meditation via snacking. - eat!drink!snack!

for the final part of my series on portland, oregon & portland-area snackage, i'm going to mix it up a bit & present you with TWENTY miscellaneous facts about the city. if they ever come out with a "portland edition" of trivial pursuit or you end up on some weird, very-specific portland-themed game show, you'll totally kick ass.

back in the 1930's, there was this guy named henry f. phillips. one day, he got fed up with the available fasteners of the day & was all "screw this. imma gonna make something better." next thing you know, he'd invented the phillips-head screw. dude was totally from portland.
there's apparently a professional paintball league & the city of portland has a team in it called the "naughty dogs." you'd think they'd have muttley as their mascot, but from what i can tell, they don't even have one...lame.
portland's oregon zoo is home to the world's most successful elephant breeding program & no matter how nicely you ask, they won't let you watch the program in action.
in late october, the zoo kicks off their halloween festivities with the "annual squishing of the squash," an event where they bring out a ridiculously huge pumpkin & let the elephants stomp it good. they'll let you watch that.
if you're into things that suck, you're in luck. portland's home to stark's vacuum museum, where there are 300 vacuums on display.
in NE portland, there's a place called the candy basket & they have a 21-foot chocolate waterfall, which means that if you're up for it, you can totally pull some augustus gloop type shizz.
there's a series of tunnels known as the "portland underground" that run under the old town/chinatown section of town. legend has it that they were used to kidnap or "shanghai" laborers out of the city. if you're interested, you can take tours of the tunnel...just watch out for C.H.U.D.s.
as of mid-2008, population-wise, portland's the 29th largest city in the u.s., just behind las vegas & just ahead of louisville. for comparison, it's one-sixteenth the size of nyc & one-third the size of philly. coincidentally, it's one-sixteenth as stressful to live in as nyc & one-third as stressful as philly.
the first mayor of portland was this dude named hugh o'bryant. he won by only four votes & did such a poor job that he only lasted one year. still, he has a city square named after him & because of the horde of drug users & homeless folk who hung out there in the 80's, it became known as "paranoid park."
do you enjoy giving money away in exchange for the opportunity to look at boobs you'll never be able to touch? if so, portland's definitely the city for you, since they have more strip clubs per capita than vegas.
downtown there's a huge-ass sculpture of a woman called "portlandia," which is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the u.s., behind only the statue of liberty. it may be smaller, but it's much cooler because the woman's holding a trident, perfect for stabbing & poking. all lady liberty has is that stupid torch of enlightenment.
dick fosbury, the inventor of the "fosbury flop," the high jump maneuver where you run at the high jump bar & leap backwards over it, was born in portland. rumor has it that his friends wouldn't let him anywhere near the waterbed.
the cannabis cafe, the first marijuana cafe in the country, opened in portland last year at 4:20 on november 13th (a friday). trippy! unfortunately, there's a $60 cover (a year-long NORML membership, a monthly fee & a per-entry fee) to get in, an amount that's probably better invested in a big bag of weed.
for those who enjoy a good breaststroke or doggie paddle every now & again, there are thirteen public ~~open air bathrooms~~ pools in the city.
the city's made up of seven "coalitions," which are divided up into ninety-five neighborhoods. as far as hoods go, they've got a hollywood, a brooklyn & some place called "sullivan's gulch," which is the NE part of the city & is just north of a gulch formed during the last ice age. it was also home to a "hooverville" back during the great depression.
one of portland's nicknames is "stumptown," a name that it got because when they cleared a bunch of trees to make the city, they left lots of stumps behind. lazy stump-leavers.
the tallest building in the city is the 546-foot tall wells fargo center. a few years back, there was a proposal for a 650-foot tall tower on the river dubbed the "SMART tower," a monstrosity of a structure that would have been covered in wind turbines, but luckily, somebody came to their senses.
one of the most prominent bumper stickers in portland reads "keep portland weird," a slogan that promotes the offbeat nature of the city & one that they sort of stole from austin, tx.
in the NW district, there's the "alphabet historic district," an area where the street names go in alphabetical order, starting at W burnside st & ending twenty-four blocks later at NW york st. matt groening's from portland & these street names provided inspiration for a few simpsons character names--ned flanders, kearney, reverend lovejoy & mayor quimby.
portland was named the "most vegetarian-friendly large city" by PETA, a name you can totally trust. the city's home to a ton of veggie restaurants & grocers like food fight! & food front (two places where pretty much all the snacks in our portland series are from). hell, even voodoo doughnuts has vegan doughnuts.

#148 - port traits - misc mix.
snacks: indianlife hot punjabi mix / betty lou's krispy bites / mrs may's almond crunch / naked dillo

to close my look at vegan snacks bought or made in the portland area, i'll be taking a look at a random mix of items, items that didn't fit nicely into the other two categories of snacks (jerky & bars) i've covered. they're sort of like the misfit toys amongst all the vegan snacks, but that doesn't mean that they're throwaways by any means. in fact, two of them ranked near the top of all the vegan snacks i've sampled. here's what we've got...

indianlife hot punjabi mix - the hot punjabi mix is made by a company out of burnaby, the third-largest city in british columbia. it's a spicy mix made with peanuts, chick peas, green peas, green & brown lentils and puffed rice, all covered in tasty spices. when it comes to snack mixes, i prefer spicy over sweet, so this one definitely worked for me. if i had to be negative & find one fault with the punjabi mix, it's that pretty much every time i grabbed a handful & went to cram it into my mouth, without fail, some piece shot out the side of my hand & onto the floor. that probably has more to do with my stubby hands than it does with the mix though.

betty lou's krispy bites - technically, this should have been part of the bars part of our portland series, but it's basically a vegan, organic version of a rice krispie, so i'm classifying it as a "treat." plus, i needed to divide the snacks up into neat, four-snack parts, so it got bumped to the "miscellaneous" category. it's ok. betty lou would have wanted it that way. her company's headquartered in mcminnville, a city that's part of the portland metropolitan area & about a half-hour southwest of portland. while her "krispy snacks" are aight, they aren't anything special. maybe it's because i'm used to rice krispie treats overflowing with peanut butter or marshmallow. maybe it's because it was so tiny that it was gone in a few bites. either way, given the copious amount of rice krispie treats i ate as a child, i was hoping for more from the krispy bite.

mrs may's almond crunch - our third snack is the simplest of the four, as it's made with just four ingredients--almonds, rice malt, evaporated cane & sea salt. in this case, simple works, as this was my favorite out of this set of snacks. the bag contained about a dozen bite-sized, square pieces that are perfect for folks looking for a quick, salty/sweet/nutty treat. in addition, on the back of the bag, mrs may notes that " we put plenty of natural goodness in our light and crunchy snacks. but mostly, we're nuts." you've gotta love a snack that fully embraces both insanity & self-deprecation. well done, mrs may.

naked dillo - if you love twinkies but can't handle consuming HFCS, animal shortening & a who's who of unpronounceable ingredients, the naked dillo's a great vegan alternative. it looks like a twinkie, it tastes like a twinkie, but brother...it ain't a twinkie. in fact, it's superior to a twinkie, as it doesn't taste all artificial. it's made by the cakewalk baking company, utah's "first and only vegan bakery." they produce four different types of dillos--the naked one, the choco dillo (a naked dillo drizzled in chocolate), the ding dillo (chocolate on chocolate) & the raz dillo (a raspberry one). i enjoyed the naked one almost as much as i enjoyed the almond crunch, but i can't help but think how awesome that ding dillo sounds. i guess that when i finally make it out to portland, i'll have to make my way over to food fight! & try one out.