Sampling the foods of Portland

We're taking a little side trek from the Great Dinner Retrospective this week because we took a trip to Portland with Megan's brothers. Any trip to a town that amazing has also got to include some amazing meals. Unfortunately we didn't get to sample everything we wanted to, missing out on a fun restaurant we heard about that only serves variations on the grilled cheese sandwich and the Voodoo Doughnut shop, but still got to try a lot of amazing meals.

Living in Montana, there are a good number of fast food and chain restaurants we miss out on, so we wanted to hit some of those in addition to nice sit down places. Megan and I both share a love of Long John Silver's, although she's a fan of the chicken and I like the fish. We haven't had a chance to visit that particular chain for years, so we stopped in at one in Spokane and had some deep fried goodness.


When we finally arrived in Portland and got all settled into the hotel, it was time for a little dinner at Red Robin, which was right across the street from our room. Red Robin may not be too exciting for some, but it's another place we don't get access to very often. For anyone not familiar with this chain, it has the same general idea as Applebees or Chilis, but with a bigger emphasis on burgers and fries. Here's Matt and Jake enjoying some drinks.



After the extremely heavy fish and shrimp from lunch, I decided to go a little lighter than the standard burger fare and got a spinach wrap with whiskey BBQ chicken, which was exceedingly delicious, especially for a chain restaurant.


Megan went with the BLTA croissant. You can see in the picture below that they serve their meals with fries and melon slices, which is a fun twist on an old standard.


The next morning we headed over to a mall a few blocks from our hotel. All the shopping got me a little peckish, so I decided to try a sushi place in the food court (another staple of big malls we don't get to enjoy often). I went with a BBQ eel roll, which wasn't spectacular, but definitely a fun little snack before moving onto to something more substantial.


For our dinner that day we went to the Rogue brewery, which was picked specifically by Megan because of their great beers. We had the "need-a-mint" pizza (many apologies, but somehow we didn't get a picture of it!), which uses whole garlic cloves as a main topping. There is, of course, beer in the pizza crust. Megan and Jake also got the beer sampler, which consists of four beers from the 40+ menu options brewed right there. Some of the more interesting beers include one brewed with chamomile tea, one brewed with spicy chipotle, and one that tastes like dark chocolate.


On our last day we got brave and spent more time traveling the Max train and found another fun mall with an amazing food court. I went with sushi again, this time trying a Philadelphia roll, which uses smoked salmon and cream cheese.


Our lunch was just around the corner at the Rock Bottom Brewery, which was an unplanned stop at a place we randomly stumbled upon while wandering downtown. The "Titan Toothpick" appetizer immediately caught my eye, but I didn't realize until they arrived that "Titan Toothpick" wasn't just a cute name - it was a completely appropriate title! Matt is holding up his fork to show how big they are. I had the "Bourbonzola" burger, which uses a glaze of bourbon and Gorgonzola. The brewery gives four different options for any burger (beef, turkey, chicken, or veggie), and I decided to go with the veggie burger, which they make from scratch. I'm glad I went that route, as their take on a veggie burger was amazingly tasty and had just the right texture and consistency.


For our final dinner in Portland we went to Kell's Irish Pub. Megan and Matt enjoyed the restaurant immensely in our Seattle trip, so it was a place we really wanted to try again. Here we're enjoying a few drinks before our meals.


I tried the oyster shooters, which had oysters and cocktail sauce in shot glasses, and also got the Irish Double Decker, which has corned beef and turkey with a horseradish sauce.


Megan had the Ballycastle Sausage rolls, which were served over a bed of mashed potatoes. Talk about amazing pub fare!


On our way home we stopped in Spokane again, but this time wanted to go with a sit down mexican place. At the Azteca restaurant I picked the seafood chimichanga, which had just about every type of seafood you can imagine stuffed inside.


To make up for the missed pizza picture from the Rogue Brewery, we put together our own take on that delicious pie for dinner tonight. Usually we make our own crust and sauce, but today we decided to go with pre-made Boboli crust and sauce to make it a little simpler. To start off with, Megan put on slices of mozzarella and provolone, and fresh basil.

