Portland Wedding Celebration Food- Check!

On Sunday we went out to the Sake One members party I had talked about over the weekend and got some great Hawaiian grinds. 808 Grinds was serving up not only items off their regular meal, but also little bits using their regular menu items in new ways. Exactly what we were thinking of doing with the food for the at home reception. We will for sure be booking them to make some of the food to add to what we will also be preparing. Bring on the tidbits and pupus for our at home reception!

Sorry, the food was so good and we were so hungry, we barely took pictures. 

As you can see from the shower, tidbits and pups really are cute. And who doesn't want cute food for their reception. Ok, sure... Maybe not EVERYONE. I guess some people would want elegant food, but not us. We are all about the cute.

Hawaiian Grinds

Drew and I love us some Hawaiian grinds (food). If we hear there's a new place that's opened up in Portland, we have to try it. Throughout Portland Metro, we've been to Bamboo Grove, L&L, Noho's, Ate-Oh-Ate, Ohana Hawaiian Cafe, Da Hui, Hawaiian Kine BBQ, Lilikoi, Roxy's Island Grill, Hawaiian Times, Hapa Grill, Aloha Grill and 808 Grinds. Yeah, you could say we've been to a few.

There are many activities that should not be performed on an empty stomach, including dancing, swimming and surgery. Especially one not full of some Hawaiian grinds.Wait, what? For reals though, one should not celebrate a reception with out some great eats. With this in mind, we started thinking about what kind of food we wanted to offer our guests at our at home reception. Getting married on Maui and wanting to bring the islands home for our Portland celebration, we didn't have to think about food long (Who are we kidding? We are always thinking about food!) before we came to the quick conclusion that we wanted to serve some good ol' Hawaiian grinds.

Plate lunch always makes for good grinds!

Portland Food Cart Challenge

For those of you who don't know, Portland has amazing food carts all around town. Some open up bright and early, while others cater to the night owls. All have simply wonderful eats to offer everyone from the vegan to the gluten free to the carnivore. We have had many great meals from these carts for next to nothing.

For example, today Amanda, Drew, and I went down to Lady Thai at SW 3rd and Washington. We each had tofu Vietnamese style sandwiches, two orders of veggie spring rolls, and one order of tofu salad rolls. All of this with tip was only $18. A real bargain for the three of us to enjoy a meal out, if you ask me. Especially, considering how yummy and satisfying all of the food was.

We were all talking about how much we enjoy going to the food carts and how affordable it was when I suggested that we start visiting the food carts more often. We are trying to save money to be able to buy a house, but still want to be able to go out for a meal about once a week. These two ideas can work against each other unless you are able to eat somewhere cheap. None of us are into the typical fast food, so it can't just be cheap, but has to be real whole food, as well. Making our way through Portland's food carts meets both of these requirements by being a wonderful treat for our taste buds and wallets. Plus, I love the idea of helping out the local little guy. Since we all love eating at the food carts, everyone agreed this was a great idea.

I looked up the Portland Food Carts website, started going through all of the carts with vegetarian options since none of us eat meat, and set a little challenge for us to try all of these food carts. With the exception of not having to re-visit the ones we have already eaten at. Unless, of course, we want too.

As of date we have visited Big Ass Sandwiches, Lady Thai, Grilled Cheese Grill, Yarp, Potato Champion, Flavour Spot, Taqueria Los Gorditos, Taste of Poland and a few others I am blanking on the names of, at the moment. We have loved them all and haven't got a bad meal, yet. I'd recommend checking any of them out. We will report back to you on how the challenge is going, what wonderful foods we find along the way, and also give you a re-cap on both past and future carts that we have eaten at.