plus, Pinkberry only has two flavors, which sucks (Green Tea and Plain). Nuyo has at least 10 different flavors, you can choose your toppings and it's .38 an ounce. Believe it or not, those little toppings do add up the weight factor. Makes you think twice, right? Yeah, I thought not.The seating set up is the same at this Nuyo, but with more seats. It's a lot more spacious here, which I like. The Telegraph location is cramped and noisy.

Here's my boring same old same old. Well actually, I got the taro and the lychee this time, along with my usual suspects of chocolate and vanilla. The toppings are the same - chopped almonds with mini chocolate chips, mini mochi balls and a drizzle of chocolate sauce. Snooze.

This was Bert's - Strawberry/Banana (this was really good - not too sour) with Pistachio and Lychee. The toppings were chopped almonds only.

Lastly, our girl's - Strawberry/Banana with Mango. She chose the multi-colored sprinkled, sour gummi worms, and a few pieces of mini mochi balls which was topped by a maraschino cherry. This would've been too sweet for me, but she really likes that sour gummi stuff.

Like the other location, the flat screens positioned in various corners of the store play old school videos. They played some really good ones that day like the Sugar Hill Gang's classic "Rapper's Delight"! Unfortunately they also played a 2 Live Crew Video. No, it wasn't "Me So Horny" or "We Want Some P-ssy!". It was actually one without swear words (I forgot the title of it), but the video chicks in there had HUUUUUGE BUTTS and were gyrating them suggestively. Uh, yeah, not what I wanted to see.

Trevi Ristorante

Last Sunday we wanted to eat at Bonnie Jean's Soul Food place but for some reason, it was closed. It was 12 noon too. I figured it would be open especially as a lunch destination for those leaving church or something. Anyways, it was closed. I remembered seeing Trevi Ristorantein an old restaurant review a few years ago and always wanted to go there. When I followed my friend a couple weeks ago to Bonnie Jean's, I spied the restaurant which is on Federal Blvd, near a corner in a really run down looking area. So....since Bonnie Jean's was closed, Bert, TC and I went here. It was raining when we got there and during the course of our meal, it was pouring pretty heavily. Click here for the Yelp reviews. This was the shot I took as we left (below):
Menu cover (kinda blah):

Their take out menu:

When we got there, it was empty and unfortunately it remained empty during the hour or so we there there. We were greeted by a young girl (a teenager) and a woman whom I believe was her mother. It looks like a family run operation. The interior is pretty nice though with terra cotta sponged walls and a huge wall with a painting of the Trevi fountain (didn't take a photo of it).

The restaurant was spacious with lots of tables as well as booths on the side and facing the window towards the front.

Our young server gave us garlic bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. As you can see, the bread was burnt. I didn't really like it. The bread tasted cheap, like cheapass french bread from Vons or Ralphs.

We ordered the Calamari Fritto appetizer. The marinara sauce was piping hot and it had capers in it. This was a nice touch. The squid pieces were cut kind of strange and there were two pieces with tentacles. I actually like the tentacles, but gave them to TC for novelty's sake. They were cute, like a mini Kraken.

We also ordered their signature Trevi Salad, which are mixed spring greens with strawberries, grilled chicken breast, candied walnuts and strawberry dressing. I thought the portion was a bit small for the price ($9.50 I think), but I loved the dressing which is saying a lot because I'm not a salad dressing person. I liked it because because it was sweet and light tasting. No heavy oily taste or vinegar flavor.

We shared the salad as well as our main entree, the Vegetarian Pizza. As you can see, the toppings seem a bit sparse. There were chopped olives, slived green peppers, mushrooms, and really thinly sliced red onions. I thought the red onions were sliced way too thin. They were not pleasant to eat because they got caught in my teeth (insert nasty joke here). I ended up picking mine off. The toppings didn't seem evenly distributed either.

A shot of our lonely pizza with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top and also before we put on the hot pepper seeds.

Okay, I can cross this place off our list. We had decent service. The girl was not very well versed with speaking with customers. "Do you want dessert?" . Uh, yeah. No. No other customers were there. One lady did walk in, but she came in to talk to the lady working there, then left. Maybe this place is happening at nights?

Rubio's

On St. Patrick's Day, I met up with Bert for lunch. We had just gone to our daughter's school to watch her class perform a play, "Pandora's Box". She portrayed one of the "Miseries", which was "Pain". Nice. Actually, the kids did a great job. So, before going back to work, we went to Rubio's. We saw this sign advertising their new salmon offerings:
Over the years, Rubio's has spiffed up its look. Back in college, I used to go to the Rubio's near SDSU. The older location in Chula Vista (on Broadway near H) closed and relocated a few years ago across the street to the Chula Vista mall.

View from our table - we sat by the corrugated tin wall.

The salsa bar - mild, tomatillo, roasted chipotle and the picante. There are also sliced limes, lemons, and pickled jalapenos with carrots.

