Portland: Part One!

I made it back! And oh, how I wish I was still in Portland… yesterday it was 111 degrees here. Guess what it was in Portland? 77 degrees. Ughhh Portland… why?! Or rather, why do I have a comparison of the temp in Phoenix and the temp in Portland side by side? It’s only going to make me sad in the summer…

Anyway, back to the adventures! I’m going to break this down in order of my favorite things about Oregon, rather than a daily log, because that’s easier. And yes, be prepared for a lot of Voodoo Doughtnuts! And be warned, this will be a photo-intensive post, so if your computer loads pictures slowly… just warning you!

First things first: day 1 of our trip, we went to Cannon Beach. Unfortunately, the first day we arrived was the only day it was sunny, and hence this one and only picture I got of the beach (and me). The next morning, we ate breakfast and left early amid the dreary rain. However, I thought Cannon Beach was absolutely beautiful! Next time, more pictures for sure. Also, more Mo’s eating. So much more eating at Mo’s…

Cannon Beach!

One of the coolest things Dad and I did was take a jet boat ride on the Willamette River. I say it was cool because a) jet boat, duh! and b) we learned some interesting info, but I have to say, I wouldn’t do it again. It was one of those jet boat rides that intends to get you wet, and half the time the guide went so fast that I had to close my eyes because my contacts were blowing out! Boo!

Boat ride!

Dad is psyched to be on a jet boat, clearly.

That’s probably the most excited face my Dad had on this whole trip. He’s not a ‘smile for the camera’ guy!

Waterfall!

On our trip, we saw the beautiful Willamette Falls, which was stunning.

And of course, any trip to Portland would not be complete without a trip to the farmer’s market! Unfortunately, Dad and I weren’t in town for the famous Saturday Farmer’s Market, but on Wednesday, we did stumble upon this smaller market downtown.

Farmer’s Market!

A view from the outskirts of the market… once we were up in it, I was too overwhelmed by everything to get any decent pictures!

You can be sure I bought some fresh strawberries and ate them all in one sitting!! Dad and I, of course, being the sweet-fiends that we are, also got a bunch of pastries… but yet again, no pictures… because we inhaled them :-/

And what would a trip to Portland be without lots and lots of eating?! (Answer: not a trip at all!!) Every single day (for breakfast and lunch) we ate at the food carts. Dinner was typically leftovers from lunch, or we weren’t hungry, otherwise we would have eaten dinner at the food carts too. No, probably not the healthiest meals, but damn were they good. My favorites off the top of my head?: DC Vegetarian (I got their tempeh BLT); the Whole Bowl (I ate there twice!); and La Jarochita (those breakfast burritos were NOT KIDDING AROUND. Huge!!). Honestly, I wish I had eaten at DC Vegetarian twice, but Dad insisted we move around the city to find more food cart pods (except, you’ll notice, when he found a food cart he loved…), so alas!

But here, the one semi-blurry picture I got of the Bambino bowl from the Whole Bowl:

I don’t even remember exactly what is in here but let’s take a stab: cilantro, avocados, black olives, black and red beans, brown rice, salsa, and something called Tali Sauce. I have no idea what Tali Sauce is, but let me just say: it makes the bowl. I mean, otherwise this bowl is something I could even whip up… but with the addition of this not-spicy-yet-not-sweet sauce, the bowl is perfect. Heaven! You’ll also notice I left off the cheese and sour cream, thereby making this bowl vegan… aww yeah! Eating healthy while traveling FTW!

By the way, the bowl looks small… believe me, it’s not. I was full off that bad boy for hours! However, it is possible to eat it in one sitting so, if you live there or maybe have access to a fridge, you could get the bigger bowl and have leftovers. That’s what I would do!

And finally… what you came to this post to read about… VOODOO DOUGHNUTS!!! We ate here twice, which was the most I could convince Dad to do, and I’m pretty sure the second time we ate there was only because it was Friday (our last day) and we had nothing to do, and because Dad is a sweet fiend like me.

My first Voodoo loot:

Yes, ALL VEGAN!

From the top, clock-wise, the ODB (I’m not going to spell that out for you, but you can find it here!), the Diablos Rex, and the infamous Voodoo Doll itself! And yes, the Voodoo Doll had red filling inside of it (like blood). The best part about all of these donuts? They were all on the ‘vegan’ shelf, meaning they were made with no eggs and no dairy! Woohoo! Also, for those curious… they taste exactly like ‘real’ doughnuts. I could not tell the difference and, believe me, I’m kind of something like a ‘real’ doughnut connoisseur.

