A Foodie Day in the Home Town

Started the day at Slickity Jim's on Main Street with a cup of coffee and a brunch dished called Ju Suis Un Petit Canard. Two scrambled eggs with goat feta and avocado on an English muffin, topped with tomatillo salsa, served with salad and potatoes. The tomatillo salsa gave it a very distinct tangy taste and I absolutely love avocado on everything.

Ended the day with a pit stop at Rogue. We had the calamari which was a tid bit on the salty side. We were then interrupted with a happening flash mob in the concourse to Lady Gaga -Born this Way. What a cool thing to witness. We returned to our table and skipped the main course and went straight for dessert. Only 4 options on the menu but our waitress recommended this one so we went with it. It was very sweet, but the bottom cake part was a bit too crumbly. But when it is a la mode with caramel sauce it makes it that much better.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Explosion

Eat - Bike - Eat Some More

Day 3 of the Portland Foodie tour - and today we are traveling by bike! We registered for Bites by Bike, a tour run by Portland Pedal Bikes. Our tour guide Scott, set us up with bikes, helmets and a safety demo before we headed to our first stop; World Cup Coffee. This establishment, obviously a coffee shop, also roasts coffee beans from around the world. We got a behind the scenes tour of the roasting process and got to stick our head in a bin of roasted aromatic "Puddle Jumper Espresso" beans which smelled so amazing that it made you want to rub your face all over the beans. The people in charge of creating the descriptions for the coffee use essential oils of different smells to relate these to the batch of coffee. We had fun smelling the essential oils and guessing what they were, there was; potato, peas, coriander, smoke and many more.

Along the way we had fun biking around the city seeing the buildings, the parks and all of the different restaurants and pubs. The next stop was an amazing Deli which offered a variety of smoked meats and salami, we were presented with a spread of in house made bread, salami and cheese as well as sweet and salty roasted hazelnuts. Everyone devoured the board, as we hadn't had any food yet that day!

 

Next stop was Two Tarts Bakery, which was described as a small but delicious bakery. We were served Hubba Hubba cookies, which were blackberry butter cream icing sandwiched between a vanilla bean shortbread cookie and Chocolate Starburst cookies which were a chocolate nib shortbread sandwiched with delicious chocolate ganache. YUMO! 

The Big Egg

The Big Egg was the reason we decided to make Portland our foodie trip destination. This awesome food cart is known for their extreme egg sandwiches while using local and phenomenal tasting ingredients.

At the Big Egg we each ordered a different sandwich so we could try as many things as possible on the menu. They had a fair list of choices, but Nicole ordered the Seasonal sandwich, Jenny the Monte Cristo and I ordered the PDX Sandwhich. PDX is what the locals call Portland, we were trying all weekend to figure out the acronym but turns out there isn't one! The sandwiches arrived, and we all were so excited not sure whether to take a bite or to take a picture.

Monte Cristo

PDX Sandwich

Seasonal Sandwich

After what felt like a billion hours of shopping, we checked into our hotel and then took of on foot towards downtown Portland and the brewery district. We ended up at Deschutes Brewery. We each got a sampler of 6 beers and a burger.

Brewery Burger

Yellow Belly Burger

Portland is also known for its many micro breweries, so of course we had to have a sampler of their brewed beer! Nicole and Jenny thoroughly enjoyed theirs and laughed at me while I tried to finish mine. The beer was tastey, but it was a challenge for a novice beer drinker like me. The burgers were delicious, and we had a great time laughing and eating to our hearts content.

Day 1 - Seafeast in Seattle

Day 1 of our trip started off slowly as I was unsure of whether I shut my garage door or not. It has become second nature so when I returned home to check it was shut and I didn't even remember doing it. After the minor hiccup, Kadi, Jenny and I hit the open road with our tunes all set-up.


Our first stop was in Seattle. After being mislead into a closed gate, we were able to safely park the car and make our way on foot to the Crab Pot. We were greeted by our waiter who laid butcher paper down on our table in preparation for the meal. We each ordered the Westport Seafeast - which included steamed Dungeness crab, snow crab, mussels, clams, shrimp, corn, and potatoes. We were armed with wooden mallets, signature bibs and large metal bowls placed on the floor for our shells. Once the food arrived to the table it was dumped on the butcher paper covering the table. After taking some ridiculous pictures we started to chow down on the steaming pile of seafood in front of us.

After the Seafeast we headed to Olympia for the night. We made a pit stop at Trader Joe's for some dessert. We scored some S'more Ice Cream Sandwiches and chocolate covered potato chips. We buckled down for the evening with a bottle of Covey Run riesling and our purchased treats.