Bert got the grilled salmon burrito with chips:

I got a couple of fish tacos - for those of you not from San Diego, Rubio's Fish Taco is one of San Diego's signature fast food places. The San Felipe inspired fish taco is a lightly breaded portion of fish served with shredded cabbage and a white sauce. Pretty good. The portion is a bit bigger here than at Fin's (a Rubio's offshoot). This is a crappy photo by the way. We used a different camera and it kind of sucks or at least the settings I used weren't right.

Cross section of that grilled salmon with lime and roasted corn and cabbage. There was also guacamole in there - nice and creamy. The roasted corn was a nice touch as well as the citrus flavoring. The chips were blah though.

I like making ghetto lemonade. I usually order just water then put in lemon and/or lime slices and put in sugar packets (or Splenda). Until next time!

3rd Year Blogaversary

(image courtesy of jonesprimavera's photostream on Flicker, found during a Yahoo image search)

It's been three years since I've started this blog! Happy Blogaversary to Pink Candles at Ridgemonth High. The name, if you can't figure it out, is a combination of my three favorite movies, "Fast Times at Ridgemonth High", "Sixteen Candles" and "Pretty in Pink". The moniker was thought up by Lotus since I couldn't think of anything three years ago. If you haven't figured out, my name is what Grandpa Fred calls his drunk "Chinaman" Long Duk Dong from the John Hughes' teensploitation classic, "Sixteen Candles"...."Whew! Canine Cologne!" . If you didn't know this reference already, you're either too old (over 50) or living in a cave or under a rock.

Anyways, what started out as a way to post my ramblings on music, food, and whatever is still pretty much the same. I didn't start adding photos until the summer of '06. I didn't start foodblogging until a few months after I started. I remember looking up Ben's 1615, a fusion Filipino place in National City. The blog that had the review was Kirk's MMM-Yoso blog. After reading his posts and looking at his links, I was hooked. I thought, "Hey, I could do that". I've been taking pics of my food even before I knew about food blogging. It's the obsessive compulsive streak in me to document my food. Anyhow, the food blog seems to make it seem almost normal.

A lot has happened to me over the past three years as well, especially last year. It's been about oneyear since I felt the lump in my left breast and got it checked. Unfortunately since it was cancerous, I had to go through a lot of shit like the mastectomy and chemo, but the good thing though is, it's all gone! My mammogram on my right breast came back all clear! Since last fall, my hair has been growing back and people think I just have a cool haircut instead of looking like Sinead O'Connor. I've been back at work for the past two months and it's like I never left. I don't stress out as much as I used to and I am just more "chill" than ever, which is saying a lot, since I'm very Type A. Now, I'm Type B-!

Enough of that! I have two more weeks until Spring Break. Then, we're off to Portland, Oregon!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's one of my favorite snippets from "Wayne's World":


and here's a little something from "The Simpsons:

and while not entirely related to St. Patrick's Day, here is another video snippet of "Whacking Day ", from the Simpsons, in reference to a made up holiday created so people could beat up the Irish. Here's Homer practicing Bruce Lee style on snakes:

Bonnie Jean's

My friend and I were planning to have lunch at Asia Cafe today. Unfortunately, it was closed, which was disappointing since I wanted to introduce her to the joys of Nem Khao (Laotian fried rice). However, a good thing came out of this. My friend suggested a soul food place a few miles away. My mind was racing...Ooh, soul food. Never been in a soul food place before. Fried food! Hell yeah! Gotta blog it. I'm hungry! Oh my gosh! Soul food! My churning internal monologue lasted a mere five seconds. My mind was made up - forget everything else!

After following her car up Market, passing Federal and Euclid along the way, we ended up 54th St. There it was, Bonnie Jean's Soul Food Cafe, located in a really run down looking strip mall straight out of the 60's. To be honest, I'd never been in this area before. Maybe driving through when I used to take the surface streets to State, but yeah. This was all new to this Filipina chick from the South Bay. No glitzy signs. No chain restaurant logos. Handpainted windows advertising the specials. This was my kind of place! Click here to see their website. Reviews from Yelp are here .

You can't see it but there was a car on the far far left that was a shiny maroon Cadillac Seville with some killer silver rims. Yes, my friends, it was a Pimpmobile. Its owner was this guy wearing a black turtleneck in a black leather jacket with wide and pointy lapels (think of Lamont Sanford's no good shifty friend, Rollo). He must not have been a very rich pimp since he was using a pay phone!!! Shouldn't successful pimps be sporting a Blackberry or an iPhone? Okay...maybe he wasn't a pimp for those of you that think I'm stereotyping. Maybe he was just a cell phone-less stylin' guy with a cool car. Yeah...
Ooh, chicken and waffles! Must try that next time since the closest Roscoe's is in LA. Hot wings for 50 cents? Hmmmm...
The store front:

Oops, this picture should have been a few pics later. Well, walking in, it doesn't even look like a restaurant. It looks like a combination of someone's store and living room. The wall on the left when you enter had beveled edge square mirrors. Kinda 70's. Like the family room in my parents' house. The other walls are painted a deep red and covered with posters of famous African Americans, like Billie Holiday and Miles Davis (both were also featured in their bathroom). There were also posters of President Barack Obama and African American themed artwork. If you look on that shelf below, there was a black Angel. I really liked seeing that. Most angels are depicted as white with blond hair and blue eyes. It was nice seeing an angel of color. There was also a shelf that had board games that you could play while waiting for your food. In fact, the young couple who sat near us were playing Connect Four.