Eat me…

And, as mentioned on Yelp, go early!! The first day we went at 6 AM (the downtown location is open 24 hours) and there was no line… Friday we went at 8 AM, line practically out the door! People literally get boxes and boxes of these doughnuts, so really… go early or go really late!

And one our last day in Portland, Dad decided to be adventurous…

ODB for an ODB.

and he tried the ODB plus the Triple Chocolate Penetration (picture not shown, because we ate it immediately…) He proclaimed the doughnuts from Voodoo “good”, which is about the highest praise about anything that you could expect from my Dad, so I took it as a good sign.

That’s it for today! Look for more pictures and Part Two tomorrow (or the next day, you never know with me)… until then, stay cool!

Book Club & Upcoming Trip!

Today was my very first foray into joining a ‘book club.’ If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may know that I recently moved back to Phoenix (well, it’s been 2 1/2 months, so maybe that’s not so ‘recently’) and am actively searching for fun friends. I’m absolutely sure I’ll meet some cool people at work but, since I haven’t started working yet, I thought I’d get a head start on making some new friends out of work.

Enter: book clubs! Combine reading + new friends + talking about books + refreshments and me, and what do you get? A very happy Melissa indeed! I’m part of this ‘New to Phoenix’ ladies-only Meetup group (by the way, if you haven’t checked out meetup.com and you’re looking to meet people/do stuff, I highly suggest you check it out!), and they just started a new monthly book club event. Hooray!

The location of this book club was pretty far from where I live, but it was in a super familiar part of town (basically, the side of town where I grew up), so I was acquainted with the location and knew exactly how to get there. I think if I hadn’t been familiar with the area, I would have passed on this event and waited for the next book club meet up, but I lucked out.

We read Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (summary here), and I thought the book was really good. I’m not really into reading fiction books on my own, and I highly doubt I would have ever chosen to read this book if it hadn’t been “required.” However, I’m really glad I read it because it was a cute and short book, the kind you can’t really put down.

(source)

So, did I make any friends? I definitely can say I made one friend for sure (she happens to live across the street from me, so we may carpool for future meet ups!) but I’m unsure as to whether or not we would get along. She’s my age, but she’s very, very opinionated and I feel like I might tire of that rather quickly… there were two other ladies I hit it off with (one who is in her early 30s and the other is more late 30s), but didn’t get to talk to a lot, so we’ll see. I wasn’t brave enough to get their phone numbers or exchange emails, but hopefully at the next book club event, we’ll get to talk more.

As for the Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead Reboot, I’m still sitting on a 5-lb. loss. The boyfriend and I have dropped strength training from our workout routine and have just been doing cardio, so we’ll see if that pumps up the weight loss any faster. I’m personally okay with just doing cardio for now, because I had kinda fallen off the whole ‘Run to 5k’ challenge, and now I’m back on it

And as for my upcoming trip? Guess where I’m going?!

Portland, Oregon! Woohoo!! This is kind of like my graduation present/trip from my parents, although I’m just going with my Dad. We’ll be there for 5 days, and I’m super excited. It’s the perfect place for a vegetarian ‘hippie’ like myself! I’ll be sure to share photos with you all when I return!

That said… do you have any suggestions for places/restaurants/food carts to visit in Portland? I have a list of places I’d like to go, but if anyone wants to share their suggestions, I’m all ears!

Las Vegas recap!

Our Las Vegas recap will be kept pretty short because unfortunately, soon after coming back from the trip, I fell sick! Yes, as I type this, I’ve taken a couple of Tylenol PMs, so who knows when I may pass out Anyway, on to the interesting stuff!

Our trip to Las Vegas was, to put it succinctly, AWESOME! We were there from Tuesday until Friday, and did quite a lot on a very small budget. Some of the things we did were free, including:

• visiting the M&Ms shop
• Visiting the Coca Cola shop

Okay, so THIS wasn’t free- $7 for 16 of these size cups to try Coca Cola flavors from different countries. This was so fun! I’m a sucker for trying anything from foreign countries, so I couldn’t pass this up. Blake even liked it! Our favorite flavors were a fizzy apple cider-y type from Mexico and a normal-Coke tasting on from Germany. Blake also really liked the flavors from Asia, especially the tea-flavored one from China. Yum!

I was extra excited!

One flavor we don’t recommend? The Beverely from Italy. Ick! It tasted like black licorice… but you should go and be the judge!

We also toured almost of the casinos too (free!)

This was inside the Mandalay.

We visited the Bellagio (pic above and below)

Happy Holidays, y'all!

I love going to the Bellagio for the holidays– they deck out their Arboretum in all festive, holiday-y stuff. I creeped on these penguins a lot! (They weren’t real)

Yay Bellagio! Then we visited The Cupcakery, somewhere between the Monte Carlo and the Bellagio.

