restaurant review- Tabla

Yesterday, being Courtney's birthday provided us and a couple of friends with an opportunity to eat out. Courtney had been to Tabla once a long time ago and wanted to go back.
So, to Tabla we went.
The evening before Courtney and I had read several reviews for the restaurant. All of the reviews were favorable, but were a bit odd. All of the reviews were very defensive in tone and seemingly responding to some criticisms about the portion size and cost that we did not see anywhere.. Undaunted we made reservations for what would turn out to be a busy Thursday night.
The menu was a bit light on vegeatarian fare, offering only one or two items per section in each of the categories of appetizer, pasta and entree. Courtney still found excellent food in each, I am happy to report.
All four of us chose to have the three course meal at $24 per person. Tabla was certainly a bit spendier than a diner or fast food, but the quality was proportionally higher as well.
Our meal started with crustini with a lemon-thyme and pink peppercorn spread that was just a little bit too peppery. Fortunately, this was offset by the fact that it was complimentary.
We decided to get an olive sampler to start off the evening with our actual ordering. I am not a big fan of anything save the boring old canned black olives, so I can't really give it rave reviews, but my three companions were quite pleased with fare, all agreeing that the olives were good and of good quality.
I chose an organic mixed greens salad for my appetizer and was very pleased with the portion size. It was slightly larger than a starte salad you receive at most restaurants, but quite a bit tastier. The dressing was a tangy sweet vinaigrette with just the right amount applied. The salad was topped with chopped nuts and romano cheese, much to my satisfaction.
For the pasta course, I ordered the ravioli. Notice, there is no 's' on this. It was one large ravioli with a whole poached egg inside of it. It was flavored with peppercorns and topped with poppy seeds, that to me, looked like ground pepper and provided no additional taste.
The entree I received for my third course was spicey Italian sausage on a bed of chard and polenta. The polenta was cooked to perfection, being crisp but not hard to chew. The chard was good as well, but indistinguishable from kale of other greens. The sausage was delicious. It is nice to actually get something spicey, when it's advertised as spicey. So often, it seems that restaurants call something spicey, but mean 'hot'. While the sausage was hot, that was cetainly not the only spice.
We opted out of dessert. We all were full and Courtney couldn't even finish her entree. I'm not sure who thinks that the portion sizes are small, but I'm guessing that they are the type of folks that frequent the Old Country Buffet and Izzy's
The service was excellent throughout the whole meal. Our waiter paid just the right amount of attention to our needs, without hovering over the table.
The ambience was nice, though by the end of the meal when the restaurant was full, it was a bit loud and I had to ask others in my party to repeat themselves several times. The second half of the evening, the music played was Modest Mouse, which is always a good choice.
Overall, I would grade Tabla a B+. It was very good, but not the best food I had eaten. The price was a bit high, but all of us felt that it was worth it. It would have been nice if there had been a little bit less wait between courses, as the meal tiook us just about an hour and a half.

The Joys of Life

One of the great joys in life ias having a temporary disability. This is expecially true if there is no end in sight to the end of sight.. I dare someone to find a warmer feeling than fondly recalling when they could do something they loved to do, but knowing that they can't do it now, while on the third hand knowing tht they should bea ble to do it again at some indeterminent point in the future. Probably. How soothing it is to give up one's worldly goods, little by little to pay the bill collector's. I go to bed each night with a smile on my face, knowing that my insurance company can rest easy on what they caharge me alone. I have become familiar again with the joys of silence at the realization that if I hear a radio DJ make one more pun on a band's name I will throw my stereo through the window.
And finally, I can say how proud I am not to have become bitter about my lot in life, to not have become self-loathing like a lesser man would have. Why, most Americans would welcome an oppurtunity to take an extended vacation and sit at home doing nothing, nothing at all. Not watching television. Not listening ot the radio. Especially, not reading a book. Or a magazine without big pictures.

The Big Day Feb. 15th, 2006

The is only one time in a person's life where they ask someone to marry them and it is something that they have never done before.
My big moment was yesterday. Yesterday was our six year anniversary, so it seemed like a good time. Truth be told, it was way past time. I should have asked the question a couple of years ago when we were in Venice. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.
We started the evening off with dinner at Fratelli's, in the Pearl District. It was a wonderful as always. Both Courtney and I are big fans of authentic Italian cuisine. Good Italian cuisine. Fratelli's is the best in Portland, and probably the best outside of Italy itself. The portions are much smaller than American portions, where people seem to mistake more for better. Yet, we were still full. It was nice not to be stuffed.
after dinner, we went for a walk in the unseasonably warm Febraury night. We walked around the neighborhood, finding our way to Tanner Springs Park and eventually to Jamison Square. It was there in the moonlight that I got down on one knee and asked the love of my life to marry me. Was it a surprise to her? After six years together, I'm not sure I could surprise Courtney. This was something expected for years, so perhaps the timing was unexpected, but not the question.
I'm happy to report that she said, "yes".

walking buddha gets the blues

I found out a few weeks ago that I have diabetes. A bit of a bummer, I must say. But, it's not the end of the world. It is the end of the way I used to live my life. Now, I must be aware of what I put inside of me, pills, food, etc. Plus, I've been diagnosed with neuropathy in my feet and advanced proliferative retinopathy in both eyes.
So, on December 15th of this last year, I had a procedure, called a pars plana vitrectomy done on my left eye. I'm still at home recovering and can kind of see out of the eye again and as soon as I can a little bit better, will be having the procedure done in the right eye.
I won't describe it, as it is a bit gross, I will just say that it is very invasive. If you want learn more, you can probably google it, or even email me and I'd be more than happy to let you know all the details. :)

Spring Dreamin'

I'm a lucid dreamer. Always have been. It's usually entertaining, as long as I don't try to psychoanalyze myself. Sometimes though, I have the worst dreams. Excrutiatingly detailed looks at my failures and impotence. Occasionally, these worst dreams even become nightmares. (A bad dream is typically classified as a nightmare if you are woken up by it.) Whatever type of dream, I usually recall them in a richness of detail that would make any filmmaker blush at her inadequacies. The memories have a tendency to remain clear for years- I still remember in vivid detail the first nighmare I had when I was eleven and newly in the sixth grade.
One of the features of lucid dreams, is that often the dreamer recognizes it's a dream, and may even have some degree of control over what occurs in the dream. I often figure out that it's a dream, but in a paranoid way. Let me explain. A family member or close friend who has died will be in the dream as if nothing ever happened, or as if they had just been on an extended vacation. I react with, "My God! How can this be? You're dead!" Sometimes I'm convinced by the workings of the dream that I have been under some dastaredly misapprehension for a number of years. But, more often than not, I figure out that I'm right and that I must be in a dream. Sometimes the dreams are so real and well, trivial, that it makes me question reality upon waking. And when the questioning is about whether someone you have cared for deeply is really dead- ya; not that fun. [Philosophically speaking, I am very interested in this topic. What is it to be alive? and all that. But, when I'm trying to drag ass out of bed in the morning...I don't want to try and figure out if my Grandmother is still dead.]