February Tasting Notes

EAT!

VooDoo Doughnuts - Voodoo Doll, Lemon Chiffon creuller: I'd never actually been to a VooDoo Doughnuts before, but I know the one just off Burnside downtown always had a line, so I went to the one just off Sandy on the east side, because I had never seen a line there. Well. Apparently this is an old Taco Time or something and the line squiggles all around the inside. If you look in the picture below, you can see them - the cash register is to the left, out of the picture. I stood in line for about 20 minutes for two doughnuts...both were good, but I think doughnuts just aren't our thing anymore. What I couldn't believe was how many people ordered multiple dozens. Are you kidding me?! Do you know how many calories are in those things?!

Sizzle Pie - Don Caballero slice, Wake and Bake slice: Sizzle Pie opened on East Burnside a couple months ago and every review I've seen goes on and on about how great their variety is and how awesome the pizza is. Those people must be stoned. Our slices were a little burnt; my Wake and Bake slice didn't even have yolk on it (three eggs on the entire pizza, of course I get a slice with no yolk...); and I just wasn't impressed with the sauce or really much else. Can't see myself going back with so many other good pizza options in town.

Pacific Pie Company - sausage roll, Sunday roast lamb pie; beef and pinot pie, chocolate caramel tart, chocolate peanut butter pie: Pacific Pie Company first caught our eye at the Beaverton Farmer's Market a couple years ago, where they sold wonderful single serving Australian pies (check out the menu - beef and stout is fantastic). This was actually my first visit to their store on Ankeny, though they are moving now to a new location (bigger, more seating). I picked up the sausage roll and roast lamb pie for dinner (lamb) and brunch (sausage roll) and both items were very, very good. Then, with Valentine's Day upcoming, they had a special pie - the beef and pinot - along with an array of sweet pies. The sweet pies they didn't always have at the Ankeny location (but believe they will more often or always at the new place). The beef and pinot was so balanced, the wine providing a perfect balance to the beef, mushrooms, and everything else. If they had this on their menu all the time I'd have to buy one every week. The two sweet pies, though, were the real star. To be real honest, these might be two of the best desserts I've had in Portland. The chocolate caramel tart was hard but not too hard to chew, and the chocolate peanut butter pie melted in my mouth with goodness. I can't wait until the new place opens, and I can't recommend Pacific Pie Company highly enough.

Corbett Fish House - walleye fish and chips: I had never had walleye before and this is one of the only places in town to get it, plus they are know for fish and chips so what the heck, right? And they were good - very good. The breading and spices were tasty but not overdone and the fish was cooked perfectly. The fries were fine, nothing special. But would I go back...that's the question. Well, as I said, the food was good. But this dish cost me $16 for three relatively small pieces of fish. Perhaps the fish is expensive, I could buy that if it's true (no idea), but their halibut version is $17.50 - way more than anywhere else for food that is as good and the customer receives more. No complaints on the dish, just on the value provided and the claim it's the best in town. It's good, but the cost probably knocks them out of the running.

Cafe Velo - chocolate chip cookie: Portland Monthly magazine did a piece on Portland's best chocolate chip cookies and Cafe Velo made the cut. They use the famous Jacque Torres recipe, which we have found at home is good, but not as good as this recipe from The New York Times which tweaked it. For the better. Cafe Velo's rendition was not as good as the Torres one we made at home and not nearly as good as the NY Times version. Apparently it's time to open our own bakery.

Also, check out the two restaurants of the month that merited their own reviews: Roost and Little Bird!

Roost: There is a restaurant at the corner of SE 14th and Belmont called Roost. It's not a big place, perhaps seating 40 or so, and the decor is sparse. Not sparse in the sense of poor or underfunded, but sparse in a minimalist sense, all black, white, pine, and stainless steel. Read More!

Little Bird: Last summer I had one of the best meals of my life at Le Pigeon, a tiny French restaurant on East Burnside in Portland run by Gabriel Rucker, one of the most acclaimed chefs in Portland. Around that same time Rucker announced he would be opening a new restaurant in downtown Portland, a French bistro named Little Bird. It finally opened in early December to very good reviews and we've been meaning to make it over there, but didn't make it there until the other day for lunch. Read More!
DRINK!

Coffee

Grendel's Coffee - mocha: VooDoo, Sizzle Pie, and Pacific Pie Company were all part of a couple hour walkabout in same general area on East Burnside. The last stop there was at Grendel's Coffee, a small neighborhood-type place across Burnside from Le Pigeon. The menu has no surprises but the mocha was a very solid offering. That's good, since there is no close alternatives.

Beer

Great Divide's Smoked Baltic Porter: I think I've mentioned this one before, but it's the best smoked porter I've tasted. I need to go buy more. Again.

Southern Tier's Blackwater Series Choklat Stout: This is the second Southern Tier brew I've tried (if you remember, the Creme Brulee was far from a favorite). I was skeptical about this - but yes, bought it anyway - because of the previous experience, but that skepticism proved to be completely unfounded. Imagine if you can the flavors of your favorite mocha. Now imagine those flavors seamlessly blended with a well-balanced stout. Does that sound like a tasty beer? Yes, yes it does. And that beer is this one. Stock up and thank me later.

