Vacation: Things I Ate and Drank (as documented by iPhone photos)

I am back from vacation, and I have plenty of photographs to share! The things I was doing and seeing while away were, not shockingly, more interesting and shareable than my daily bar studying life. I am dividing my recap up, in part because I have enough food/drink photos to make one post, and because I could get all of these photos from my phone. The real camera photos are going to have to wait for another day because I haven't put those on my computer yet. 

By way of background and geography, this vacation was to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, located in Ashland, Oregon. I haven't been as much recently, but I used to go every year when I was a teenager. I flew into Portland, where I met up with my parents, who had also flown in from their home on the east coast, then we spent a full day in Portland seeing some sights before heading south to Ashland on Monday. We stayed in Ashland until Friday, seeing great plays, enjoying time with family and friends, and of course, eating and drinking. I couldn't resist snapping some quick photos of what we enjoyed, and this is only a sampling to boot! Places not covered by the photos include Olympic Provisions in Portland, Cucina Biazzi in Ashland, and others I am not remembering at the moment. 

Without further ado - the photographic evidence. Get it? Evidence? Studying for the bar? I digress... 

Investigating Portland in advance, I had the great (in my opinion) idea that my parents and I should go to this Beer and Cheese Fest event happening the day we were touring the city. It doubled as my Father's Day gift, since it was conveniently Father's Day that day as well, and I got to spend the day with my dad for the first time in a while! There were 11 beer and cheese pairings, and because of my commitment to the experience and my beer and cheese prowess, I made it through all 11 pairings. It helped that we hung out there for about three hours though. 

For lunch on the way down from Portland to Ashland, we stopped at Marche in Eugene, Oregon. It was hopping and clearly popular, but we managed to get some seats. My main meal was these delicious cornmeal covered fried oysters. So good! I definitely found myself tending toward seafood throughout the entire week. 

This and the next few photos are from the phenomenal breakfast served at the Winchester Inn in Ashland. My grandparents have stayed there most of the years I've been to OSF with them, and though I stayed elsewhere with my parents this year, I was lucky enough to be able to join the Winchester crew for breakfast 3 out of my 4 mornings there. There are always three choices of the main breakfast entree, usually two are eggs and the third might be something more grain based, like pancakes or waffles. Often the egg dishes just end up sounding more appealing to me, as good as everything always sounds. Plus, breakfast potatoes. The prospect of breakfast potatoes has definitely shifted me toward egg dishes throughout my experiences of eating breakfast out. Anyway, what you see above is a poached egg dish over a goat cheese souffle, topped with a black pepper cream sauce. And breakfast potatoes!

Before you get your main breakfast entree, you even get a pastry plate with a different pastry each day and some fruit. On the day pictured above, there was a delicious scone with maple walnut butter.

This dish, which I ate my last morning in Ashland, was quite impressive. It is a poached egg dish - but the poached eggs are somehow coated in panko breadcrumbs and fried. There was some prosciutto under the eggs too. I say it was impressive because despite the fried aspect, the yolks inside were as luscious and runny as ever, like I look for in poached eggs. Anyway, it was delicious and I was curious how they did it! 

 

Pictured above is my dessert (shared with parents along with a few others) at Amuse. It was a delicious chocolate truffle cake with coffee ice cream, plated beautifully!

Thursday night we enjoyed some sushi and related fare at Kobe. To start I ordered this cocktail - called the St. Germain's Garden. It had St. Germain liqueur, some grapefruit juice, vodka, and muddled basil. Yes, my love for basil certainly extends to cocktails!

 And here is some of the delicious sushi! I had tastes of the rolls on the far plate (and plenty of other things), and ate most of the rolls on the near plate - and those duck spring rolls off to the side. Rarely am I so full after sushi - it was so good!

