Home on the Range

Feeling stuffed from our Turkey Day feast and finally getting some respite from a week full of rain, Todd and I hit the town to try and get in as many activities as we could. This included a trip to the local science museum, a hike with lots of butte sunshine on our pale faces, a cheap movie, local concert and some golf brush-ups. I'm glad we made it out because as I sit in our apartment updating this blog, the sky is already dark and rain is pouring from the sky. Oh and did I mention it's only 4pm...

On account of a great Group On offer, we finally made it to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) to see the amazing Body Worlds exhibit. Although we couldn't take photos of any of the bodies we did get some floating shots.

We went to a show at a new music venue called the Woods. It used to be an old funeral parlor home and is now a bar/hangout. No ghosts, but some mediocre bands for sure.

Slow Trucks (not our favorite band even though they were from SF and they had just broken up so the show we saw was literally their last one)

Animal Eyes (could be one of our new favorite bands and is a local Portland group, what you can't see mid-stage is a very talented accordion player who rocked!)

A walk out in the Powell Butte. Hooray for sunshine!!!

Finally, another great Group On find brought us down south to the little, quaint, strip-mall cluttered city of Tualatin to visit a driving range.

"Hi, my name is ______ and I just drank a GolferAID.

Thanksgiving Dinner for Two, Please!

As we have been practicing our grown-up ways these past few months, we decided we would work on some adult entertainment skills (not that kind) and cook our entire Thanksgiving meal ourselves! We opted to stay in rainy Portland as time would not permit us to get all the way down to CA for a visit so close to Christmas. Although we missed our family and friends, after it was all said and done, it was a SUCCESS!! We made an amazing, home-cooked Thanksgiving meal! And we are still eating the leftovers...

The four stages of the turkey breast (our party was too small for the whole bird):

From left to right: I brined the turkey breast for about 12 hours over night; the very raw turkey about to head in to the oven; the finished product; carved to perfection.

**While many disagree that brining adds much moisture or flavor- I thought it definitely made a difference!!

The sides (from left to right): Green bean casserole with fried onions and bacon, twice-baked potatoes and sausage dressing. There was also a pie... somewhere!

The finished potatoes and beans!

We did it!! Happy Thanksgiving!!!

The Little Joys in Life; Salem edition

I wanted to share a quick glimpse into my world outside of Portland. There is a world outside of Portland, yes! I experience it everyday on my slog of a commute down to Salem, the arrhythmic heart of OR politics. Largely it is pretty shitty but sometimes there are moments along the I5 corridor that just make you want to smile.
For nearly 6 months I have watched through my carpool window, an abandoned building in a vacant lot turn into what looked like a up and coming start up business in Salem. Day in and day out we saw little progress as the business owner clearly was delayed in his opening by the economic downturn that has really affected us all. Rubbish was cleared from the parking lot, grafitti removed, bullet holes patched, homeless shooed away. And then one day a sign...DayNite Donuts and FroYo Nation. Oh my heavens. A donut store on the carpool route! Then began the long wait to see when this entrepreneurial business leader would finally open their doors to the public with the exclamation, "Come eat my donuts!" Month by month we waited, the leaves changes, the rain started falling and we nearly gave up hope of seeing a perfect frosted fried dough circle. Then one particularly dark and cold morning we began to approach DayNite Donuts and we saw a blinding light issuing forth from the building. Cars we in the parking lot, there were people inside!! We almost ran a pedestrian over flying across three lanes on early morning traffic to pull into the parking lot. Our prayers had been answered, unfortunately we were still in Salem. Its the small things that get you through it. Thank you DayNite Donuts!

The Melehans in Portland!

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have my family come pay me a visit in our new home in Portland. I had an amazing list of activities for us to do while they were here including hiking (in the rain) around some of the waterfalls near the Columbia gorge, an afternoon matinee of the musical Pinkalicious (a favored book of my nieces), dinner at a favorite local restaurant and the topper- Portland Zoo! Although everyone was drenched by the end of the trip we were happy to have visitors to show around the city!

As you can see my nieces, Sofiya and Gabby were thrilled to be hanging in the rain. At least they came prepared...

When we first got to the zoo we were overwhelmed with choices about which animals to see. The wolves weren't too exciting so we opted for More Zoo. And we were glad we did!

Look! An amazing stampede with only one elephant!

Feeding time for these hippo friends.

They were actually very slim in real life, the camera really does add three tons...

One of two extremely beautiful, friendly sea lions giving us quite a show in the pool.

And finally, my favorite animal- The Poley Bear!!

Polar Bear Facts: Polar bears really have black skin to attract heat to their bodies and their fur isn't really white it's translucent.

After a long day at the zoo we left without any bites, scratches or missing limbs. However after we visited the snack stand we realized we were with the most hungry, ferocious beast all along!

We had a great time at the zoo and even made a new friend (the only friend we've made so far).

And picked up some cool souvenirs.

