Portland!

I'm in love.
Thank you: Food Fight, Herbivore, Sweetpea Bakery, Back to Eden Bakery, Red Bird Studio, Alberta Co-op Grocery, Pie Footwear, REI, Beermongers, and last but definitely not least Portabello (the best vegan restaurant I've ever been to, and I've been to a few. I was so excited about the food -- and so hungry -- I forgot to take pictures. Imagine though. We had cashew cheese stuffed pepadew peppers, portabello steak with whipped potatoes and swiss chard, semolina gnocchi with chanterelles and vegetable ragout -- db also had a Arrabiata pizza and finished it! -- then, the best part of the dinner was the raw chocolate cannoli stuffed with vanilla coconut cream filling. Oh my goodness it was amazing!).

I had an amazing time.

Tomorrow morning I'm running the Columbia Gorge and I cannot wait. It's uphill for at least the first three kilometers, but it levels out after that. Anywho...it's going to be fun.

More Victoria and More Food

Victoria is a beautiful city. With the sunny weather, all those runners in town and what seemed to be a cruise ship docked it was also a busy city on the long weekend.

After the run and after we packed up and checked out of our hotel, db, my step-dad and I stepped into rebar for lunch. During the running expo db and I had stopped at the Russell books stand to flip through the many books on running. While I didn't find a running book, db did find a cookbook. The woman working the stall informed us of the popularity of the book and that it is a restaurant in town. We bought the book and decided we needed to eat there. It's not entirely vegan, but it is vegetarian.
Once I saw it I remembered being there when I lived in Victoria, I just didn't frequent it so it wasn't too familiar. The restaurant steps down just below street level and is set up for both dining and sipping juice at the bar.

Healthy food and runners will find each other so it was no surprise to me that there was a line-up at the door. We didn't have to wait too long though and once we were seated we were waited on promptly. Drinks came (I ordered an apple, pear, banana soy smoothie) and we ordered lunch.

Here's my lunch

Beneath the veggies and cashews lay a bed of buckwheat soba noodles in a tamari/sesame sauce.

Here's what my step-dad ordered

We'd already dug into our lunches before I remembered pictures and that's why there's a bite out of his burger. It's an almond burger (if I remember correctly). It looked very good and that was the verdict by my step-dad as well.

db orderedHmm...looks a lot like the brunch I make on the weekends. He knows what he likes. His scrambled tofu did have more of a greek theme to it so I may want to try duplicating this. I did notice a recipe for it in their cookbook so I'll have to try it.

After lunch/brunch we wandered around stopping in at shops that interested us.


It was a pretty relaxing day.

db and I said good-bye to my step-dad and we headed our separate ways. We had a ferry to catch.

While waiting for our ferry, I could see one of the new faster ferries docked and wondered why they weren't running that one? Maybe this is part of the service cuts they announced earlier this month? Or maybe it's because they've decided to use smaller ferries during the slower periods and since it was a long weekend they deemed the ferry to be too big for a busy long weekend (I'm being sarcastic in case you didn't know).

Anyway, we took a smaller ferry. It was full, but not overcrowded. There were lots of runners, but I'm not a very social runner so I didn't talk to any about their experience of the run. Plus I felt a little guilty in my marathon shirt when in the end I didn't even run it.

Back at home the girls were happy to see us. The cat sitter left some photos she'd taken of Gigi and Prima and a nice note about her visit with them. The two cats ran up and down the hallway clearly excited to see us. It was a nice welcome home.