This weekend we went to visit some friends in Portland so we decided to make Burgerville our lunch spot on the way down. I had been wanting to eat there ever since I heard about it on NPR’s “The Splendid Table” but, since it only has locations in southern WA and northern Oregon, I hadn’t had the chance. At first glance, it seems like your typical fast food burger joint but Burgerville uses lots of local, fresh ingredients, many of which are organic! They also just switched over to using wind power which is pretty cool. I had the breaded halibut sandwich which was just OK but my fries were wonderfully crispy and flavorful. The true highlight, however, was the mountain huckleberry shake. It was absolutely delicious and had tons of little huckleberry pieces in it that I could chew on! Robert had a burger featuring 100% Oregon beef and Tillamook cheddar cheese. Burgerville also has really cool packaging and nicer-than-average employees. I may need to find an excuse to go back when the sweet potato fries and hazelnut shake are in season!

Well, Robert and I made it safely back from Greece last night! Below is a day-by-day account of our trip for anyone who is interested. Since this is a food blog, my notes revolve heavily around what we ate each day. Overall, the food was really so-so and I hate say that I have had much better Greek food here in the United States. If I ate meat, I’m sure I would feel differently because a lot of the grilled meats I saw looked delicious. Vegetables were surprisingly hard to come by and were always overcooked for my taste. And, since I don’t like tomatoes, Greek salads for me were nothing more than cucumbers with feta and perhaps a few olives. The most surprising thing: no pitas anywhere! Nearly every meal came with French fries and bread. We did have some excellent meals however. The broad beans in tomato sauce and yogurt with fruits were the most reliable foods. I drank lots of house wine, retsina and Mythos beer which tasted kind of like Singha or Sapporo. I am really looking forward to eating sushi and Thai food again. Here is my report (I am tired so I’m sure there are lots of spelling and grammatical errors – please ignore): Ellen and Robert’s trip to Greece (2005)

Hi everyone. Robert and I are off to Greece this Sunday. 12 days of nothing but sandy beaches, sunshine and the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. I, of course, am really looking forward most to the food (almost as much as I’m not looking forward to being on an airplane for 16 hours!) I will be taking notes on everything I eat and plan on putting together a Greek-themed menu for my website as soon as I can so stay tuned for that. Hopefully I can get some good food pictures during our trip. In other news, if you haven’t seen it already, I am currently the featured listener on eatfeed.com. I don’t know how long I will be featured there so be sure to check it out quick. It’s a great website to visit anyway; the podcasts are really interesting and very well done. Well, that’s about it for me until I return!