Recipes and Meals | I Will Run For Chocolate

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with an old blogging friend and a new one.

I’m sure everyone knows Jasmine both from our previous meetups and from the fact she is just an awesome blogger. The other lovely lady on the far left is Doniree, another Portland-area blogger.

We all ~~dragged~~ fed our boys and selves at Slappy Cakes in Portland, a very cool, new concept-type restaurant. Basically, each table comes with a built in griddle where you make your own pancakes! You can order different pancakes bases, extras and toppings and complete a completely customizable meal.

Steve and I opted for a peanut butter base with bananas and whipped cream. As Jasmine said, “Oh Camille, you would order that.” 🙂

So many options!

I love my sweet boyfriend who orders chocolate milk 🙂

But sometimes it’s hard to make choices…
And it’s hard to remember to order when us girls are all gabbing away.
Eventually we get down to business, though.

It’s hard not to get shown up when you have Doniree: Expert Pancake Maker in your midst!

We had a lovely morning and brunch!

I have another post in the works about Steve and my continuing adventures in beautiful Portland!

Stay tuned!

I partied like a college student last night. And by that, I mean that I had two glasses of wine with dinner and was so drunk that I passed out at 7:15pm in the car on the way home. If you are waiting for the “just kidding”, keep waiting, because it isn’t happening!

After our cheesey adventures, Steve and I drove the rest of the way to Portland. It was only about an hour, but it featured a full-length tour of ~~beautiful~~ disgusting Salem. Oh Salem, you never fail to make me glad that I live over an hour from you.

We arrived in Portland waaay early for our dinner date, so we chatted in the car for a bit before wandering around the area surrounding the restaurant. We were told by the man working the counter in the world’s trendiest comic shop that we were in the Mississippi/North Portland area. All I know is that I need about 15 more piercings and way more vintage clothes before I am hip enough to live there. Here are the important things that this neighborhood taught me:

Garage doors make a trendy replacement for walls.
“Salt tastings” are a real thing. I did it. It was salty.
There is such thing as a trendy comic book store.
Products featuring mustaches used in unique ways are really hip. We saw a shirt featuring a bicycle wearing a mustache. Obvs.
I am not very cool.

And on that note, the rain started pouring and I realized that I made the most amateur Oregon mistake ever: no raincoat. Duh. So we went and sat in the restaurant to wait for Jasmine and Ryan (for some reason, WordPress won’t let me link to her blog. Click on it manually here: http://www.eatmovewrite.com).

Steve was pretty hyped over the fact that they had the Bulls vs. Hawks game on. Even when our dinner dates got caught in traffic and were a few minutes late, Steve was too pumped on the game to really notice. Okay, he noticed, but he was still pumped.

I enjoyed a glass of bubbly and delicious wine while Steve drank like a real human being and ordered a rum and coke. Why in the world can’t I be a good 21-year-old and order real alcohol?

Anyway, when Jasmine and Ryan arrived, we set straight to work on ordering dinner. Our restaurant, Casa Naranja is mostly a tapas bar, so ordered a few small things and did some sharing. Steve and I ordered the Yam fries with lemon cayenne aioli, Toasted Grand Central rustic baguette served with sherry vinegar and E.V.O.O, and Grilled rosemary- skewered red potatoes with truffle aioli.

Everything was amazing. The potatoes in particular were out of this world!

Jasmine ordered the Mesclun tossed in balsamic vinaigrette, topped with gorgonzola, apple & candied walnuts , and the Tempura chevre and date balls with honey and fresh sage.

Ryan ordered the Painted Hills half lb. beef casa burger with escabeche and chevre. Somehow the photo of his meal got lost between my memory card and my blog post. Blurgh.

Everything was super delicious and we ended up chatting over a second glass of wine for a while before we took off.

Please forgive my weird squinty eye. I know, it’s pretty “Top Model” of me.

It was so nice to see Jasmine and Ryan again and for Steve to finally meet them. We actually have a weird sort of history with them. You see, Jasmine and Ryan are from Indiana and went to Indiana University at the same time that Steve, who is also from Indiana, went to IU. Of course, they never knew each other, but still weird. And it gets weirder… While Steve and I were living in San Diego, they lived literally a mile away from us, and we never met. Jasmine and I started talking about a week before we moved, and sure enough, 6 or so months later, they were moving to Oregon too! How crazy is that!? We think it’s pretty weird…

Anyway, after a bit of post-dinner hang out, Steve and I hit the road back to Corvallis. Of course, like any good lightweight, I passed out drunk after 2 drinks and 2 minutes in the car. Classy. I slept the entire way home and woke up long enough to get inside and pass out again.

Then I had a dream that I had a baby with Russell Brand. We named him Jack Sparrow and he had quite a head of hair on him. Jack Sparrow kept transforming in to a very fluffy cat and then back to a baby.

I should probably not drink anymore…