Right before we went to the airport to head home on Saturday morning, my parents and I visited Stumptown Coffee, which I understand is a Portland institution. My dad and I both got some slightly fancier coffee to start, but then to go I got a small cup of their regular brew as well. I have to say, I may have enjoyed it even more than the French press I got, which is a really good sign. I'm glad I got to try it out! 

And finally, to pat myself on the back a little bit, this photo from the trip home. We got to the airport in the middle of the day and grabbed some sandwiches right before my parents' flight left, and I ate my sandwich in the extra hour before my own flight left. I knew that I would be on the same plane for entire afternoon and into the evening, stopping in another city, but staying on that same plane. To minimize the risk that I'd get too hungry (yup, I have my priorities) I wanted to grab some things that could travel well and serve as dinner if necessary. After searching through a bunch of various snacks and all that, I came across those dried mango snacks to the right - happily with nothing added. The only thing in the ingredient list was mango! I also came across some prepared wraps and sandwiches, and while I am sometimes wary of those sorts of things I was intrigued by the quinoa spinach wrap pictured above. It sounded pretty good and healthy, so I grabbed it as well. I am happy to say it was good AND healthy, and I was proud of myself for choosing something on the lighter side. As the rest of this post illustrates, I didn't exactly hold back on vacation (I rarely do), though I did often eat a light lunch due to our meal/play schedules. It was thoroughly enjoyable, but now that I'm back home I am re-focusing on delicious healthy foods in moderation, and the food I found in the airport felt like a good step.

So there it is, the photographic account of my vacation in food and drink! Hopefully sometime this week I'll get around to posting some of the beautiful scenery and other sights I encountered while I was away. :-)

Vacation :-)

I am leaving for a vacation today! I am certainly excited. I am headed to a place I am very fond of, but haven't been to for 5 years. And I will be spending time with my parents, grandparents, and friends of my grandparents (some of whom have become friends of my own). I will write more about it upon my return. For now, a quick post with some photo updates! Let's be real, part of what I like about blogging is gratuitously sharing what I have been eating and cooking lately.

I hard boiled some eggs since I had so many on hand, and they came out great, even verging on soft boiled, which is fine by me!

Two of those eggs went into this "use stuff up" salad - it had kale, feta, the eggs, jarred roasted red peppers, some banana peppers, and a quick balsamic vinaigrette. I am not always a huge salad person, but I really enjoyed this and felt good about it eating it too. 

This was a yummy breakfast smoothie with lots of good fats and protein - a container of coconut Siggi's yogurt, almond milk, chia, wheat germ, chocolate protein powder, sunflower butter, and some frozen banana. Accented by bar review books in the background! 

This was a yummy "use stuff up" frittata. It's got two eggs, the equivalent of two egg whites (I use a product called "simply whites" that is basically egg whites in a carton), some grape tomatoes, shallots, garlic, parmesan, and feta. Topped with basil clipped from the pots on my back porch, which I love!

I also made these oatmeal blueberry flax muffins from a recipe at Pinch of Yum. I did modify it a bit - I used a combo of white whole wheat and regular whole wheat flour, I doubled the recipe, and I skipped making the glaze. These were really good and I am glad I still have 8 of them in the freezer!

Alright, I'd better work on the stuff that needs to happen before I leave for the airport. Until next time!

Another Week Gone

Already June 9? That is pretty crazy! Things are just fine around here. I had some really good social time the past few days, but the flip side of that was that I was not getting bar studying done at the pace I wanted to. On the one hand, it is not worth stressing about past the point where it will make me more productive, but on the other hand, I needed to use it to be more productive, especially since I am going on vacation for a week (next week!) and I don't plan to study much while I'm there. Luckily today was a good day for productivity. After NOT getting everything on my "to do" list done yesterday (the list provided by the bar prep company in the online course), I went ahead of the list today and made a plan as to how I can get a solid week of work in this week before I leave. I won't be that far ahead, but I won't be behind so much that I feel panic-stricken upon my return (I hope). Just tonight my big accomplishment was getting all of the various outlines onto my Kindle and downloading some lectures to my iPhone - I still really don't want to fit studying in while I'm in a lovely place with family and friends, but now I can use airport and airplane time to squeeze in some more work.