Originally, we sat in a small table for two in the back, next to this wall. We ended up moving because the table was wobbly. I liked this wall - it had (I assume the owner's) family photos giving this place a nice and homey feel. The atmosphere was very chill. We were greeted right away by a super nice lady. She gave us time to look over the menu.

Here's the view from our relocated table. You can see a rack of greeting cards - they had handmade cards with African Americans featured in their designs; some were religious in nature. There's that mirrored wall! In the foreground is a table were you can play chess. It wasn't too crowded today. It was Saturday afternoon and we were having a pretty late lunch, around 1:15'ish.

This is the view when you walk in. There's a bookshelf (books are 50% off by the way). Behind the gift souvenir display was the cash register. This place also sold these really cool bags that were handmade out of reall vinyl records. The two that I remember were George Benson's "Give Me the Night" and Peabo Bryston (forgot the song). One side of the bag had the vinyl record while the other side had the album cover. Both sides were shellacked and riveted with metal studs. There was also a sturdy net that formed the sides and bottom of the bags. Those were going for $65. Near our table, they had mouse pads for sale which featured African Americans playing golf, plus memorabilia from Historically Black fraternities and sororities (key chains and such). Very cool indeed. Click photo for closer look at the menu:
I was craving the catfish and upon learning that the $5 special was catfish, (this changes daily by the way), decided to get that. In fact, we both got today's special, thus only one photo of the complete meal which consisted of breaded cornmeal catfish nuggets, rice and gravy, a bread roll and a side of green beans with potatoes. The beans were kind of blah - the canned variety. They were also kind of cold. The rice was very soft which I didn't like. The grains were kind of mushy and didn't stick together. Maybe this was Uncle Ben's or something. OMG, if it was, please pump my stomach now like Rod Stewart!!! The gravy was all right, but I would have preferred to eat that with mashed potatoes. I don't like my rice to be wet. I didn't really finish the rice but polished off the catfish!!!

Close up of the goodass catfish nugget which you must try if you ever go here:

The hot wings were 50 cents each. I could have eaten a whole bowl of these. I was reminded of Chris Rock's line in Keenan Ivory Wayan's classic blaxploitation spoof , "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka"" when he's ordering food from Isaac Hayes(the rib chef was NFL star turned actor, Jim Brown).



"C'mon, just one riiiib!"

Here's my friend reaching for the hot sauce, which wasn't really hot:

Our cutlery was mismatched. That in itself wasn't a very big deal. As long as my utensils pick up food, I don't care what I'm given. Today was different. I was very excited because the knife pattern was our wedding flatware pattern!!! That, my friend, is Oneida's Pacific Tide pattern. I bet it's discontinued now. I chose that in 1994 after Bert and I got engaged. We liked it because of the wave like pattern and also because it matched our China, which was Mikasa's Wedding Band Platinum pattern. Because our Filipino relatives were "kuripot" (aka 'tight', 'cheapasses', 'stingy'), we never got any settings for our wedding gifts. Instead, I returned all the crap I didn't want (like 4 other slow cookers, platters I never registered for and whatnot) and used that money to buy a complete set of the flatware and accompanying hostess set and all at the Mikasa Outlet. So yay! Pacific Tide spotting! At a soul food restaurant of all places!

One last look at the window:

Picked up this post card before we left, but the photo was taken at home:

Mmmm...I saw the reviews on Yelp and those fried mac and cheese nuggets were referred to (more than once I might add) as "Fried Crack". That descriptions makes it all the more enticing to me.

Next time we go, we're definitely getting this Soul in a Bowl! Everything just sounds so good! I want to try the chitlins. Yes, I know what they're made of. If Filipinos can eat "bulaklak" (which literally means "flower" but are really cut up and fried intestines; also known as "bituka"), then I can eat chitlins. And I want to try the fried gizzards too. My mom used to make that stuff. when we were small. Those and fried livers with onions. My dad, who used to be a Navy cook, knows how to make soul food. Most Filipinos and blacks were stewards back in the early 60's. That's how my dad can make American food as well as a few soul food dishes (ham hocks with black eyed peas and collards for one). My next target - Sister Pee Wee's (another soul food joint) and Magnolia's.

OMFG!!!!!!!!!

Read the article here . It's actually pretty good, not that insipid teen beat type fluff that most magazines printed during the Twilight craze back in November. The writer was pretty witty and sarcastic. There was actually new information and not just a rehash of what's already been said. Plus Pattinson's quotes were priceless. Here's one (on being told that he broke up Camilla Belle and that dude from the Jo Bro:

"I F**ked Joe Jonas" (!)

Lack of media training alert! It's great! No canned Disney answers!

And OMG! The pictures are this slideshow are also TRES CHAUD! MUY CALIENTE Y GUAPO! Check out the hotness here!