California Grubbin'

food: 5/5 experience: 3/5 overall: 4/5 After having three Mexican meals in a row I thought it might be time for something a bit healthier. Especially given we were gonna have pizza later that night. Enter Garden Bar, with a location right across the street from Powell's Books . Portland has nine Garden Bar locations across the city, including two in outlying cities, where you can get your salad on. It's like a Pluto's or Jack's in California where you make your own salad; only they just have salad and nothing else. So I got... a salad. Mine has mixed greens, almonds, beets, herbs, cherry tomatoes, and this thing they have called fish noodles made from Alaskan pollock. They taste like fishy noodles. Plus lemon juice, Greek yogurt dressing and plenty of fresh pepper . Pretty healthy but not pretty filling. I felt like I was hungrier after I ate it than I was before. Maybe because I had only had one-third of a (rather large) quesadilla earlier. It was so good

Yes, I know, Paris again?  Come on though. It's Paris. I know  you wanna read about it. At least look at some pretty pictures? (Obligatory link to previous California Livin' posts.) We went to quite the number of gardens and parks during our stay in Paris, but this one was definitely one of a kind. Unlike most of the Parisian parks and gardens, this one isn't as manicured. Aside from the garden portion of it, it's kind of like a slice of wilderness. There's old buildings everywhere, lots of wild grass, dirt and gravel trails. I don't know, it's just... different. The purpose of the park is that it hosts a huge variety of plants, mostly labeled, many familiar but with a good amount of "unique" ones as well. There's some sort of zoo in the back, which we sort of glossed over. Admission to the zoo is something like ten Euros. Wasn't interested in the zoo at the time, so couldn't tell you about that. The park is fre

food: 4.5/5 experience: 4/5 overall: 4.5/5 Laughing Planet Cafe is a Portland-based chain restaurant with an emphasis on vegan so we're already on rough waters there. They have locations in Oregon, Canada, Washington, and Reno. I visited their Reno location first. This place falls under the so-healthy-it's-nasty category. I'm sorry but no. It reminds me of that one time Selena Gomez was trying to get Justin Bieber to eat "healthy" vegan food (oxymoron) at this one restaurant and he spit his food out. Not that I did that because I can't afford to be wasting money but yeah. I got the paleo bowl because it seemed like the most filling low-carb item on the menu of vegetables. It was pretty mediocre. I mean there's just not enough healthy ingredients in there that you can make a good-tasting meal out of, or spices, or something. Something was just "missing". Plus health food is not cheap. So it cost more than a few bucks to feel moderatel

food: 4/5 experience: 3/5 overall: 3.5/5 After polishing off a whole burrito from Laughing Planet , I was still hungry and needed a late night snack. Hey, give your girl a break, I hadn't eaten anything until 6pm that night and I had to make up for lost time. Since we were located in Southeast Portland, far away from any sort of restaurant scene, I had to make do. I found one taco truck nearby named La Catrina that was open late, and so it was. Enter huge-ass fish burrito. It's a lot bigger than it looks in the picture. One instance where the camera definitely doesn't add ten pounds. One of the best burritos I've had for sure, mostly due to its sheer size. It had crusted fish (I think it was cornmeal...awesome (not)), Mexican rice, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, and tomato, all wrapped in a tortilla that was probably one foot or more in diameter. So yes, it was big. And no, I should not have finished all of it, because yes, I put on one whole pound the next da

food: 5/5 experience: n/a food truck overall: 5/5 Food trucks are difficult to review. First, they're hard to come by, so the person reading the review may never get to employ said recommendations. Second, well... see point one. They travel all over the place and sometimes they don't tell you where they're going. I haven't seen Yaad Jerk active on social media since last year so who knows what they're up to now. If you do ever see this Jamaican truck in your vicinity (check the food truck festivals) I implore you to give it a shot. Since it's a food truck their menu is rather small. They have three specialties listed on their site: Jamaican jerk chicken, coconut curry chicken, and stewed oxtails (beef). I got the two-chicken combo (coconut and jerk). The curry is sweet, creamy and not spicy; and the jerk seasoning isn't too spicy either; but both are just wonderful. The serving size is decent, plus they give you a lot of rice. They didn't ha

Insert DJ Khaled voice: "Another one!" Okay never mind, I don't want that fool stuck in my head. Here are all the previous ones in this ongoing series that is California Livin'. I couldn't visit Atlanta without trying some of the nightlife. I'm not a big nightlife person myself. I don't dance unless I'm drunk, and I don't drink unless I'm in a crazy mood already. Neither of those happened on this particular occasion. My one Atlantan friend is an introvert so he too likes his space. He's the sit-at-the-bar-alone-and-brood type. No ribbing, he's said this himself. Which is cool with me because I have a bit of an antisocial streak. Anyway, we ended up at Joystick because there's actual fun stuff to do there besides "socialize" and "get wasted" and "do lines off the toilet seat." So there's that. Cool cool. Arcade games and board games and other stuff. They have trivia as well. About ten

Everyone knows that come autumn, allll the pumpkin spice goodies roll in. They sweep the grocery store shelves, they line the offers in your spam folder, and if you're a foodie like me, a lot of them make their way into your mouth. Here's a list of everything pumpkin I could get my hands on. First and foremost... Battle of the Pumpkin Spice Lattes! Starbucks: 5/5; 2.5/5 (not pictured); 5/5 The basic bitch of fall specialty products, the Starbucks pumpkin spice latte. This started it all. And I have to say... it's actually really good. They're in the lead for good reason. There isn't an overpowering sweetness and it's got just a hint of spice, but you can still taste the signature Starbucks flavor. Now available in a bottle. My local 'bucks had a special pumpkin chai latte on the menu with coconut. I guess this was a bad choice. It tastes mostly like... coconut. There's a hint of chai and pumpkin flavor but it's mostly coconut. So without