We ended up trying a Red Velvet cupcake with tons of cream cheese frosting– so yum!

Along with the free stuff, Blake also got us tickets to see the Jabbawockeez (from America’s Best Dance Crew) perform at the Monte Carlo. It was so cool!!! The Jabbawockeez did a dream-related theme, sort of Alice in Wonderland-ish. It was very trippy and, of course, the dancing was absolutely out of this world. It’s so cool how they can get their bodies to move like that!

Below is a picture of us getting ready to head out for the Jabbawockeez performance. You can’t see it too well, unfortunately, but I’m wearing one of my snazzy Express shirts I just got. Merry Christmas to me!

But alas, all good things come to an end. In all, we spent much less than we had even budgeted (about $300 total) and we had TONS of fun. Some of the things we planned on doing (like going to the Fashion Show at the opposite end of the Strip) and using our sweet coupons didn’t happen, but we did stumble on some great deals thanks to advance planning and Groupon.

Traveling to Vegas is also great if you’re able to go in the winter and, if possible, during the middle of the week. We’ve gone to Vegas twice now during the winter (once during the week, once for a long weekend) and both times staying at the Mandalay Bay has been extraordinarily cheap. Definitely check into the discounts these casinos give, especially if you are looking to save money and have the time to travel.

As for food, Blake and I saved money by visiting the Mandalay Bay breakfast buffet every morning, stuffing ourselves for a few hours, and making it last. We were able to go until late dinner time (7 pm), and by that time we would have a light dinner (Subway, or a pizza slice from the food court.) It wasn’t exactly the healthiest thing to do, but it did save us some cash!

I leave you all with our final picture from the trip– a blurry photo as we checked out of the Mandalay!

When you travel, do you usually stick to a budget, or do you bring a ton of cash and hope for the best? What great travel advice do you have? Let me know your thoughts!

Canceled flights and idiotic business travelers

Earlier this week was so crazy! I was in Phoenix, visiting my boyfriend for his birthday, and the absolute worst thing happened the day I was supposed to fly out: my flight was canceled and my rebooked flight was delayed indefinitely. Wtf Southwest?!?!

Luckily, the people on the phone at Southwest were very nice and rebooked me on the earliest flight in the morning, where I made an important observation: business travelers are actually the rudest, most vile people to travel with. I know it sounds strange… usually when I fly, I’m annoyed by the older folks or the people with kids, because they are so slow, walk into you, and never know what they’re doing.

But business travelers? They are heads above the rest. They are sophomoric, idiotic, and rude.

It was definitely a “guy’s club” flight that I was on (at 6 AM, so I was definitely NOT in the mood to deal with it.) Grown men were saving each other seats like little girls in a cafeteria. I actually got the stink eye from one man when I looked at his entirely empty row with I guess what looked like possession in my eyes. Don’t worry, tool, I have no intention of sitting with some guy who makes jokes about his “lame ex-wife” the entire flight. Lame ex-wife? More like smart ex-wife to leave someone like you!

I ended up sitting next to a very nice older gentlemen. He may have been a business traveler, but he was polite and didn’t make fart jokes at me all flight, like the other guys in front of me did. He even gave me his extra serving of Southwest’s honey roasted peanuts, which are my fave!

When we landed, all of the businesses travelers stood up like they were going to move somewhere. Um, what? We’re still taxiing, morons. Sit down. And then, they all pushed their way to the front, completely ignoring people in front of them trying to get off in the proper manner. I actually just jumped in front of some guy who was pushing behind me to push past me. I deliberately took my time getting my bag, too, because seriously? You may have pushed away the other nice woman on the other side of the aisle, but no way you’re pushing me, mister. Oh, and just you try to push me, sir. You will get screamed at so fast and so loud you will never want to mess with another 20-something year old female again.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not a morning person. Or at least, I don’t like being insanely stressed out in the mornings, and that’s what flying on the plane makes me.

Anyway, when I finally, finally got home, I still had to finish one assignment before class that night. Let me tell you, it was a nightmare. I hate canceled flights!

Since I hadn’t gone grocery shopping before I left, I basically threw together everything I had left, which ended up being:

• A box of pine-toasted couscous
• A can of black beans
• 1 tomato
• 1 red bell pepper
• a tsp. or so each of salt and pepper

And… voila!

Yes, there is my lovely chipped nail polish. The red was pretty while it lasted…

The dish was very filling and hit the spot. I love couscous and I love black beans, so it was a pretty tasty meal. Not the prettiest or the most well-rounded, but good enough for a quick meal.

I still have a bunch of it left, so I’m trying to figure out what to do with it. Any suggestions for the leftovers?