I bought Matt a dual present for Valentine's Day because it was actually tickets for a trip to Portland for our anniversary. Heather has been offering to watch the kids for a long weekend for months (years?) now and I finally decided to take her up on it for our 13th (!) anniversary this year.
Of course, I had to take a ton of selfies to send back to the boys! We did a lot of walking around because it was a long weekend and the only activity I booked was on the last day for only a few hours. So we went exploring!
Of course, since we were in Portland, I had to make a stop at the donut shop I narrowly missed the last time I was in Portland years ago. Everyone had talked up these donuts and by the time I dragged my friends there, they were out of all of the donuts! I mean, it was 2am, but still - heartbreaking!
Oh Voodoo Doughnuts, I have been imagining you for years! We almost didn't get them this trip because every time we walked by the long was ridiculously long. Luckily, I picked our hotel in close proximity to their store, so we managed to beat the rush on Sunday morning!
The other thing we were dangerously close to was a completely lucky find. We picked a spot to eat dinner based on the menu for the Portland Restaurant week. (We used to do these in Houston, a 3 course meal for cheap and the proceeds go to charity.) We randomly saw them making their signature beverage for someone else and had to order one. This is a Spanish Coffee at Huber's, my friends, and it was amazing! We may have come back for brunch just to get another one!
But why did we go to Portland? Matt has really gotten into hunting since we moved to Alaska and apart from the deer on his first trip, they have been doing their own butchering. And after the 3-day bison butchering event, we all decided maybe we could use some lessons. The soonest butchering class I could find was in Portland and technically for pig. But I figured some of the lessons learned would be useful no matter the exact animal.
The Portland Meat Collective teaches the classes and I thought it was great! The space they held the class was pretty awesome and we all got a ton of pork to take home. Look at that chunk of leaf fat on the cutting board on the right. That will make some fantastic pie crusts soon!
Matt really seemed to enjoy the class too! I never managed to drag him to a cooking class, but a butchering class? No problem! Also, we were the only couple... Apparently not everyone thinks of it as an anniversary activity!
We had a long trip home for our pork, so I decided to ship coolers and ice packs to the hotel before we got there. We ended up fitting most of it into our cooler and it all made it home safely. There was a random assortment of cuts since the class had 12 people and 3 pig "halves", but I'm a little confused on what to do with this particular one. All the recipes I can find call for more than one tail. Guess we'll have to butcher a few more pigs...! ;)