Greetings from Portland!

Yes, we are in the city of bliss as part of our "annual leave time" or "summer holiday" or plaine ole vacation. Given that beer is a big part of PDX culture, it almost seems more appropriate that we blog on our Beer Club Website (done) but I also want to ensure we don't just focus our TEAM LOVEHARDSTEIN communications on that aspect of life.

We have, so far, done so much, in so little time. We're staying with Mike & Marlowe who live in NE Portland is a gorgeous residential neighborhood in their very lovely home. They've put so much effort into lovely-ifying their home and their gardens (and chicken) are to die for. I am not jealous, but rather, extremely impressed at how much they're growing--tomatoes, beans, peas, kohlrabi, potatoes, pumpkin, watermelon, melon, corn, raspberries, strawberries, pawpaws, pears, apples, and more...and they just started gardening this year!

Appropriately, we've biked all around PDX so far to enjoy many culinary delights like the Jewish deli Kenny & Zukes where I worked hard to get Ben to share a pastrami reuben with me (the picture just looked so good) but we compromised with a turkey rueben and an order of latkes with sour cream and heavenly applesauce. Checked out world famous Powell's book store, a few breweries and the super hip and recently NYTimes featured Ace Hotel, where surely we would have stayed had we been in the hotel, and biked on over to the Portland Bike Festival. This event was crazy, and probably quintessentially Portland. Tall bike jousting, bike clowns, femla ebike dance troop tattooed and dressed in all pink, and a punk rock band plus Widmer beer equals craziness.

Dinner landed us at PokPok--an authentic Thai place that's all the rage--and an hour after waiting we found ourselves in the "shack" nibbling tapas style on Northern Thai food. Only when I got home did I realize that we hadn't even seen the options of curry (Masaman, red, green, or any color!), pad thai, chicken satay or any other typical Thai dishes. Instead we had sweet salty and sticky wings, a fish/noodle soup (a tad bland actually), an eggplant dish, a boiled egg/hen salad dish, and a few other things.

Sunday so far has been spent, too, on bikes. I was luckily able to join Marlowe for a bike/gardening tour with Slow Food. Awesome, awesome, awesome. We stopped first at Columbia Ecovillage, where all these folks are coming together to live and have huge land and gardening expertise and making lots and lots of food. Impressive. Then onto Glen the gardener's home, probably one of the most impressive home garden's I've ever seen with bulging raspberries and a complex watering system and beautiful lettuces. He also does a lot of bee keeping and sells his own honey (of course I bought some). Finally we end up at Harriet's. Harriet has the whole political food thing going on and got me thinking a lot. She discussed the idea of homemaking...calling is householding and is all into radical householding and preserving and living minimaly. It was fascinating and she runs a bunch of classes on Preserving Food. I guess it's only right that in Portland I've now had all these thoughts about living intentionally and gardening (really want to beekeep).

I really encourage anyone to read some of her writings here and especially this one on householding. Or even this one about what she's done and thinking with someone else writing about her. It's literally food for thought. And her garden, her space, was so lovely, she had so many little tables and nooks with flowers and lavender and tea roses under trees and trelisses and wedged between garlic and shallot plants, with herbs drying under a mini treehouse.

Yes--the stereotypes I had were true--everyone bikes, loves good beer, has beautiful gardens and lovely homes with flowers and trees. So far, so great!