Help me plan details of a proposed vacation to Oregon....?

That was close -- good save there! Did the two of you get to discuss zombies together? It's one of Mo's major fields of expertise.

Portland is a wonderful city, with lots of fascinating plants, animals, and people in it. I'm glad you're loving it too, and having such good luck with the weather. Enjoy the rest of your stay!

I sure hope you and Boomer are putting your cameras to good use and taking photos of your walking garden tours. It would be great if a mishap occurred occassionally and one of you happened to get in the photo too.

Chickpea sandwiches? Uh oh. I need to find out about those..

I couldn't think of anyone better to explain these sammies to! Starting with a nice chabatta split, layer the following (I may be missing something):

lemon aioli (aioli? looks weird)
fresh, local, mixed greens
mashed chickpea 'burger' grilled
shredded carrot

I adored this stand - New Seasons, I believe it's called. They also had saffron arancine (not sure why they spelled it with an e) stuffed with cheese and chopped, steamed kale. They had breaded and fried mashed potato balls. Mmmmm. I miss it already!

I'll try that chickpea sandwich idea, sounds wonderful.
I love arancini.. that's what I was talking about (or maybe you knew them already) on the thread where you were trying to cut carbs and I was trying to say, well, if you cook risotto rice, not as risotto but for rice balls stuffed with mozzarella and crusted with bread crumbs, which I bake instead of fry, you can freeze those and then only be eating a relatively small portion of rice at a time. Also known as suppli al telefono..

I read about the Portland food stand place in a fairly recent column of the Frugal Traveler in the NYTimes - a terrific idea, made me salivate just to hear about the different stands.

were the mashed chickpea burgers cousins of falafel?

It all sounds good.

I love it when our next door neighbour treats us to hot, fresh arancini. I always think I won't love it, and I always do love it.