Other stuff happening - well for one, like I said, social time! One of my very very best friends from law school (who is also in a relationship with a military guy) got engaged on Thursday! It was so thrilling when she sent a photo of the ring. :-) Luckily we've had the chance to hang out in the past few days, and I just feel blessed to be able to experience such an exciting time with her after knowing that she and her fiance were ready to tell the world their plans to be together for the long haul! I also saw two other friends yesterday for a fun movie event (watching Gosford Park and drinking tea), and tomorrow I have a lunch and facials date with two friends for one of their birthdays! I have definitely been able to get myself out of the house a good amount, which is good for my sanity, less good for productivity. It is all about balance. Also, I am becoming increasingly aware of how close our move is, which makes me feel sadder and sadder about leaving all these lovely friends I've found. It is all very bittersweet, but I guess I would say I am really trying to savor the time I spend with them this summer.

Now a few phone photos from the past week or so -

Don't you just love when a recipe comes together easily and quickly, is delicious, and as a bonus might even be pretty good for you?  That was this pork dish for me. It's Pork Chops au Poivre from Eatingwell. I replaced light sour cream with Greek yogurt, and used some of my farmer's market shallots, which worked out well. A lot of the delicious flavor comes from the brandy in the sauce, which we just happened to have on hand, maybe from Thanksgiving gravies of the past few years. As you can see I paired this with some sauteed kale (with plenty of garlic).

Just a little experiment - confirming that yes indeed, oftentimes farmer's market eggs have differently colored yolks than grocery store eggs. I am not going to identify which is which, because if I have to do it for you, maybe they weren't as different as I thought. This is another iteration of my cheesy zucchini scrambled eggs, which I have eaten for breakfast about four times at this point.

I was fascinated by this SkinnyTaste recipe for vegan eggplant meatballs, so I made them just tonight (and promptly un-veganized them, because I heart cheese). They were pretty easy and I enjoyed the flavor. Much like many recipes to this effect, you wouldn't have fooled me into thinking they were meat of course, but if you accept that it was a tasty dish, and another one that I could feel good about eating.

Also after I went to a yoga class down south on Saturday, I couldn't resist stopping at Trader Joe's. I may have overdone it a bit on the frozen seafood, but hey, it lives in the freezer so using it up is not so super urgent! I also picked up some of their well-reviewed olive oil since I was running low, and decided to try some sunflower butter, which is fascinating stuff. So far I am a fan!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend and a happy Monday!

Farmer's Market Fun

Getting food from a farmer's market always sounds like a good idea, at least in theory. Now that I have the time and mental space, I am actually turning that sentiment into action for the first time in a while. We have a nice little farmer's market here in our town, and I headed over this past Thursday. I got some zucchini, shallots, and eggs. 

And here are a couple things I've made -

Above, a yummy and healthy breakfast made with eggs, shallots, zucchini, and shredded cheddar in a scramble and some toast with coconut oil.

A roasted zucchini and ricotta sandwich. The recipe is from Annie's Eats and was posted recently, so I had this in mind when I headed to the market! I've eaten this sandwich twice so far and have supplies ready to have it twice more. :-) 

I definitely get a lot of pleasure out of knowing all this food was produced so close by, and that it's good for me. It is unrealistic for me (for a variety of reasons) to go 100% local, unprocessed, organic, vegetarian, or whatever else, but I figure doing some amount of all of those is good for me and hopefully the environment etc. too. 

And as a final word, just a note that I somewhat regret that my photos (all taken on my phone) will never be that amazing. Oftentimes, if a recipe is linked, like the sandwich above, you can see the food more artfully photographed at the original source. There are plenty of blogs out there with awesome photography, and this will not be one of them, at least until I find I want to invest resources in a better camera and some better skills! Never say never, but that time is not now.