Food Critics

Maile and I are spoiled. Portland has some really great restaurants and we have been to enough of them that now it is getting harder and harder to please us. I had a coupon last night for a buy one get one free dinner for any of the restaurants owned by the Restaurants Unlimited Incorporated. They own places like Newport Bay, Stanfords, Portland City Grill and others. We decided we would go to Manzana in the Pearl District. We couldn't find it though because it was no longer there. It had been replaced by Palomino which is owned by the same company so we decided to go ahead and try it.

Now Maile and I should really start our own food critic blog or at the very least start posting on city search or something because all we do when we go out is comment on everything about our experience. Palomino had a good ambiance. No complaints there. Our waiter was attentive and cute. **wink, wink Our first impressions of the menu was that it lacked a cohesive theme. Exactly what kind of food does this place specialize in again? Nothing stood out of note. We shared an order of portobello mushroom soup which they kindly split into two bowls for us. The soup was good but I was glad for the fresh cracked pepper because it really needed an extra dimension to it. Just a tad boring. They also served us sliced bread with some sort of salsa or marinara sauce with chunks of cheese (maybe feta) in it. I like the sauce but Maile thought it was a bit weird.

We decided to order two things and split them each in half. I ordered a chicken and Gorgonzola salad and Maile got the Marsala chicken with cappellini. The salad was actually quite delicious. It had pears and candied walnuts and coated lightly in a maple vinaigrette. The chicken was very tasty and the flavors of the salad blended quite nicely. I thought the $18 price tag on the salad was rather exorbitant but the salad itself was nice.

Maile's Marsala was nothing to write home about. HA, although I guess it was enough to blog everyone about. Nothing extraordinary about it. A little heavy on the garlic. The presentation wasn't very nice. It really needed some sort of vegetable with it to help liven up the plate. Brown sauce and sauteed mushrooms never look all that pretty when poured on a plate over a flattened breast of chicken. The chicken was $19.

Anyway, I think our final verdict would be that the price was way too high for the creativity of the food. You can find much better places in Portland that give you a much better meal for the price. I am just glad we got $18 knocked off our final bill.

Unusual Wedding Preparations

You know...when it is your brother getting married, the type of wedding preparations you do looks different than if it is a friends wedding. As family, you have all these other things to think about, like what to do with all the family coming in to town. For my parents, this has meant pushing the time line of their home remodel up to get the upstairs finished in time for guests to arrive. So my dad and I spent all day Saturday installing crown molding to the baseboards, doors and closets of the guest bedroom and hallway. I must say that we were impressed with ourselves. We did a pretty good job (this time) and accomplished much more in a shorter time period. I'd show you pictures, except that I didn't take any. I like working with my Dad on projects although when it comes to numbers and calculations, we don't process things the same at all. He would spout all these numbers into the air and my brain can't collect them into any coherent. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and I'm a whiz at math. Make me do anything mentally without a visual image and I look like an absolute idiot. But we didn't cut off any fingers and didn't destroy too much wood because couldn't measure correctly.

We also reinstalled the closet system that they took out in order to pain the closet. My dad took before pictures of what it looked like assembled so we would know how to put it back together. Course the pictures didn't help me know which of three nearly identical shelves was supposed to fit at the top so I had to reinstall the shelf three different times. The pictures also didn't tell me that I was using the wrong screws. Who knew that all the hardware in the bag didn't just go to this closet. Oi!

However, the house is looking fantastic and if you haven't had a chance to see it since all the work started like a year and a half ago, you should check it out. The master bath/walk in closet is so cool and the kitchen isn't too shabby either. Great work Mom and Dad! Now on to the rest of the downstairs. :)

I also got my hair cut and highlighted this weekend in preparation for the wedding. My gal Chandra made me look fabulous again. I was getting a little scraggly there. Now I've got to work on the slideshow that I am putting together for the reception. I need to block out time in my life to do that because that is going to take a bit of work. Then next Sunday I'm starting to bake the 36 dozen cookies that will end up being party favors at the wedding. His and Hers favorite cookies. Cute huh? So 18 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies for my brother and 18 dozen white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for Pam. Thank you ahead of time, Mom, for helping me!