Johnny Appleseed couldn't touch us with a ten foot pole.

C, M and I headed Albany-wise for a sweet treat retreat this weekend past. Our only obligations were to relax, kickback Cloud-style and make some homemade applesauce (and of course: eat a ton of food!)  

The process went a little something like this: after dicing and boiling up apples we ran them through this beast of a device... 

Grind grind grind. Very satisfying. And after cooling off several containers over night, we turned the  applesauce into real applesauce—lots of sugar and cinnamon and heat. 

Then came the jarring!

Wa-la! Now we have several cinnamon-induced, mouth-watering jars of applesauce to spread over our pork chops—and spread we will! Can't wait to totally knock out the palate with this stuff. 

Welcome back, sunshine.

The sun's out again after yesterday's autumn-y hiatus and I'm listening to the trip-y, Hindu-y, Temple of Doom-y acoustic mini-set that Animal Collective recorded at KEXP (both tracks are from their brand-spanking/ear-spanking new album Centipede Hz, but these recordings are remarkabl-y different—more akin to a float downriver).

Anyhoo. The return of summer weather has prodded my tongue in an appeal for a condensation-y, ice cold pint. Until C comes home I'll just have to watch this here beer commercial on repeat, stolen from the awesome dudes over at popflys (who musta stolen it from some place else).

Hello Monday.

Our weekend Spanish celebration went off without a hitch. Friday evening greeted us with our first meal at Portland's Los Gorditos. We ordered dinner-to-go at the new Pearl location and even saw one of my Spanish 203 classmates there. 

Cambria ordered the Carne Asada Tacototes (not tah-ko-totes, rather tah-ko-toe-tays). I, on the other hand, waded knee-deep into a Garbage Burrito.

On Saturday, Wifey and I spoke to the always entertaining staff at Tenth Ave Liquor. We discussed the variances in tequila and mezcal and the cough-syrupy wrongness that is Early Times. Meanwhile, I defended myself against the accusations that I was a soulless ginger, while Cambria blushed at the onslaught of driver's-license-photo compliments. 

We ended up with this fine, wormy purchase:

We capped off the weekend with the perfect Sunday night dinner: Homemade Taco Pizza. Cambria lead the way, as she is the taco-pizza expert—Trader Joe's dough, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, refried beans, lettuce, olives and taco meat. She even crafted it into a loving homage to the state of Oregon. And little Margaret helped, of course.

Wifey, you're the best!

Just to top off such a Spanish-tinged weekend, I also finished Gringos. My Spanish summer now seems all sewn up—now I'm bringing in the fall with Willa Cather. Glory hallelujah!

Hasta luego — El final de mi carrera españolas (posiblement)

Seeing as the end of Summer Term fast approaches—and my sanity is beginning to sink like a tar smothered 19th century Nantucket whaleship—I've decided to commemorate my long history of Spanish tinkerings by devoting it an entire post here on Tiquismiquis.

For several weeks now I've been reading Gringos by the southerner Charles Portis—who also wrote the better-known True Grit. I've been struggling to find time for this masterpiece of aimless wandering, but not because of any lack of interest. 

Portis is an incredible weaver of dry wit and stripped language. I've followed the rambling American expatriate Jimmy Burns from Mérida to the Mayan ruins, endured the onslaught of quirky characters and ever-shifting locales, and have just ended up in the middle of some bizarre hippy sacrifice. Still have 80 or so pages to go, but the adventure thus far has been otherworldly!

Wifey and I plan to accelerate our Friday night with a bottle of mezcal and—perhaps perhaps perhaps—some delicious Mexican food. I didn't know it at the time, but years ago I drank Scorpion Mezcal—including the butt-end of a withered scorpion. Apparently tequila can be considered mezcal, but mezcal cannot be considered tequila....?... The trick is in the extraction.

A heap of Agave

This weekend promises to be una gran fiesta y un largo descanso! Perhaps Sunday will present itself as yet another opportunity to see John Turturro do his do-rag thang! Until then, I've got three more days of language barriers, perfect tenses, presentations, examenes y pruebas. 

Noire Portland: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

I was walking home from Spanish 203 today whilst cramming el pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo into some dark recess of my mind (where it will hopefully never bother me again) when I suddenly felt the urge to solve a crime!

With all this sunshine it's hard to recall Portland's rainier days—dark months when you can wring the rain out of a skyscraper and watch the city-dwellers recede into the shadows like wary hermit crabs. 

But today, even with that great ball of fun lighting our way, the city still looked like a mystery. So don a fedora and buy yourself a pack of Chesterfields. It's time to weed out the crooked.

Dead man crossing.

Yes, we're the beautiful City of Roses—fine fine fine—but roses also have thorns. I tramped through the South Park Blocks trying to beat the heat, but it was gettin' to my head. People lounged around without a care, like they couldn't sense the other side of things, the city below the city, the brick behind the fancy new siding, the real face behind the mask.

North I headed and as I neared the end of the South Park Blocks, I paused for a moment to take in a grand view of The Roosevelt Hotel. It reminded me of some locale in Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy. Perhaps someone was watching me from one of the hotel's dark windows, or perhaps I was watching them.

Yes, Portland has it all—the makings of a fine noir city. But without a steady rain beatin' me in the back or the scrunching of wet tires echoing through the streets, my mouth was beginning to get dry. Luckily I passed by the Hotel deLuxe, where the walls are lined in gold, glamour and glitter. A man needed a diamond jacket to pass off here, but no worries—he could always duck into a dim-lit boothseat in the Driftwood Room and order a bubbly Portland '85.

Finally, I tottered home past the old Pennoyer Mausoleum and Ella St. Social Club, where the night's antics had yet to embark. I kept my eyes on the windows, but as always I couldn't make out who was playing records in the upper office. 

With feet like cinderblocks, I finally reached my destination under big ol' Blue Volvo, watcher of Burnside, keeper of secrets. 

By this point I was delirious, nearly dead from the heat. My little itch to solve a crime was stretched thin and warbling with each passing semi. My noir mood quickly gave way to thoughts of a popsicle—cool lemon lime. Ah, forget it! Perhaps cases are best solved in the rain.