Next she layered on a few slices of pepperoni for color contrast and to get a little meat on a primarily vegetable based pizza.

On top of that went cherry tomatoes and garlic cloves, which were baked with butter and herbs prior to topping the pizza to ensure they wouldn't be to hard.

This is the beautiful sight that awaited us when the oven door opened and the scent of baked garlic and basil wafted out.

For a full meal we put together a side salad using some of the left over pepperoni and cherry tomatoes, as well as baked green beans and chili-lime pumpkin seeds I bought in Portland.

And that's all for our Portland meals! Check back next week for the next entry in our dinner retrospective.

The Great Dinner Retrospective - Part 3

With our last dinner retrospective we went over a lot of quick, easy, and economical meals, so this time around we'll be delving into more elaborate and fun dinners we've made over the course of the past year.

To start off, here's one of the many quiche variations we've tried out. This is a meal that's easy to customize and make in many different styles just by swapping out the type of cheese and the filling. Swiss and cheddar are are great options, but you can use just about anything. For stuffing we generally use broccoli and some other veggies, in this case red pepper and green onion. If you want to go for a more breakfast oriented approach you could instead use bacon and sausage. If you want to cut out the meat or lower the fat content, this is also good with egg beaters and soy bacon.


Here's the finished product after the egg mixture has been poured into the shell with the veggies and baked until just firm enough to cut into slices and stand up on a plate.


This next chicken based meal is something we like to call the "restaurant replacement," because at the end you feel like you had something as good or better than what a nice restaurant would make. The sauce is what makes this dinner so spectacular, deliciously mixing together a cream base with basil, pimentos, and several other spices.


This next one looks a little odd, but is as amazing as it is messy! A local barbecue place sets up a booth every year at our state fair, and they sell a concoction dubbed the "cowboy cocktail," which consists of alternating layers of barbecue meat, beans, and potato salad or coleslaw. We cooked up beef in the slow cooker with spices and beef broth and then shredded it apart for our take on the "barbecued" meat for our version.


Here's another take on the same idea, but done as a burger instead of a stand alone "cocktail."


One meal we really love doing is home made pizza night, were we put together whatever ingredients strike our fancy at the time for the perfect pie. We have a few signature pizzas we've perfected over time, including a hamburger pizza (not pictured in this blog) that uses mustard, hamburger meat, and pickles. This pizza below is our buffallo chicken pizza, which uses a base of bleu cheese dressing and chunks of chicken coated in buffalo wing sauce. Below is the first layer of this wonderful blend of spicy and cool.


After putting on the sauce and chicken, everything gets topped with a thick layer of mozzarella cheese.


Here it is pulled right out of the oven, piping hot on the pizza stone and baked to a golden perfection.


For our last meal in this edition of the great dinner retrospective we'll go over my birthday dinner from last year. On special dinner occasions at home we like to mimic a meal we had at Red Lobster once, consisting of steak, lobster, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Megan isn't a seafood fan, so she skips out on the lobster. Here are the little delicious crustaceans cut down the middle and with a small layer of meat removed, which will be used later for a topping on the mashed potatoes.


After removing part of the shell and cutting them open, the lobsters get covered in melted butter and garlic prior to broiling.


One of my gifts that year was a couple of a different dip packets from a nice kitchen supply store we have here, so we mixed them together and dug in with bagel crisps and pita chips while waiting on the meal to finish cooking.


Asparagus can go from bland to spectacular if cooked right. For this dinner we cooked it in both butter and oil and used a roasted red pepper seasoning.


And finally we reach the end and are ready to dig in! The asparagus tops the steak, and a combination of shrimp and lobster meat tops the mashed potatoes.


Here I am getting ready to partake on my birthday dinner. This is a meal that is well worth the preparation for a big occasion.

Check back in next week for another look back at what we've been eating over the last year during our cooking adventures!