I am warming up to Portland Part 1

This post is a little late in coming. Last week I convinced Matt to take a half day off work and come to Portland with me. The way I see it, he has spent so many weekends in Los Angeles for work he can spare a few hours for me on a Monday afternoon. The purpose of my trip was to get some running shoes. No, I am not running. Yes, I am walking with the hopes of working up to running later. Does anyone else feel like their body was not put together in the right manner to run? Nothing about it feels natural to me.

First stop of the day was lunch at Wildwood.

Wildwood is a restaurant opened by Chef Cory Schreiber. He specializes in recipes utilizing ingredients from the Pacific Northwest. I am ashamed to admit that I can't remember what we ate other than it was moaningly delicious. My entree was akin to liquidy/cheesey/creamy ravioli with greens on top. The combination was sublime. In the chef's eyes I probably committed a cardinal sin by not eating the hunks of fried bacon dotting the plate but, eh, dead flesh, not for me. I didn't realized there was bacon from reading the menu description and I wasn't about to send the beautiful dish back. We noticed on the way in the Wildwood has a cookbook. With each bite I was more and more inclined to buy it. What absolutely convinced me to make the purchase was dessert: Hazelnut Chocolate Turnovers - caramel sauce, hot fudge and butternut crunch ice cream. Sounds like a pretty generic collection of ingredients but the crust was hands down the best I have ever had and the total package took the sum of parts into the stratosphere. Matt agrees.

After lunch we made our way over to the Portland Running Co. A helpful clerk had me running up and down the sidewalk in a variety of shoes until we found the pair that kept my ankles from rolling in and messing with my knee and hip joints. Matt said he found it funny to watch my gangley self running back and forth in front of the window. I came away with a really fast lookin' pair of silver/purple/white shoes. I swear they work better if they are pretty.

A quick stop at IKEA for another CD shelf and we were on our way home. We had signed up to stuff envelopes at the Lewis County Democratic Committee offices. How delighted are we that there is such a thing!