USA 2011: Portland Part 3

Hello strangers. I am sorry I stopped blogging for so long. Things have been happening. My girl Gizmo got really sick with a kidney infection and was in hospital at work for nearly a week. She is home now and back to her old self, but is still too skinny and her kidneys were damaged. She already had Stage II IRIS renal disease, but now she is in Stage III. This makes me sad. I am happy that she is happy again though. I have also had a huge document to put together for my research masters confirmation that will be next week. So let's get back to Portland.

After my garden adventures, I went back to the hotel to meet up with the awesome K and Toby from In The Mood For Noodles. By crazy random happenstance, these Melbourne vegan bloggers were also in PDX at the same time, and we were at the same hotel! Thus began the start of a fun and food filled three days.

Thanks to Google Maps, we navigated the bus system over to the SE to have lunch at Hungry Tiger Too, which is an omni place but that has a whole vegan menu. They also have lots of g/f options, which was important as K is g/f. Toby and I are gluten full. Thankfully there were so many delicious options to choose from for everybody! Insane amounts of food were then promptly ordered. I got to try a little bit from K and Toby's dishes too. We share the love.


Toby was excited to try some (non g/f) biscuits and gravy. US gravy is creamy and chunky, but good!


K was intrigued by vegan and g/f Chicken and Waffles, which seemed to be very lovely seasoned tofu served upon these magical waffles. It was a hit.


K was super excited to try the GIANT vegan and g/f pancake. It was all about getting that pancake. This was truly giant. And tasty! It was a great pancake!


Also a small greek scramble. This was good, but could have had stronger flavours.


I decided to try the buffalo thing again, with a small Tofuffalo Salad. The buffalo was a lot hotter on this one then it was when I had the wingz in Denver. Thankfully the creamy ranch dressing and lettuce cooled it down a bit. Still, my nose ran a little. So classy.


I also got the South East Club with a side of fries (I upgraded from chips... I just don't get eating potato chips with your sandwiches. Sorry America). This was HUGE! The fries were huge! The sandwich had tofurkey, tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomato and vegenaise.

Afterwards, we rolled out of there clutching out full bellehs and took a short stroll down to the famous vegan mini-mall.


It exists! And we were there! None of us were up for tattoos (I am so needlephobic it's kind of funny. Especially seeing as I am a vet), but we were up for food and clothing! Toby went to get some coffee, leaving K and I to do the hard business of shopping. We suffered so.


First stop, Food Fight! Vegan Grocery, where we spent lots of time stocking up. I got lots of yummy chocolates and some lollies, some cookies, some soy curls and all sorts of yummy things! I bought a big red Food Fight bag to put it all in, like the great big square that I am. I did see some vegan marshmallow fluff there, but talked myself out of buying it because I wasn't sure how it would survive the journey home. Of course I am now kicking myself, because I have several new recipes that require it and I cannot get it here. If the jar of queso made it home, surely the flimsy plastic container of fluff could have?


Next door was Herbivore, for some clothes shopping. I got two tops, and also picked up a copy of Yellow Rose Recipes, which is apparently out of print but is talked about so much on the PPK that I grabbed the chance to own it. K and I both bought the same top, but we live in different states. We are waiting for the weather in both states to be agreeable so we can wear it on the same day and be Super Awesome Vegan Twins In Different States (SAVTIDS for short).


The final stop at the mini-mall was Sweet Pea Bakery, the first of Portland's three vegan bakeries that we visited.


I was still pretty full from lunch, but I found room for this lemon slice. Sorry, I couldn't get a good non-blurry photo for some reason. Anyway, this was good! We must have been there towards the end of shift or something, because there was not that much in their cases. Not many g/f options either.


I also had this delightful iced tea, which has some sort of clementine base. Yummy and refreshing!


We were still pretty full, so afterwards K and Toby agreed to my request that we take a stroll up to Voodoo Doughnuts. Unlike my beloved Mighty-O Donuts in Seattle, this is not all vegan, but does have a large vegan selection. This place was packed. The line was to the door and snaking through the shop and it took about half an hour to get served! Apparently PDX is addicted to donuts. Most people were getting a dozen donuts each. Hard core. The building is BRIGHT PINK! How awesome is that? Also, you got your donuts in an awesome pink box. So cute.


I just got a box of half-a-dozen assorted vegan donuts. There are only five in the box here because one was for Toby. Sadly they did not have any of my beloved cinnamon donuts.

Once we made it out of the shop alive, we caught a bus back to the hotel. We were still pretty full from the days eating, so I took K and Toby back to Prasad for some light and healthy eats.


This time I tried the Ganesh Bowl,and tried the Bhutanese red rice instead of the quinoa. This had steamed greens, a mild yellow curry, lime, sesame seeds and cilantro. This was really good. The Dragon Bowl still wins though. I also had an iced ginger tea, which just seemed to be huge chunks of ginger and was kind of odd.

Then it was back to the hotel for some planning and then rest before another exciting day.


Along with my nightly peppermint tea (or two) I tried my first donut. The girl at the shop had just randomly selected for me, so I wasn't sure what to expect. This little voodoo cutie is their jam filled donut. He was yummy!


Here is the box that the donuts come in. See, very cute! Francesca the travel cat is showing that indeed good things do come in pink boxes!

In the next post, we will eat even more than we did today! Hurrah!

See more photos and read about it again over on In The Mood For Noodles.