Blue Moon's Grand Cru: Last year's Grand Cru I like to a certain extent, but this year's was much better. The balance between the citrus and ale flavors was more seamless and they complemented each other, rather than pulling at each other a bit. I also think this year's version had a higher level of accomplishment in the beer component, providing a little more complexity to the flavors. Blue Moon gets a bad rap in the craft beer world because they are owned by Coors, but this beer definitely deserves some attention.

Wine

Sokol Blosser's 2007 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir: We bought this wine because we wanted a nice pinot to go with a beef dish we were making, but after the first couple sips we decided it really wasn't something we wanted to drink. It had way too much spice and tannins for our taste buds...so I found a recipe I've been meaning to make for a while and used the rest of the bottle to make coq au vin (the recipe from Alton Brown I pointed out here). Drinking the wine - not so great. Cooking with it? Fantastic!

Little Bird Bistro

Last summer I had one of the best meals of my life at Le Pigeon, a tiny French restaurant on East Burnside in Portland run by Gabriel Rucker, one of the most acclaimed chefs in Portland. Around that same time Rucker announced he would be opening a new restaurant in downtown Portland, a French bistro named Little Bird. It finally opened in early December to very good reviews and we've been meaning to make it over there, but didn't make it there until the other day for lunch.

Little Bird is open from 11:30am to midnight Monday through Friday and 5pm to midnight on the weekend. For lunch they serve an array of French favorites as well as Le Pigeon's famous burger.

We were promptly seated, arriving just after 11:30 and before the lunch rush (plenty of office buildings nearby), and served some fresh bread. We decided to order the burger again because it was so good at Le Pigeon, and the coq au vin (chicken cooked in wine). I was intrigued with trying their coq au vin because I had just made my own (this recipe) a short while ago and wanted to see how it stacked up. (As always, click on the pictures to make them larger.)

Little Birds came atop a potato puree with pearl onions, chunks of slab bacon, and mushrooms. On top of the chicken was a slice of toast smothered with chicken liver mousse. The mousse was very rich, decadent, and just the right amount - not sure I could have handled more. The chicken was perfectly done, with a crispy skin and nuanced flavor from the wine sauce. Mushrooms I usually avoid like the plague, but these weren't bad at all when infused with the flavors of the sauce. And the potatoes? Yum!

The burger is apparently quite popular. We were seated in the balcony so we could see everything coming out of the kitchen and at least one-third of all the orders were for the burger. Ours we requested medium and it was cooked perfectly. The flavors were just as we remembered, though it seemed to have a heavier hand with the horseradish. It wasn't enough to be overpowering, but clearly noticeable. The Little Bird version of the burger comes with fries (or salad) cooked in duck fat, which is different than the roasted potatoes Le Pigeon serves - and there were very disappointing. In fact, I think they were burnt, and I didn't get any flavors really at all. Next time? Salad.

Just for fun, here is a gratuitous food porn picture of the burger cut in half:

Looks quite tasty, doesn't it?

We had planned on dessert going in (dessert at Le Pigeon was transcendent...), but for lunch they only had three options. We opted for the bon bon plate, just some small bits of sweet to round out the meal.

Starting from the bottom and going counter clockwise: candied orange peel and kumquats, espresso fudge, salted caramel truffle, pistachio toffee, chocolate peanut butter bon bon, and a huckleberry jam-filled white chocolate bon bon.

All of them were good. The candied orange peel may have been my favorite while Wifey loved the salted caramel truffle. One couldn't go wrong with any of these, really, and it was a nice balance of flavors.

We will definitely go back to Little Bird, probably for dinner next time. Or, maybe we'll just go for dessert!

Novel: The Collage

When I decided to write a novel I thought I had this great idea, but I also felt as though I needed a little something more to help me get organized. Then back in December I read about this class taught by author Lani Diane Rich (via Tawna Fenske's blog) called Discovery, for fleshing out a novel idea. So I signed up.

Lani teaches various techniques for writers to get a feel for their story, plan it out and build it up, before actually starting the writing. We've done various exercises to help do that, but perhaps the most interesting so far has been creating a collage.

The idea behind the collage is to create something visual representing your novel, something that tells your story.

The great thing here is I kind of wanted to do something like this anyway. Since I am writing a mystery/thriller story, I wanted my collage to be something visually representing that kind of story. My idea was to make it look like an evidence board in a police station, something like what you may have seen on Dexter or Flash Forward.

So I bought two bulletin boards, two feet by three feet, to use as my base, and mounted them on the wall.

Next I had to gather materials to put on the board. Wifey had some construction paper and we came up with some cross stitch thread as well, along with a huge pile of pushpins.

First I needed a backdrop to mount my specific pieces on, so since my story is set in good old Portland, Oregon, I pinned up some old maps of the city.

Then it was time to fill in specifics. My original idea was to put characters on the left board and pictures representing key scenes, actions, or settings on the right. I wanted the pictures on the right to tie to specific places in the city, but given that much of it happens in the same general area that proved to not be possible.

