Foo Foo Drinks Rock!

John and I joined some new friends of ours for a drink down at the Bend Distillery Martini Bar the other night. It was great fun.

I'm a huge supporter of local food and products, I think it's what makes Bend such an up and coming "right on" town. By "right on" I mean a place where all the cool kids have lived or plan to someday and where all the people with money like to buy their second homes. I grew up in Santa Cruz, it's a "right on" town, so much so that John and I could never afford to buy a house there now. When ever I tell anyone I grew up in Santa Cruz they usually respond with, "right on, that's a pretty cool place." That's where the "right on" adjective came from. Bend is now producing a similar response from folks.

Bend is lucky to have a local distillery that makes some pretty tasty liquor. Their tasting room and martini bar downtown is usually pretty crowded but on the early Tuesday evening that we were there it had more the feel of a mellow, mood-lit coffee house than a bar. There were a couple sofas, lots of candles and some awesome local artwork on the walls. Of course it still had the nasty, old booze smell of a bar when we walked in but once we saw the drink menu we knew we were in for a treat. They had a bunch of traditional martinis but they also had a ton of foo foo martinis dressed up with fruit juice, cream, espresso and garnishes.

I ordered the Crater Colada. It was Crater Lake Vodka, coconut cream, pineapple juice and orange juice served in a martini glass rimmed with toasted coconut. Delicious. Other drinks ordered were a Dreamsicle, a Shanghai Citrus (something or other), and a Lime Ricky (virgin drink for the driver). All the drinks were fabulous. The Dreamsicle was mango infused vodka, mango puree and cream, again served in a martini glass. The freshness of the mango was perfect with the richness of the cream and a beautiful change from the traditional orange creamsicle.

Drinks were all between $6 and $8. Pretty normal pricing for foo foo drinks I suppose, but well worth it. The bartendress was very informative and attentive, friendly too. We'll be back there as soon as our bank account recovers...

You can check out the Bend booze and get some cool recipes at bendistillery.com

Pho, 'nuff said

When John and I lived in Tahoe our favorite place to dine out was a cozy little Asian restaurant named Pho 777.

It was in Reno, hence the "777" (jackpot!) name. Yeah, I thought it was their address for a while, but really, it's clever. We found Pho 777 on recommendation from a friend who had also traveled in Asia and who shared our love of cheap eats. Not only was the food there delicious, but it was also dang cheap. We instantly fell in love with the little place and dined there on every trip to Reno.

John and I are "good faith vegetarians." So we eat veggies most of the time but we make exceptions for home-raised animals, wild game, meat while traveling and Pho. At Pho 777 we ordered our dishes with veggies and tofu only, even though the same waiter told us nicely each time that the soup is made with chicken broth. We smiled and said, "yes, still, tofu only please."

Pho is a nest of rice noodles and veggies floating in a hot sumptuous clear broth. An added and required bonus is the little plate of fresh bean sprouts, fresh Thai basil, sliced fresh green jalpenos and lime wedges. This plate is not a side salad, you add these acoutrements to your bowl of Pho. It is absolutely my favorite soup in the world. I ritualistically slurp and sip it down until my belly is uncomfortably full. But it's worth it. It hits those happy buttons deep down inside.

Pho is amazing. It satisfies the soul of hunger like a hearty stew and yet is as fresh as a spring salad of peat shoots. It feels so healthy to eat that I find myself craving it after a good yoga session. It is so warming that I want to inhale it's beautiful aromas on a chilly central Oregon winter's evening. You get the idea, it's everything you want and need from one bowl of soup.

On our last trip to Reno we found our dear dear Pho 777 boarded up and closed. It had shared the building that burned down and killed 12 people in that Reno hotel fire. We were saddened by the horrible deaths but we had to admit that we were even more sad to find our beloved Asian restaurant gone.

When we returned home to Bend we vowed to quench our desire for Pho by making it ourselves. It turned out to be very possible to replicate Pho with a couple of key ingredients: chicken broth and a little special spice bag from an Asian market. The spice bag contains star anise, fennel, coriander, cinnamon, sugar and cloves. So it adds a little spicy sweetness to the broth that is hard to identify. It makes the soup Pho.

The chicken broth we got from work when we cooked a few free-range chickens in a big pot of boiling water. The bakery used the chickens for their chicken salad and we brought the broth home and cooked it down for a couple hours with onions, carrots, celery and the spice bags. Our windows were steamed and out house smelled great, AND we now had our Pho soup base. Once we added salt, honey and a dash of soy sauce it was ready.

Next we steamed our veggies and tofu and boiled our rice noodles separately from the broth. We arranged our noodles and veggies in our bowls and ladled the soup over it, floating the tender morsels and finding so much joy in the little rising bubbles of tasty oil. We sprinkled some green onions, bean sprouts and fresh basil on top and squirted our lime wedges over our steaming bowls. It was perfect. John and I both grinned and looked like we had discovered gold. We had our Pho once more.

At the Starting Line

Ok, here it is, starting now I am officially beginning my quest to get paid to do what I love: eat and travel.

I have always wanted to be a food writer. I really think that would be the perfect career. My first attempt to write a recipe consisted of writing down for my mom the directions for making what I called Polar Bear Cereal.

Polar Bear Cereal
makes one serving
1 cup crushed ice
1 cup fruit juice

Add fruit juice to ice and eat with a spoon.

I thought it was a great idea. I figured I could enter it in one of those contests in the Pillsbury Magazines at the checkout stand. I never did and the thought of what I could have won had I entered it float in and out of my daydreams to this day. But I suppose child hood fame and fortune could have also corrupted me and I think it's better this way. Now that I have matured as a person, writer and eater I can really do something great with my dreams.

I have no career. When people ask me what I do, I like to say, "I travel, I have fun, and I fit work in when I can." Well, I like to think that and I only now have started training myself to say it. I like to think it turns their little idea of life upside-down. Of course I have lots of goals in life to actually get me to the point when I never have to work, when I can just retire at a young age.

The first of those goals would be to pay off the house that my husband and I just bought this Spring 2004. That was a huge step to get ourselves into that much debt again after we had just finished paying off his student loans.

Shortly after buying the house we took a 6 month vacation to hike the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. We saved all our money the winter before to take the trip and also make sure the mortgage was getting paid. I think it took that trip for us to realize how we really want to live our lives. While out there we decided that we really need to retire. When we returned home we would buckle down and pay off the house in 5 years. And when that is done we will be more free to travel. Heck, we could even move to Thailand and live off our rental income. So that is our goal and we're sticking to it, however many doubting looks and sugar-coated supportive smiles we receive from our family and friends.

So for the next five years I'm gonna be working my butt off and pinching those pennies while daydreaming of hiking the PCT, living in Thailand and writing about food. I'll even daydream about travel writing as I'm sure this blog will have lots of posts on our travels as we fill our bellies with Ramen (I still can't believe they can sell the noodles for $.10 a packet).

So as a stepping stone to eventually get paid to eat and write about amazing food and travel I will be posting to my blog. It has the fitting title: Will Travel For Food. Maybe I should have called it Will Write For Food, actually now that I think about it I should have named it Will Write For Free. These are all fitting titles. This blog will have it all: travel, food, writing and of course my trials to get free travel and food in an effort to pay off the house!