Birthday Weekend

What an awesome b.day weekend! Here's a summary:

• Thursday: Picked Phil up from Seattle and had dinner. Drove back to Portland and spent the night at Barry and Carol's new house in Laurelhurst. It's beautiful!
• Friday: Had lunch with mom and grandma at Milo's City Cafe on Broadway. I had crab cakes and eggs with Bearnaise sauce. Phil ordered eggs benedict with smoked salmon (yum!) and mom and grandma shared a cobb salad about the size of the table. We then had an impromptu birthday celebration next to mom's car on the sidewalk, where I opened my presents :)
• Friday night: Had beers with Desiree and Ian at Bridgeport pub and shared a plate of warm olives. When the folks next to us left for the evening with over half of their plate of warm olives left, we ate that too. Afterwards, Phil and I just made our reservation at 23Hoyt. We started with a plate of gnocchi and chanterelles, then had lamb kabobs with plum sauce, and halibut with grilled peppers for the main entrees. We enjoyed all of this with a yummy bottle of wine, which was hard to choose with about 100 on the list! Although I don't like cake, we went to Papa Haydens after dinner and Phil had an incredible piece of chocolate cake while I sipped on a raspberry desert wine.

• Saturday: Phil and I transferred wine at Nuthatch with John Bacon then went hiking around Mary's Peak, hoping to find some chanterelles.

• Sunday: We awoke at 6 a.m. since I was unaware of the time change and set the alarm (oops) and drove over to Pacific City. We had a beautiful morning at the coast with family and said goodbye to Granddad. It was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny and very calm at the tidepools. Afterwards, Phil and I again tried to find mushrooms, but were not successful until we pulled over on the side of the highway after I squealed about some giant looking fungus that was too crazy looking to not stop. Phil quickly noted that the ones I saw were pretty but not edible, and we went about 10 yards off the road before finding chantarelles! Yeaaaahhh! Carol cooked an awesome dinner and we sauteed the mushrooms to go with it. After dinner we went to see American Gangster, which will obviously be movie of the year. Wow.

What a busy weekend! It was great to see so many people and eat such amazing food. The perfect birthday after getting over pneumonia.