Finally, for the food post: Pok Pok's. A local favorite known for their fish sauce wings brought us into to one of Andy Ricker's (some bigshot Portland restauranteur) most popular restaurants. Apparently he owns several and they all serve delicious traditional and fusion versions of Southeast Asian food! Pok Pok lived up to its reputation. Here were the highlights:

The amazing whole fried Tilapia.

The Coconut Ice Cream Sandwich and the Affogato. Yum!

Hiking in the rain, sustainable sushi and Herbie!

Although we are fortunate the rain has been light over the last couple months, we encountered our first rainy weekend and decided it wasn't going to keep us down. We got bundled up (your raincoat is never too far away while living in Portland) and faced the wet, cold, soggy trails that lie within the gorgeous Columbia Gorge. We took the trail to Wahkeenie Falls and looped around to the top of Multnomah Falls, supposedly the largest waterfall in Oregon. The landscapes were beautiful as it's easy to get "rain amnesia" and forget the amazing seasonal changes that happen in Oregon during the fall.

A loooooong way down from the top...

After our hike we worked up quiet an appetite and in our attempt to discover all of the hidden foodie gems in Portland we chose a restaurant out of the Willamette Weekly 2011 Restaurant Guide and fulfilled Todd's food fish wish by heading to Bamboo sushi, the MOST SUSTAINABLE, ECO-FRIENDLY sushi restaurant IN THE WORLD. THE. WORLD.

The sockeye salmon nigiri.

After some sake and beer we made our way over to our favorite neighborhood, clubhouse bar full of pool, video games, art and music where they were performing a Herbie Hancock Tribute.

My latest cooking venture: Savory, vegetable muffins! Used an old recipe that I had used for some zucchini muffins (when we had way too much zucchini in the summer time) but made the recipe a litte more healthy by eliminating bacon and adding carrots and broccoli! They were a delicious, healthy treat!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Halloween

CowaBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOnga!!!!! Halloween finally arrived and as a favored holiday of mine and Todd's we made sure to "go green" in our costume efforts- we made them with TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE POWER! Although new to Portland (Halloween can never live up to our old hometown of SF), we found some places to celebrate. We began our night with a neighborhood jaunt to the local haunted house, ate some pizza (turtles heart pizza) and ended up crashing a wedding party. And we did all this with only a little bit of rain.

Cowabunga dude!

Our front porch where we later had Trick-O-Treaters!! It looks pretty scary though, I probably wouldn't have gone to this house as a kid. Guess who carved which pumpkin?

The entrance to Scare Hollow. Apparently some crazy folks starting building there own neighborhood haunted house each year that is free to the public. The make-up, props, actors and sets were amazing, but unfortunately for only about five minutes as the walkthrough was rather short...

We finally arrived to our crashed wedding party only to find all the guests had HUNG THEMSELVES!!

Fortunately we found some other turtles to party with!

Halloween Treats: I made salted, chocolate, bacon popcorn! A wonderful recipe from a cool food blog.

One Nerdy Weekend

It feels like winter is here and we are considering turning on our heater, but i think we can hold out a couple more weeks. Unfortunately, we both got sick with colds and sinus headaches. No fun, but the stuffiness helped us sound the part for Nerdiest Portland Weekend 2011!

According to my gas chromatograph there are three times the number of snot molecules in your glavin...!

We kicked off our exploits in search of the wild nerd is his natural environment by making a short visit to the local comic book store, Things From Another World where a quick perusal of the literary contents revealed the relaunch of 52 favorite DC titles with new #1's of Batman, Superman, and the my favorite, The Blue Beetle. (In many ways Jamie Reyes struggles as a teenager linked to a planet destroying scarab embody the tribulations of Joe Every-man trying to make his way in a world fought with peril. In issue #256 we get our first glimpse at Justice Caterpillar!)

From there we headed over to a live taping of the Nerdist Podcast at the Aladdin Theater. I love this podcast where three comedians; Chris Hardwick, Jonah Rey, and Matt Mira discuss nerdy things like comedy, zombies, and Dr. Who. It was super funny and I recommend subscribing to their podcast post haste!

In Episode Three, you ascertained that Capt. Kirk would easily be able to outflank Han solo in an intergalactic space battle, but you failed to take into account the fact that Kirk's Enterprise never had the deflector shield capabilities of the Millennium Falcon, further the Falcon's thruster drive could easily outmaneuver the Enterprise's slow ST Photon Torpedoes in tight combat situations. 

That was a fun live comedy laughing. But its October and we were getting in the mood for Halloween. So we decided to check out a live screening of the 1923 classic vampire film, Nosferatu. This was screened at an old haunted church (United Methodist) and accompanied by a live score from the house organist. The air vibrated through those pipes and created eerie sounds that I had never heard before. It was really remarkable to see this musician be able to anticipate the action in the move and create a completely fabricated atmosphere. I felt that I was there in Transylvania among the fog and rocky spires, paranoid about who or what was creeping around in the shadows, but that could have just been the cold medicine talking.

Creepers!