Food Pods, a Late Husband and Bird Poop

First full day in Portland and Russ had to work for a few hours so I took the free streetcar around the city to get my bearings and see if there was anything interesting for me to visit.  I really don’t like to shop because I basically have too much stuff already so I mostly look at the people an make up stories in my head about where they are from, if they like their spouse and what they had for breakfast.  Please tell me you do that too.

Before I left in the morning I asked Russ what his plan was for our visit to Portland.  He said we came here because of the food scene.  I must have made a face at him that must have said, “What are you kidding me?”  Then I realized he had been working on this trip for 5 months, long before I hatched the weight loss plan.

It is a good thing that I am fully committed to this program before I came to Portland because this place is all about food.  Well, food and tattoos.  I feel like there might be some kind of tax on people who don’t have tattoos here since they are so prevalent.  When I am making up stories about people I see riding on the streetcar if they don’t have a tattoo and they are under 40 I think they must be from Kansas City or Hartford and they had pancakes for breakfast.

Portland is the center of the street food/food truck/food cart universe.  This was something Russ wanted to experience so I researched where we might meet to get lunch when he was finished working.  First, in Portland they have lots of places where many food stands are clustered together in a permanent flock of calorie-laden temptations.  They call these grouping Food Pods.

There is one Food Pod I witnessed at 10^th and Alder streets that had at least 40 vendors.  As I passed by I looked at the menus, of Thai, Mexican, Salvadoran, pizza, burgers and the most tempting, the grilled cheese bus serving a grilled cheesus (rhymes with Jesus).

We planned to meet at the Food Pod by the University of Portland.  It was an 18-vendor pod, which I thought was going to be plenty of choices.  I got there right at the pre-planned time, which was an hour before Russ, which I should have known.  So I had plenty of time to study every menu and look at all the food pictures.  18 trucks and there was not one thing I could find that would not throw me under the proverbial diet bus.  That was until I saw a doctor walk by me with an open brown box full of salad.

I was too busy imagining where he was from and what is surely blond wife looked like to ask him where he got that salad.  I studied the trucks with no luck in finding anyone holding a brown box.  I waited and waited for Russ, feeling myself being drawn to the Bahn Mi sandwiches.  As I was about to succumb to that Vietnamese delight I have been craving, a bird pooped on me.  It had to be a wake up sign from god.  That poop led me to the closest stand, The Portland Soup Company, to find a napkin.  This was the only stand that was turned sideways so the menu was hidden from view.  Ta-Da, the salad came from the soup company.  It was not just any salad either.  It was an arugula, apple, caramelized onion and Brie salad.   All the things I love the most, salvation.

If Russ had been on time or the bird had not pooped on me I certainly would not have found that salad.  So even while I am daydreaming up stories God is looking out for me.  I just have to pay attention to the signals.