This beautiful place is directly behind our host’s home — it is working agricultural land and a nature preserve with public hiking trails. More on polders in this cool wikipedia entry — scroll down to learn polders’ role in democracy in the Netherlands.

UPDATE: OC register finally has some real coverage up. See it here.

^ Val and our great Park Kitchen lunch

And, are we indebted to Nathan! After we roamed around the neighborhood a bit more, visiting galleries and the Museum of Contemporary Craft and taking pictures of the cool Portland architecture, we headed for Park Kitchen and were treated to a lunch of delights, delightfully served. Val had a Sazerac. We split a bowl of Green Pepper and Hazelnut Soup, garnished with Wedding Salami. Complex. Soothing. Special. I had the house-made hot dog, a delicious and mild sausage sandwich served with PK’s own ketchup. Val’s entree: the terrine of the day, a pork terrine, with pickled beets and coarse mustard. Subtle. Savory. Beet pickle vinegar balancing perfectly with the richness of the terrine. For dessert, we split a Fennel Cake with Blackberry Ice Cream and Candied Fennel Slices. This was great: a coarse, delicately fennel-flavored cake topped with tangy and not-too-sweet berry ice cream. The candied fennel — sliced see-through thin — delivered a nice punch of licorice and sweetness that married perfectly with everything else on the plate.

Each dish was beautifully thought out. Gracefully balanced. Intriguing and still simple. the portions were perfect. So our lunch was a highlight meal of the trip. Now, we’ve changed our plans to eat at Le Pigeon tonight and are returning to the Park Kitchen for dinner. We are still definitely interested in visiting Le Pigeon — but we’ve become very wary of overeating, of literally biting off more than we can chew — and we just decided that the Park Kitchen’s menu offered more light-dining options. On the menu tonight at Le Pigeon: rabbit, lamb, fois gras, beef bourguignon, more. Very, very tempting, but a little dangerous too. Also, we’d need to be at Le Pigeon at 5 p.m. to sit at the chef’s counter at the popular five-table restaurant — and, it just ended up feeling too early to eat. So it’s Park Kitchen at eight. Many thanks, Nathan!

PS: Portland’s public transit is very nice. Riding the streetcar in the cool gray morning, I might have been in Amsterdam. Plus, our hotel gave us free train tix, so the transport was on them. (I really like this place.)

• WWL-TV live video

• Times-Picayune Hurricane Coverage

• Times-Picayune Abita forum

• St. Tammany Parish government

• National Hurricane Center

• Big resource list from JefTek [thanks nik]

Today, we rolled out the cool new literary event search features at CaliforniaAuthors. Users can now search — right from the pages of our site — for events listed in the big-and-growing BookTour event database. CSS/php master Val did a really beautiful job with the coding and I am proud and happy with the implementation. Click here to read a nice message about our partnership from BookTour.com’s Kevin Smokler. Click here to give our new search a try!

On another front, Val’s back seized up yesterday, giving his spine a disturbing “S” shape and essentially immobilizing him. So we spent the morning visiting Claudio, getting x-rays, etc. Val is icing tonight for more of the same tomorrow. So this evening we’re having comfort food: this deeply good and supremely easy mushroom soup from famously cranky TV chef Anthony Bourdain. We made ours with shiitakes.

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As part of our dinner conversation last night: off the beaten path spots for the M&M road trip. Tips from around the table:

1) Middendorf’s in Pass Manchac, Louisiana. You’ll never get a better fried seafood platter and its thin-filleted fried catfish — made with the same recipe since 1934 — is famous. I just read that its under new management since 2007, but the old-line staff is still in place and it seems like the new owner respects the menu and the history of the restaurant, so you should still be able to get the good stuff there.

2) UCM Museum in Abita Springs, Louisiana. A walk-in art installation where you can see the Bassigator among many other oddities. Exceptional place to stop for souvenirs. But since the whole place is a description-defying work of art, you’ll just have to go experience it to see what we mean. (Handily, Abita Springs is the home of the Abita Brewery — and my favorite beer is served up right there at the Abita Brew Pub. And, it’s just down the street from my mom’s house, where — if you are Mark and Michelle — she might hook you up with a shrimp po-boy from her favorite place (not on any map) Frabielli’s — the real deal with buttered french bread toasted just right.

3) If you happen to be on the long long Texas route and anywhere near Bourne, TX, don’t miss the Bear Moon Bakery and Cafe. I always stop here on my LA to New Orleans trips. When Laur and I were there in February of 2006, a baker displaced by Katrina was making killer king cake (in Texas?! who figured?) and lots of delicious goods are baked on-site, real espresso and yummy food made from fresh ingredients. Great breakfast. Reasonably-priced and cute.

Click here or on the map above to get a google map with links!

Nightnote Kentucky correspondent and friend Janice felt it! The big midwest shaker shook her area and she sends us this report:

You Californians might think this is normal but I was awoken at 5:30 this morning with my house shaking and a making all sorts of noise! We had a 5.2 quake and an aftershock of 4 point something that was a bit dramatic because I’m on the 12th floor of a highrise at this time. I’ve never felt the ground move. It was weird. I thought it was an explosion but it kept moving. I like terra firma. When I woke up, my cat was about to bolt from bed. I grabbed her, both to calm her down and to snatch her up if it was bad enough to force us to leave in a hurry. I didn’t want to have to hunt for her. As far as I can tell, nothing was damaged but some stuff knocked off shelves. I’ll check for cracks again when I get home, especially chimneys because several in the neighborhood fell or look close to falling. It makes me want to move back to the deep alluvial plane of the Mississippi River!

Thanks for the report J. Learn more about Janice’s shaker at the USGS.

In other earth shaking news, the USGS sent out a report last week that “found that California is virtually certain to experience at least one major temblor by 2028,” read more at the LAT. And, yes moms, we have our earthquake kit in order.