A delicious burger

Leslie and I love food.  We would consider ourselves “foodies” even.  We plan our trips around great eating experiences, and we try to make amazing meals at home whenever we can.

Tonight was one of those meals.  After watching Food Inc. at the Belcourt last night, we were in the mood for some good, healthy food choices.  Of course, as we drove to Whole Foods, I mentioned that maybe we should have burgers tonight.  After eating veggies all week, a burger seemed right, so we headed to Whole Foods to score some grass-fed ground beef.  When the time came to make a decision, I opted for the ground bison, which was $1 less a pound.  I haven’t tasted the grass-fed beef, but I’m pretty sure I made a great decision.

I won’t go through the cooking process.  My buddy benfRank has a blog (you should visit it) where he does that, and i’m not trying to compete with him, but merely make a nod at the brilliance of what he’s doing and share some of our food experiences as well.

Tonight’s menu:

Bison burgers on whole wheat buns – garden grown lettuce and tomato, Dubliner cheddar aged for several years before gracing my mouth with its presence, and a herb salsa made out of almonds/olive oil/herbs from our garden that i would maybe hurt kittens for.

Sweet potato fries made from purple sweet potatoes with a brown sugar/chili powder/sea salt coating.

Corn on the cob from our CSA.

Leslie opted for grilled green bell pepper, and i went with a sauteed jalapeno.

This is the amazing bison burger we made tonight.

On an Actual Visit to the Pacific NW

This is a long post.  That said – you need to read the part between the ********’s if you skip over anything.

Seattle

On Tuesday, June 23, Leslie and i headed to the great state of Washington via jetplane. The flight was long, because Seattle is far away.

The next day, we moved into our hotel for the next several days – The Pan Pacific Seattle. The hotel was amazing. It even had a Whole Foods underneath it. We took a food tour of Pike Place Market, which was very informative and allowed us to try several foods and experience things we would not have experienced otherwise. We both agreed that the chowder and seafood bisque from Pike Place Chowder were the tastiest things we had on said experience. Leslie also enjoyed the Piroshkys from Piroshky, Piroshky. The cheese from Beecher was stellar.

We then walked down to the sculpture garden (meh) and then stopped and had a beer at Cyclops, which was a pretty descent bar to grab a drink. We found a fun knife set called The Ex at a mod furniture shop, and purchased that for our kitchen.  This was followed by a tasty meal at Flying Fish.

Thursday, we went on the Underground tour, which was ok.  The opening history, delivered by a guy who looked and delivered jokes like Norm McDonald, was the highlight.  The tour itself was a little sleepy.  We followed this by picking up Leslie’s race stuff at Qwest Field.

After a mediocre lunch, we headed out to Ballard, which may have been one of the highlights of the trip. (I must note at this point that it was on this bust trip that we found out that Michael Jackson had died. Almost every place we went for the next 2 or 3 days was playing Michael Jackson) This neighborhood is a dream. Great stores and restaurants and bars and shops and other things. We saw the strangest contraption at one point. 6 people were sitting on this bike-like thing, all facing each other and peddling, each person playing an instrument (upright bass, banjo, jug, washboard, kazoo, etc), while a film crew followed them. I also found an amazing squid tee at a store called Monster Clothing and Gifts. The entire store was dedicated to monsters. Maybe the coolest store I’ve ever been too.  We ate that evening at a restaurant called Root Table. Once again, one of our favorite experiences and meals of the trip.

Friday morning we headed to Freemont, which was the 2nd best neighborhood we experienced on our whole trip.  This is where Adobe is located.  There were great shops, art galleries, and many restaurant choices.  We ate at Roxy’s where i enjoyed a Pastrami Burger and tots. MMM.  Afterward, we went to Theo’s, which is a chocolate factory, and we sampled chocolates, and they were magical.

The Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum is housed in a building designed by Frank Gerry. Maybe one of the most impressive structures I’ve ever seen.  It’s stunning and curvy and beautiful.  The EMP part of the museum was fun, and would have been even more fun, had we had more time. Just so much to see. They even had a Hatch Show exhibit, straight out of Nashville, which was almost surreal, but not quite.  I’m a geek, but i realized at the Science Fiction Museum that i’m not as much of a geek as i think i am.  They layout and flow of the museum is very well thought through, and flows with ease.  In this part of the massive building was the Jim Henson exhibit, which showed many of his creations and talked about the history of everything he did through his wonderful life. Well, maybe not everything, but a lot.

Leslie needed to carb load for her half marathon the next day, so we ate a place called the Pink Door. There is no sign for this place.  Only a pink door.  Despite this fact, the place was pretty large and jam packed with people.  Leslie got the bolognase, which was a treat for all mouths.  Note: I didn’t like many of the beers i had in Seattle. They are very hoppy.

Leslie had a personal best in her half-marathon, running it in 1 hour and 58 minutes, or something like that. Oh yeah, the weather in Seattle the whole time was freaking unbelievable. It didn’t get over 75 the whole time, usually floating around 68-72 degrees. It was a dream.  I stood at the band stage where The Lonely Forest was playing.  They did a fine job.

Victoria

We headed on a smaller plane to Victoria after the race.  We stayed at the Fairmont Empress while we were there, and it was meh, especially compared to the amazing room we had at the Pan Pacific.  We singled out a few restaurants to eat at while were in Victoria, due to only having 2 days there, and the first one we went to, which after Leslie’s earlier 13 mile run, we hoped would be closer than it was, was a place called Med Grill@Mosaic.  It was about a 20 minute walk, and we were pretty hungry. It was closed.  And by that, i mean, no longer in business. It looked like it was nice at one point, though.

We ventured onto a place called Canoe. This is a brewpub in Victoria, and easily our favorite meal in Victoria.  It’s odd, this area being so close to Seattle, but the beer i had in Victoria and Vancouver was great (not hoppy at all).  We started with a flat bread and crispy bread dish with:

+ spinach, cumin and goat feta dip
+ preserved lemon, chick pea hummus
+ wild salmon confit and caper spread
+ artichoke, parmesan & roasted garlic dip
+ marinated mediterranean olives

We followed this with a magnificent butter chicken. I also had a fleet of beer (5 samplers).  That was the only night it rained, and we walked back in the misting.

Sunday, we ate breakfast at Willie’s Bakery, where we had a delicious muffin and some sort of blt egg croissant. We proceeded to a street fair after that, and met a very interesting woman who made jewelry out of beans and candy and such. This was followed by lunch at Pescatores, which was suggested by my boss, and it was nice and quiet (and much less expensive) during the lunch hours.

And then on to some whale watching.  Whale watching is pretty magical, except that you don’t get as close as you would hope, but apparently there are laws and such prohibiting it, which make sense. We saw Killer Whales, sea lions, birds, and really amazing houses along the coast. I now understand the term JPod (a book title by Douglas Copland) better.  The tour ended at Butchart Gardens, which were glorious and colorful. Did i mention that it was like 68 degrees or something?

Monday in Victoria was astounding. Leslie wanted to go to these Butterfly Gardens that were located in the center of the island, so i had a brilliant idea to get us to the gardens. We rented birds and rode them there. I mean dragons. We rode dragons to the butterfly garden.  Actually, we rented scooters and drove up the coast on the scenic route.  It was one of the most amazing days in resent memory.  The weather was phenomenal, the views and houses and everything around us was sparkling with magic and faerie dust, and the butterfly gardens were actually pretty great.  At the gardens, a bird started attacking my foot, then actually mounted my foot for a while before wandering off to better things.

After another beautiful drive back down the coast, we turned in our scooters, grabbed some tasty nachos from a pub, then gathered our bags and got on a bus on our way to Vancouver, via the BC Ferry.

