Portland Part 1

I am finally over being overwhelmed by my backlog of pictures from Portland, the food's still there for the eatin' so I'm damn well gonna blog about it!

As soon as we arrived in town we headed straight to Sweetpea Baking Co to grab some tasty eats and to say hi to my buddy Ms Panda With Cookie because it'd been three whole years since I'd seen her in real life. Three years! I needed a panda hug. Sadly on this visit there was no panda hugging to be done, something which I think we definitely made up for during the rest of my trip. We even double-team-hugged a large chimp together. Ah, memories.

I ordered a delicious Chickpea Tuna Salad Sandwich...

Note : I took this before anyone taught me how to take a picture of a sandwich. All things considered I don't think it's that bad! 

...and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie.

Both of which I loved but the real jewel in Sweetpea's crown as far as I'm concerned are their deeeelicious biscuits and gravy. I chose to get mine with some tempeh bacon and I've seriously been waking up thinking about this almost daily ever since. It was amazing. I wish I was less lazy and could be bothered to learn how to make my own biscuits, it can't be that hard can it?!

Mandee and I chased our breakfast biscuits with some pastries because we're awesome like that. You know what else was awesome? Sweetpea's pastries that's what. Yet another thing I'm scared to try to make after an epic croissant failure back in '08!

One spot you simply cannot miss on a vegan tour of Portland is Voodoo Doughnut. They have two PDX locations, one Downtown and one in NE and I managed to squeeze in five or six visits during my stay.

Voodoo Doughnut have a vegan version of almost every doughnut on their large menu and they're crazy cheap so you can buy loads.

The day I realised that Mandee and I would be forever friends was the day she went out early and brought doughnuts back to our room before I'd even emerged from under the duvet. Best. Roomie. Ever. 

Doughnuts in bed are the best, I hope Nick reads this and gets the (not so subtle) hint that he should get up early in Vegas, drive to Ronald's, and bring all of the doughnuts back to me!

That chocolate topped, peanut butter drizzled, cookie covered monstrosity, named the Old Dirty Bastard, was amazing. I kept ordering it again and again not needing to branch out because this doughnut is perfect. The Gay Bar on the right was full of cream, not jam as I had suspected, meaning that I didn't love it but everyone else did!

Another place I fell head over heels for in Portland was Sizzle Pie, vegan pizza, by the slice, open until late, what more could you want? Well, honestly, I'd like their brunch pizza to be available at all times but I'm pretty demanding like that!

This Raw Power slice was my favourite and every time I walked through this neighbourhood I made whoever I was with stop for a slice. Sorry, not sorry.

Nick and I went for brunch at Hungry Tiger Too before he left, due to someone's (ahem, Nick) time consuming hairstyle it was super late by the time we arrived and I was the kind of hungry that has crossed passed hangry and into a whole 'nother dimension. I ordered the most epic sounding thing on the menu...

...and then got some corndogs on the side much to the amusement of our waitress.

My Greek Scramble came packed full of olives, tempeh bacon, spinach, garlic, tomatoes and Daiya cheese and was served with with sourdough toast and an enormous hash brown. This was one of my favourite meals of the whole trip. The scramble was super flavourful and if somewhere has sourdough toast on the menu I will love them forever. 

The corn dogs on the other hand? Good god no! I didn't actually realise that a corn dog is a sausage on a stick covered in sweet, yes, SWEET, batter. Now I love maple syrup with my tempeh bacon these days but this? This was taking it too far! American's, you crazy! I am glad I tried a corn dog though and if you haven't ever had the pleasure you should give 'em a whirl, but don't say I didn't warn ya!

This next delicious brunch is from Blossoming Lotus where Nick and I were lucky enough to have a brunch date with the lovely Jess Scone and her hilarious ladyfriend Jules.

This Coconut Bacon BLT was perfect and was made all the more delicious because it was accompanied by a mimosa and wonderful company. We both wish that we lived closer to these ladies so that we could have brunch together all the time! I'm still a little obsessed with coconut bacon right now, you can't buy it in the UK like you can in the US so I've been making my own using this recipe.

Last but by no means least Nick and I managed to make it to flavour spot, a waffle cart with two locations in North / NE Portland. There's only one vegan option, the No. 3 Vegan Sausage & Maple, but that was a-ok with us. Why would you need anything else?

It was as epic as it looks and for $5.50 it was a total bargain. This delicious crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, waffle was folded around vegan sausage patties and slatherd with organic vegan maple spread. I love this sandwich SO HARD. I really, really wanted to visit this cart more than once but, alas, opening hours and a base downtown made it impossible.

That's not all I ate in Portland though, Portland Part Deux is coming up real soon. Watch this space.