Also, the characters - one of our previous exercises was to "cast" the characters in our novel using actual actors. Those pictures represent my characters.

The final piece was to use the thread, wrapping it around pushpins, to tie characters to events and settings, and then back to other characters. This is what really gave it the feel I wanted of something that would be in a police station. (And let me tell you, police stations must have people who only do this - tying off those threads took me over two hours just for the few shown. Yikes!)

And voila!

It actually turned out better than I expected, since I don't think of myself as very creative in this way. It's not perfect, but it definitely looks like what was in my head. I need to still add more to the right board. Also, I really like the maps, but they are also very busy and colorful, which makes it a little distracting. Perhaps I could have gotten around that by making the construction paper borders thicker. The color of the strings also has no meaning on this board - ideally they would.

But hey, it was actually pretty fun and I think it will be very helpful. It's to the wall on my immediate right as I sit where I will write the novel, so anytime I have a case of writer's block I can lean back in my chair and lose myself in what's on the wall, looking for some inspiration.

And yes, I would definitely recommend Lani's class over at Storywonk. It has been helpful already!

Careful With Reviews

Amazon.com product reviews crack me up. I do look at them a lot of the time before buying something (which, if groceries were sold on Amazon, I'd never have to leave the house to shop again), but I've usually decided to make the purchase by then. If I've got that far, I'm just looking for an obvious reason NOT to buy something.

So instead of looking at the 95 of 100 reviews who think the product is awesome, I want to see why the other five didn't like it.

Almost always this do very, very little to sway my buying decision. And it's not because these people have issues with the product I deem as low risk or unlikely to apply to me (although, the person who complained about their network attached storage server not being able to work off a Linux server from a remote site was once instance where, yeah, it didn't apply - and I made half those words up), but it's because the complaint literally is not valid.

I pre-ordered a book once, can't recall the name, but it was still three months from release. One person had given it a negative review because they didn't like the author's last book after it was turned into a movie - or maybe it was because they were turned down for an autograph. I can't remember and both are about as relevant. Or not relevant, as the case is here.

Before I decided to read Hello Kitty Must Die, I read the customer reviews and they cracked me up. One person didn't like the book because it didn't have enough sex. (I don't recall seeing a promise of a ton of sex, either. However, read the book, it's fantastic.)

None of those things have anything to do with the quality of the writing in the book. They aren't concerned with how it was written or anything like that. And yet these comments contribute towards the overall rating of the book in a negative way, despite not really having anything to do with the book. Drives me crazy. I suppose the only way to counter that is to write positive reviews of my own? Sure, like I have all day to do that...

Perhaps my favorite negative review had to do with someone complaining about how Amazon is horrible because they had a delayed shipment on the book (or whatever it was). The reviewer explicitly said they love the book and would give it five stars, but gave it one because of the shipping issues.

What? How is that relevant to the product itself, which is the only think those stars are attached to? How is it the product's fault Amazon made a mistake? (For what it's worth, I have always been quite pleased with Amazon's customer service.)

Context people, context...

Misaki's Famous Face Rub

Misaki does a lot of cute things, but some of them are even cuter than others. Perhaps the most amazing and unpredictable is something we call the "face rub."

The face rub consists of Misaki, well, pushing herself around on the carpet face first with her back paws while her front legs go down to her knees, effectively serving as skis for her to slide on. When she's done she pops back up onto four legs and looks at you with a face saying: "What? Nothing just happened here." It's not like she's embarrassed, but more like it's just something that doesn't need discussion.

When this first happened the day after we got her last year, we thought maybe she had an itch or something was wrong with her, but it doesn't seem to be that. After awhile we decided it was just part of Misaki being Misaki and decided to get it on film.

The problem with that is timing. I'm not going to follow her around all the time with camera, so we had to figure out when she was likely to do it, and then be ready.

It seems this behavior is most likely to occur when:

1 - She gets up in the morning after sleeping in her crate.
2 - She gets out of her crate when we get back from the store or something, a little bit of time after the zoomies.
3 - Shortly after a meal.

Still, those are general times. Sometimes it's right away, sometimes it's not at all. We've also figured out it's possibly to induce face rubbing with a particularly excitable set of petting (holy crap that sounds so, so wrong...). Get her worked up enough and she has to do the face rub.

Which, of course, means we can get some pictures. The ones that follow here actually came after she came back from outside, which was right after a meal.

First comes the dropping to the front knees and rubbing on the left cheek.

Look closely at her neck. Yep, she's dirty. Apparently face rubs happen outside in the dirt too. With Misaki being a typical cleanly Shiba, pointing this out embarrasses her to no end.

Then she rolls over to the right cheek.

Then comes the pushing from the back legs and scooting across the carpet.

Switches back to the left cheek...

And again onto the right.

And she pops back up to her feet.

Perfectly normal. And perfectly entertaining.

My hope is to one day get this on video - then you can get the full experience, replete with Misaki's cute little purring/grunting/groaning noises accompanying the rubbing.

Uh oh, considering how annoyed Misaki was here and mad we were figuring her out here, I have no idea what she's going to say on her blog about this...

UPDATE: Well, it didn't take long for Misaki to weigh in...