***********************

Vancouver

The sun was setting over the mountains and water surrounding us as we toted along on the ferry.  I listened to I’m on a Boat several times while standing on a boat and watching the glory of our surroundings as we headed toward Vancouver.

When you ride a bus, be it a Greyhound or in this case, a Pacific Coach, they store your luggage in bins under the bus.  Pretty standard stuff.  When we left Victoria, we kept our backpacks containing my camera and laptop with us, but put our bags with our clothes and other belongings under the bus.  The bus wasn’t very full upon leaving, but when we re-entered the bus (they made us get off the bus during the ferry ride), a great number of people had purchased tickets from the ferry and had joined us on the bus.  Our seats that were originally at the front were taken, and we moved toward the back half.

When the bus pulled into the station in Vancouver, we filed off with everyone else, and noticed that our bags weren’t with everyone else’s.  People were gathering their bags and walking off with them, and we asked the driver where our bags were.  We all looked, and they were gone.  He suggested that maybe someone had accidentally taken our bags instead of theirs, but there were no bags that looked anything like ours.  We ran through the bus depot looking for someone carrying our bags away, but i’m afraid we acted a touch late.

Someone stole our bags.  Just walked off with them.

We filed a report with the Greyhound customer service, then with the Vancouver Police, and our 11:30pm arrival turned into a 2 1/2 hour stay at the bus depot.  As i was filing reports, Leslie walked around the bus depot and its surrounding regions with the head of security, hoping to find something.  They pulled up security footage, and we watched the guy ( a taller than 6 foot white guy) walk through the bus depot, juggling our two 30+ lb bags, trying to figure out how to carry them.  He walked by 4 cameras, but we couldn’t see his face.  They put an APB out on the guy, but our luggage was never seen again.

We checked into our hotel around 2am, completely wound up, unable to sleep.  The next day, we basically walked through Vancouver, or at least the few blocks around our hotel, like zombies, purchasing a few new outfits to get us through the next several days.  It was still amazing outside, yet we spent most of our time in a shopping mall.  Oh yeah, that squid tee and the cool jewelry leslie got in Victoria were on the bags that were stolen, along with a necklace from Barcelona that can’t be replaced.  And Leslie’s running shoes.  And our new knife set.  Actually, there were a lot of things on those bags, and really, there wasn’t much that the guy could have sold for anything.  They were just valuable to us.  But luckily, we’re ok, and it’s just stuff.

***********************

Wednesday, a day after the zombie shopping day, we spent some time with the Canadians, celebrating Canada Day with them.  We wondered around the city, still purchasing a few items here and there, watching people meander around the city in their white and red, maple leaves everywhere.  We had delicious crepes at a crepe cafe, and i had my first Granville Island Beer.  I liked most of the beers i had in Vancouver.  That evening, we met up with my friend Michelle and enjoyed another local brewpub with her, telling stories and having much needed laughs.

The next day, we ventured into Stanley Park and visited Vancouver’s fine aquarium.  Leslie had a date with a Beluga whale, feeding him fishy snacks and basically hanging out with him.  I saw an awesome octopus.  He may have waved at me, but i’m not entirely sure.  I also saw a water snake eat a fish.  It was real.

We ate dinner at an amazing Malaysian place.  The flavors were swirling masses of love and joy, coupled with some local wine.

The next day we left, gathering our police report in a shady part of town, then walking to the train station, which is the same station where our stuff was stolen.  It felt odd and oppressive and bad.  I bought some ice cream bites to try to chase away the pain.  They were good, but not great, and therefore, the pain didn’t leave.

If you’re ever travelling from Vancouver to Seattle or vice versa, i recommend traveling via this train we took.  It was on the coast line almost the entire time, and the scenery was stellar.

The jetplane rides from nashville to seattle are long.  Much reading was done.  I finished the Regulators (Stephen King) and got more than half way through The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper.

Now we’re home.  And one of our first acts was buying new cell phone chargers.  woo!