What’s Going on @ Sillydog Media

Portland has always been very pancake friendly.  Take the Hotcake House, for instance.  This is serious business that we are not content to leave up to a national chain, even one with such a fancy name as the International House of Pancakes.

Enter the waffle.  Crepes are soooo 2005.  Hard times call for more flour and less egg.  Hard times call for plenty of syrup.  But, you might be surprised at the number of stuffed and savory waffles that are making an appearance.

One of the more curious and very Portlandesque (if that’s a word — it should be) Jáce Gáce, over on Belmont, combines booze, coffee, waffles and art.  I just reviewed them for wCities and am a big fan of the atmosphere of this place.  Sure, you can get a cheaper waffle elsewhere.  And yes, mine are better, but I can’t feed all of you!  Moreover, my house isn’t nearly as spiffy, and we don’t have nearly the beer and wine selection.

Having been forced into health-nut behaviour, I usually go for some juice or tea and a bit of the fruit covered sweet action.  The grilled cheeze is but a dream, but you’d better really like your cheese to properly enjoy one.

Add to this the Waffle Window on Hawthrone and the Waffle Cart over in Northwest, and Portland, already a breakfast Mecca, is Waffle Ascendant.

Well, the very best is the kind I make at home on top of the oven, overnight. It’s just right because I take it off the stove when I want to, and better yet, no waste.However, sometimes you want to have some for dessert. I’m not the sort of yuppie that owns a gellato machine (though I’d love a kickable ice-cream freezer), but I do like the taste of real yoghurt. I especially love cinnmon ice cream, and apparently the rest of the world isn’t hip, because it’s impossible to get unless you go to one of those annoying mall joints.

Well, enter Bleuet over in Northwest. I just reviewed them for wCities. They make their own tangy, not-too-sweet, non-fat, frozen yoghurt. It comes in plain, honey (Matt’s fave, being a sugarfiend) and my fave, cinnamon. I am in heaven. It’s all organic and this is one of the “greenest” businesses you’ll find. Heck, even the spoons are compostable.
Take the streetcar into NW, since parking is useless here, and get your yoghurt on. It’s a bit spendy, but cheaper than going to Cold Stone Creamery, and you’ll feel much better about yourself when you’re done.

One of my favourite photos ever has been used in another publicaiton, this time, a blog called Coroflot’s Creative Seeds on networking. In short, the point of the article is that if you make a great first impression, you can kill it later by not keeping up with your contacts.

It is interesting to note that I took this picture and made these comments about 18 months before the first widely circulated reports of colony collapse disorder (CCD) having appeared in North America. Well, I hate to be a fortune teller, but this disaster has been a long time coming. (Read on …)

After a bit of a health-related hiatus, I’ve put several reviews up on wCities. I’ll try to catch up here.

For starters, I finally made it down to the Brooklyn Park Pub a few months ago, to watch a Vikings game. I cannot tell you what a friendly neighbourhood place this was. I spent the whole game talking to a fellow Vikings fan and had a great time. They had the New Deal Hot Monkey Vodka behind the bar and, get this: Whiskey Around the World Club. The neighbours down the street are well on their way to getting $1 off all their whiskies for LIFE. Moreover, the bartenders were soooo friendly, I asked them if I could just have a plate of mushrooms, and they gave ‘em to me for free. Heck, she even bummed me a smoke, not knowing me from Eve. Please, if you like a neighbourhood sports joint now and then or whiskey, give these folks your money.

(Read on …)

An interesting article came to my attention that sparked a bit of a debate over on the Pirates’ list. I thought you might be interested in what I came up with. This is the sort of story that could turn into a book. Are you listening LA Times SF Gate? Or is this doomed to be on indymedia forever?l

(Read on …)

It’s now officially a big issue. A reporter for Marketplace, the most excellent show (with their very own sustainability desk) on NPR that explains business news as it pertains to real people (as it most sincerely does) contacted me about a story: how has the drastic increase in the price of food affected people’s actions and attitudes towards urban agriculture?

Oh, is there a topic nearer or dearer to my heart? You know there isn’t! (Read on …)

So, in trade for building a website, I got a chance to setup a studio session with lighting tech help. That’s what her husband, Randy, does (in addition to doing cool things like filming the Dali Lama in Washington, DC.) for a living.

Matt and I had our session last Spring. I remember it was nice and warm, sunny and unseasonably warm. Matt had mimosas to calm his nerves before going to his session. I’m afraid he was still nervous, or at least self-conscious, and I didn’t do a very good job of directing him into “the zone.” See, that’s why a girl needs to practice.

I made a little executable slide-show of the raw photos from the session. (Read on …)

Well, pretty much finished — there are a few touches I could make, but I started building this website early this summer in my “spare” time and just now, finally got enough black tea in me to just stay up all night and get it done.

It’s for my friend and “employer” Kristin Zabawa, a gifted photographer who I occasionally assist with headshot photography.  It’s a lot of fun and educational for me.  Also, she’s a great gal.  I recommend her to any of my actor acquainances.

I think it looks pretty spiffy, it is is my first foray into flashy-ness.  So, the moral of the story is that I can make a functional website, but it takes a little while.

And, for the most part, you can eat them. However, just be wary of who gives you advice on where to go. When Matt’s parent’s (whose taste is dubious to begin with) recommended Eloy’s, I was surprised that it was any good at all. And by any good, I mean sort of, in that I’d not spend my own money there. However, the bout of food poisoning I had the next day was enough to keep me from ever going back there again.

Now, you can’t let a restaurant being in a strip mall disuade you, since just about everything in this wretched town is in a strip mall. Picoso, for instance, is in one and the food here was everything that Eloy’s wasn’t, namely fresh and made by real people who cared. I could eat here every day for the rest of my life and be pretty o.k. with it. Then again, I’m a little mental about good Mexican. I talked to the owner, and we agreed that homemade everything was just the only way to fly.

Sadly, the one place I was most impressed with had already been reviewed, so you’ll just have to take my advice and get yo’ self down to Le Crepe Michel. Oh yes! French food in Alba-turkey. Even the soup made me weak in the knees, but it might have been the wine selection, too. Who knows, but it’s a shame you have to drive about 10 miles to get to anything worth a damn in that town. Old Town is otherwise an awful tourist trap next door to the National Atomic Museum (which may be horrifyingly cool - I don’t know - we had to get back for some unknown reason).

A friend of the family took us all out to Thai food in the Nob Hill Neighbourhood upon Matt’s recommendation. Though a somewhat dismal neighbourhood, the interior of Orchid Thai sure looked the part. Smelled good, too. The pad thai was not the best I ever had, but everyone else’s dish turned out good. They key here is to ask for thai hot food, because it was otherwise a bit on the subtle side, unless that’s what you’re looking for. The coconut lemongrass soup was very good. (Read on …)

Or, at least that’s what I like to tell people. Honestly, I don’t seem to be able to hold enough liquor to actually get that drunk, so I tend to be more of a sipper. There are plenty of opportunities to get loaded in St. Paul, too, so you can think of it as a euphamism.

However, if I really did get around to tying one on, I might feel the need to repent on a Sunday morning. You can hardly do so in a nicer church than the Cathedral of St. Paul, right next to my very first apartment in the city over on Marshall Ave.

I mention this because I’ve had a photo of said cathedral included on the Minneapolis Schmap! applicaiton. It’s funny to me that anyone would consider those two cities to be one and the same, though I suppose the good citizens of Ft. Worth feel the same way.

Indeed, the east and west sides of Portland are becoming a bit like different cities. Perhaps they will be someday. Until such time, take care during your bridge crossing and just know that the Eastside Rules!