Back in Black

I'm wearing black to mourn the death of my holiday, and because I have gained so much weight that I will be wearing black for the duration.

Thanksgiving starred our own little pork chop, Quinn the Mighty and Merciless. Dont let the adorable face fool you. He's a cold-blooded killer.

Iain and I went to the Oregon coast for a couple days after Thanksgiving, staying in Arch Cape near Cannon Beach and Manzanita. It was midweek after Thanksgiving so most everything was closed for the season, but that was ok. We holed up in our hotel room, watched movies and read. We also took a very inspiring hike through Oswald West State Park up to Cape Falcon. This guy has a beautiful picture that really captures the feeling of the area, except for the pouring, pouring rain we had. Actually it was lovely. But wet. The Oregon coast really is beautiful and very dramatic.

From the coast we headed into Portland to spend a fabulous weekend with the very glamorous couple, Meanboy and Bun. We did too many glamorous things to recount all here, but I will try.

Barely a day goes by that the New York Times fails to write yet another slobbery wet kiss to Portland. While we do not have the slavish devotion to the NYT that some people have (ahem.), we still opted to sample the city's culinary delights. Brief reviews:

Clyde Common: buzzy airy restaurant in a new boutique hotel downtown. I had the "red salad" of cabbage and razor clams as a starter and meaty gnocchi dish for main. The star was clearly Iain and Bun's Puttanesca which was bold and slutty just like its name. Waiter was impossibly trendy and very, very dopey.

Nostrano: Stellar pizza and wine on a rainy Portland day. Iain raved about his powerhouse of a soup. Meanie says if you ask to have your Italian-style pizza cut for you, they will rather haughtily decline. I experienced no such insolence, although our waiter here was a dope too.

Grand Central Bakery: Mmmm tuna melt with no mayo. And lots of lesbians.

Cacao: Truly an "only in Portland" kind of place. It is a coffee shop that serves fancy hot chocolates as its specialty. Billed as a European-style hot chocolate, but I found mine to be less thick and less intense than some I've had. Still a gorgeous place.

Le Pigeon: This is The Restaurant in town and the one the NYT keeps mentioning. The blurb from the overall bj:

He transformed a little storefront restaurant into Le Pigeon, an informal, slightly manic spot with seasonally changing, nonconformist dishes like braised pork belly with creamed corn and butter-poached prawns, sweetbreads with pickled watermelon, and just about anything that can possibly involve tongue. His signature dessert is apricot cornbread with bacon, topped with maple ice cream.

In short, we loved it. The place was awesome. I had sweetbreads to start - doesnt that just scream "GOUT" - and Pork Stuffed Pork to follow. The pork was porcine, but the sweetbreads rocked. Iain's Cod with Lobster Balls (*snicker) tasted totally rich (*surprise) unlike what you expect (*bland and white). Meanboy described his Beef Cheek Bourguignon as a "molasses brownie beef". That makes it sound slightly disgusting, but it wasnt. We passed on the fois gras profiteroles for dessert as I'd probably ingested enough entrails for one day. Meanboy and Bun's flourless chocolate cake with smoked marshmallow on graham cracker (smore, get it?) was the best dessert and only slightly strange.

But still, the best meals we had in Portland were the scones that Bun the Jazz Baker made us for breakfast (we had threatened to go to Costco and buy scones as big as your head) and the homemade ricotta gnocchi with fresh Oregon chanterelles, shitake, and Matsutaka mushrooms Meanboy made for dinner on our last night. Like I said, tooooooo glam for words.