Gorge

It's ever so cold in the room now: a quilt has been purchased, a heater is being considered. And do we have a kettle? No we do not have a kettle. The idiot remembered some English Breakfast Twinings she'd brought from home, and so we moseyed downstairs to make a cup, only to encounter the absence of the kettle in the kitchen.

But surely? No kitchen comes without a kettle.

Anyway, now we're sitting in front of the fake log fire in the common room, and I am writing and she is drinking hot milk (microwavable compromise). Last time I promised to talk of Portland food, and as it's fall break at the moment we have been doing more eating than usual. The idiot has composed a list of all the food carts she wants to visit in the year, as 'cartopia' is quite the Portland craze (see book entitled 'CARTopia' for more details). Today we went to The Whole Bowl in the 9th and Alder parking lot, which was delicious. I ate more than she did in the end, but left all the rice at the bottom for her (am on a non-imaginary low carb diet). It was almost identical to the bowl of chili we had at Chili Pie Palace on Hawthorne, except not nearly as generous and a little bit greener. Avocado was of better quality this time. In Chili Pie Palace they spelt it like 'avacado', like: 'go on love, have a CADO for the road.' This all makes a welcome change from the habitual Pad Thai at Sawasdee Thai, or falafal from Aybla Grill, which seem to be the only options available to us on Saturday afternoons. A Monday at the 9th and Alder parking lot, on the other hand, sees every cart open for business, and being the pathological commitment-aphobe that she is, it took us about an hour to decide, finally, on The Whole Bowl.

Here's some other things about food. And let' try to stay in chronological order, or the idiot will get upset:

GREASE: She notes in her diary, the very first thing: 'Grease smells different on this side of the world.' It really does, though. The grease in Vancouver airport was still, undeniably, grease, suspended above the food hall, and getting into my coffee and my apple. But it was that particular flavour of grease, which immediately took the idiot and me back to our first American experience in 2008, and all those Greyhound waiting rooms.

SUGARY BREAD: You will not find bread without sugar. Full stop. Period.

VOODOO DOUGHNUTS: Not Krispy or Dunkin or any of that rubbish, but pagan and bloody, with a pretzel twig sticking out of its stomach. As I mentioned a few posts back, we bought a big pink box of 20 for Vicky's birthday. The apple 'fritter' is, for future reference, gargantuan, and the 'Captain my Captain' one has stale Captain Crunch cereal all over the top. Just look at some of these.

SNOW CONES: Probably the most exciting aspect of a baseball game is sucking your way through a snow cone.

JEWISH NEW YEAR: Thanks to Holly and her amazing host family, the idiot was invited to a Rosh Hashanah feast in early September. I couldn't go because the idiot said they were trying to keep numbers down and, she said, my presence is awkward sometimes, like no one's really sure what to do with me or whether to talk to me at all. Charming. Anyhow, host daddy picked them up at 9 from Eliot Circle, straight after Henry James, and the idiot told me later that what followed was one of the best meals she's ever eaten. Apples and honey for good luck, with eggplant puree and fruity bread, then the clearest broth with delicate little matzah balls, then brisket and glazed chicken (I think she said marmalade) and green beans and almonds and tiny fried potatos like tiny flying saucers, and then honey cake and fruit salad and biscotti.

OTTO'S: A 'sausage kitchen and meat market' on Woodstock, where we ate such a good sandwhich one bleary Sunday lunchtime. It had apples in it, and any sandwhich with apples in it knows what it's about.

BLUEHOUR: Not to say that the burger outlets are undeserving of blogspace (and we've frequented one or two), but...actually, yes, I do and shall say that. Because I'm Consette and I've tasted the finer end of Portland now. Hm. After seeing 'Howl' on a Gray Fund trip, we were taken out for dinner at Bluehour, where the idiot ate her first oyster and then had figs and pound cake for pudding. Thanks and bowing to Betty Gray.

PRETZEL M&Ms: America dares. Inspirational.

PORTLAND NURSERY APPLE TASTING: Two weekends in October, an inflatable apple in the sky, cider (non-alcoholic wtf), strudel, honey, and over fifty varieties to sample, down a long long table with a cocktail stick and a checklist. The idiot, as you can imagine, was in an embarrassing state of bliss. There was a period in her life when she could eat up to four or five apples a day, but mummy had to put a stop to all that for fear of tooth-rot. Inevitably, though, she had a minor relapse at the Apple Festival and bought far too many apples, and then made excuses about eating them within 24 hours in case they spoiled.

AMERICANS: Quite a long way back now, after the Korean feast night, the idiot and I witnessed an argument between, what appeared to be, five Americans. It lasted over an hour and centred on the supremity of different countries in different fields; their cultural prestige in philosophy, music, food, or what-have-you, with each American defending a country of their choice. It didn't take me long to realise that this wasn't just five Americans arguing hypothetically on behalf of other nations, but five Americans who claimed the cultural lineage of their chosen nation, and claimed it with quite an unnerving sincerity.
One thing I've learnt so far is that you'll never get an American-American. No one would ever profess to being that. Instead there's German-Americans or Italian-Americans or Irish-Italian-Thai-Americans. Interestingly, or perhaps not, the argument began and ended with food, the category everyone wanted to win.

Consette x