Cannon Beach

Portland is close to various elements of nature. There are mountains to the east, deserts to the further east. Columbia river to the north. And the Ocean an hour and half to the west.

We've been here for almost six months. This is the first time we made it to the coast. Our destination was Cannon beach. In the city it was 80 degrees. Here on the beach it felt more like 60s with the wind. The water is freezing. This is not your typical beach where people sunbath. Although it's great for surfing.

haystack rocks

It's low-tide time of the day. You can find all kinds of good stuff that's left behind by the ocean water in the tide pools. The rocks were covered with barnacles and sea mussels. There were also big fat star fish, seaweeds and what looked like anemone.

The town of Cannon Beach is small and quaint. We ate lunch at Ecola Seafood, a family eatery, where you order food at the counter and bring food to the table yourself. There were four of us. So we got four fried fish and chip basket, cod, halibut, razor clam and oysters. They were very good, highly recommended.

Portland rose test garden

Portland Rose Test Garden is a huge garden of roses...duh. If you are into gardening or simply are fond of looking at beautiful blooms, you'd be spending hours in this place. There are rows after rows of rose bushes, arranged in a multi-tier garden that sits on a 4.5 acre land.

There you would find the usual red, white, yellow and pink roses. But you'd also find some very unusual varieties. I had a lot of fun taking photos of them.

steamed fish

Uwajimaya is a Japanese chain grocery store in the northwest. The original one is in Seattle, I think. There's one not far from my work. We picked up a red tilapia from the seafood section, all gutted and scaled.

One of the best way to cook a whole fish is steaming. We stuffed it with garlic, ginger and fresh cilantro, and generously salted it. It took about 15min on full steam to cook this pound and half fish. The flesh was tender and flavorful. The best part was the head of course. =)

You can call it fresh fish at its simplest.

My Milk Toof - a new found favorite blog

My Milk Toof blog from Inhae Lee

Serious Eats did a post recently on "My Milk Toof", a blog about the adventures of two milk teef (baby teeth), Ickle and Lardee. They are the cutest ever.

The creator of the blog is a Korean American lady, who's also the author of a book of the same title. She and her blog has gathered a big and international following. There was a recent contest titled "Your Milk Toof" that called for all toof-related stories from all over the world to win a copy of her newly published book.

I'm addicted to her blog and the amazing creativity shown through the stories of the Ickle and Lardee. Hope you will check it out too. I know you will love it.

Oregon strawberries

Ever since we arrived, we've been expecting the strawberry season, which typically starts early June. Our friends, Louisa and John, have told us wonderful stories about Oregon strawberries and its superiority to any other variety in the country. This spring has been a cold one, so the strawberries came in a little late.

I also discovered that Nike campus has a farmer's market in the summer season. I need to find out the exact frequency of occurrence so I can better prepare for it next time. Today is summer solstice and turned out to be a beautiful day to kick off the summer. Everyone was eating outside.

I saw the strawberry stall and checked out their samples and immediately determined that these are in fact the same strawberries John and Louisa have told us about. They are on the smaller side with more tender flesh than typical commercial strawberries from California. The berries are also red throughout. I got a couple pints.

After dinner, we stood by the sink and ate the entire pint of it. No wonder Haagen-Dazs would buy an entire valley of Oregon strawberries just for their strawberry ice cream. The unfortunate thing is the strawberry season is only a few weeks. So we have to eat a ton of it now, or can them for later consumption. I'm already looking at strawberry jam recipes...

DJK Korean BBQ

The best Korean and Japanese restaurants can be found just west of Portland in Beaverton, a Portland close suburb, also known as Nike/Intel town where most Nike and Intel employees live. Nike's campus is also in Beaverton.

Craving Korean BBQ, we planed a visit to DJK Korean BBQ in a stretch of small scale malls along Canyon street. The restaurant keeps the temperature on the cool side to compensate for the heat from all the BBQ burners. Each of the BBQ tables has an industrial hood mounted above to suck up steam and smoke.

There were three of us. We selected three things for the grill, prawns, Bolgogi (marinated beef) and thinly sliced beef tongue. To round up all the protein, we also got a Korean seafood pancake on the side. Like all Korean affairs, we would start the meal with complimentary small dishes of kimchi.

thinly sliced beef tongue

There was also lettuce leaves for wrapping up BBQ'ed meats, along with sauces for seasoning. The beef tongue was very good, tasted like really lean meat. Bolgogi was exceptionally tender and flavorful. The prawns are excellent as long as you don't over grill it. If we had stopped there, we would've all been pretty full. But don't forget we also ordered a Korean pancake. It's roughly 15" in diameter, and cut to 8 wedges. It's a flour batter mixed in with veggies and lots of seafood goodies like octopus and shrimps. So very yummy.

Korean pancake with golden crispy crust and tender inside

We talked out of DJK with full bellies and smelly hair and clothes.

Portlandia in my building

On our way out to take a walk after dinner Friday night, I saw a guy coming into our apartment building lobby. I did a double take and realized that it was Fred Armisen from "Portlandia". He's also known as the guy who plays Barack Obama on SNL.

photo credit: Wonkette

Of course, I couldn't think of his name. So all I said was "hey... you live in the building?" He actually said hey back, and added "yeah, I live here... for now." He then proceeded to press the elevator button multiple times.

I had never run into any celebrity on the street before, not to mention in my own apartment building. I was quite happy with that, and turned to Jose and said "could you believe that?" He looked at me and said "who was that?"