LAZY DAY IN PORTLAND

This morning (I use the term loosely) we went to the Saturday market, even though today is Sunday.  It's a fun place with lost of nice crafts, I bought some earrings and a little purse and some cute earrings for Martha.  We arrived and parked at about 11:15 which gave us about two hours of free parking.  For some unfathomable reason, parking is metered from 1-7 on Sundays.  Wonder if they sold their street parking to finance an arena?  This is apparently a pretty hot neighborhood, I don't know if it's still called the Pearl south of Burnside,  but people line up at a lot of places for food.  VooDoo donuts is one.  

Another interesting thing that I only recently read about in a food magazine is liquid nitrogen ice cream. The ice cream is mixed up -- cream, flavorings, fruit, whatever you want, and then it's hit with liquid nitrogen, stirred, hit with liquid nitrogen again,

stirred again, and pretty soon it's ice cream.  

We met Pam and Norm at the market and hung out for a little bit.  I looked for really classy items.  

Part of our afternoon outing was to the Alberta art district in northeast Portland.  It's got a lot of the same hippie/hipster vibe

of the Fremont neighborhood in Seattle.  Lots of locals out having coffee and lining up for food, this time for biscuits.  

This is clearly a 1910-1920 neighborhood with lots of Craftsman houses.  

Some chalk left out in case a passing chod wants to draw on the sidewalk.  

It looks a little like maybe they are more rental than owner occupied, but I'm judging mostly on the fact that there's not a lot of landscaping.  Clearly, there also aren't any garages, either.  We stopped at Random Order, a coffeehouse and bakery whose sign said they sold pie, delicious cocktails and fried egg sandwiches.  We had pumpkin chocolate chunk muffins and coffee.  Met some very adorable dogs, too.  

Their owner was obviously a professional dog trainer. The bigger dog would do a number of cute moves and the owner was having a good time using the dogs as a chick magnet.   

We went back to the Pearl to make sure there wasn't anything we missed at the fair that we could agree on, there wasn't, emphasis on the agree on factor.  Then we wandered around the neighborhood, had a beer, went back to Powell's Books, because I forgot to check out the gardening books, and then a little more shopping at the home stores -- I particularly liked Casa Bella.  

We had some delicious tamales from one of the vendors at the fair at the end of the day.  I don't know what other cuisine what cuisine was mixed for these tamales, but they were delicious.  They had chicken, potatoes, prunes and green olives in the stuffing, and were wrapped in banana leaves instead of corn husks.  The consistency of the masa was a little different, too.  They were so close to closing that when I went to buy a coke at another stand, the owner gave me an elephant ear, which is basically some pizza dough fried and dipped In sugar. I'm embarrassed to admit that I really liked it.  Of course, what's not to like about bread and sugar, especially if you add a little extra grease?

We made an early day of it today.  We might go to a glass gallery tomorrow, plus I want to walk around through some of the bungalow neighborhoods.  With a little luck, we might find an antique shop that's open, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.