Portland Eats

I do love to eat! The fact that we have so many dietary restrictions does make it a bit of a challenge when we travel, but we struck gold here in Portland. I haven't said much about the city itself - in large part because I'm mostly stationed in the hotel room working on curriculum while Carmela's in her conference - but tonight's meals inspired me to reflect a bit more. One of my duties when we travel is to scout out Carmela-friendly places to eat, and in the past couple of days we have found, tried, and loved - Great Harvest which is a bakery that actually stone-grinds their own flour and has vegan options; The Flying Elephant which is a cool deli that, like Great Harvest, uses local and sustainable foods; Bangkok Palace with some great Thai food; and Old Towne Pizza which is supposed to be haunted.

Tonight we grabbed take-out at the Vegetarian House (all vegan Chinese food) and ate down by the Willamette River, but beforehand we stopped at Voodoo Doughnuts . I would compare Voodoo Doughnuts to Mike's Pastries in Boston - the food is great, and it's worth waiting in the half hour line outside (that's when we took the "Keep Portland Wierd" picture, too) because of the place itself. I've seen this place on the Travel Channel and the Food Network several times and just had to go - it turned out that they have an impressive selection of vegan donuts, so Carmela was able to do more than join in the wait. Sometimes the vegan donuts are made with bananas as the binder, but we lucked out because today they used apple. "Do you know how long it has been since I've had a creme-filled donut?!" Carmela exclaimed as she enjoyed her first bites.

The picture is taken back at our hotel room (this took a lot of will-power to not eat them on the walk back). Starting from the left, going clockwise, is the Portland Creme, a Chocolate Coconut (which Carmela found misleading because she expected the donut itself to be chocolate rather than a chocolate glaze), the Old Dirty Bastard (a raised donut with oreo and peanut butter), and a Triple Chocolate Penetration (yes those are Coco Puffs, which is why I'll have it in the morning for breakfast). You can see me starting to eat my Old Dirty Bastard, but it's still sitting half finished next to me - so I gotta go.