Voodoo Doll Doughnut from ...

... the Voodoo Doughnuts van, in place at the entrance to the PDX Bridge Festival's celebration in honor of the Steel Bridge's 100th birthday on Saturday, July 7, 2012.

Official words from the Voodoo Doughnuts Menu: Voodoo Doll Raised yeast doughnut filled with raspberry jelly topped with chocolate frosting and a pretzel stake! (characteristics of Voodoo Dolls are all different) My friend Ann enjoyed every morsel of her purchase.

 

Here's the van in a photo taken on a different date, parked at Voodoo Doughnuts Too on NE Sandy.

Voodoo Doughnuts No. 1

The new sign at the downtown Voodoo Doughnuts. How cool is it that it is across the street from the Keep Portland Weird sign!

666 pounds of doughnuts and Voodoo Doughnuts' boxes used to be in here!

On August 18, 2011, I stood on the sidewalk with Milton and Kay, totally surprised to see through the plate glass window of a building a couple of blocks from my building the giant pink box which had held a a world-record heavy helping of Voodoo Doughnuts earlier that month. I leaned toward the window and said, "I cannot believe this! Look at this, y'all!" Needless to say, they stopped to look with me and I explained what I had heard on the news about the attempt by Voodoo Doughnuts to break the record for the largest box of doughnuts in the world. And here we stood, looking at it 10 days later! How cool is this serendipity? Way cool.

Here's a write-up I found at Bites on Today: "World's largest box of doughnuts weighs in at 666 pounds" By Keith Wagstaff 

How much does the world’s largest box of doughnuts weigh? About 666 pounds -- a sign that eating 3,880 doughnuts might put your arteries through hell. 

The giant pink box of doughnuts -- a stunt from Voodoo Doughnut's owners Kenneth "Cat Daddy" Pogson and Tres Shannon -- was unveiled on Portland, Ore.'s Hawthorne Bridge during an event called Brunch on the Bridge. 

To help Voodoo achieve its goal of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records, Portland’s mayor Sam Adams, a notary and a scale master were on hand to verify that Pogson and Shannon had indeed constructed the world’s largest box of doughnuts. 

“I think we must have set another record when we handed out 666 pounds of doughnuts in just 45 minutes,” said Shannon. “It was a good way to give back to the city of Portland, which has been pretty good to us over the years.” 

The sweet crate, a giant version of the doughnut shop’s regular pink box, contained 380 smaller boxes filled with glazed doughnuts, all arranged nicely into a pyramid. The pair piled on an assortment of their signature treats, from apple fritters to their Fruit Loop-crusted Loop doughnut, until they reached the magic number to break the current recordholder's total of 297 pounds. But why aim for 666 pounds? 

“The current record is a little less than 333 pounds, so we just decided to double it to 666 pounds, which kind of goes along with our voodoo theme,” said Shannon. “It’s the mark of the ‘yeast’.” 

Voodoo is waiting for official certification from Guinness World Records. After the tally, more than 1,400 people in attendance got to share the doughnuts.

And here's a link to an article at KATU TV Channel 2 about Brunch on the Bridge and the Voodoo Doughnuts participation in the event. If you look here, you can see the inside of the box with the pyramid of doughnuts and lots and lots of regular-sized pink Voodoo Doughnuts boxes!

P. S. I've figured out how to get blank lines where I want them! Now, if I can just get this to work as my post. You see, I work on my post, editing and getting it exactly like I want it, in my practice blog. Then I copy and paste it onto my blog. Here goes! Copy. Paste. I'm crossing my fingers! This is a great development, a stunning start towards figuring this out! Hooray! Thanks, Karen, for those words you put into a comment on April 4--they're the reason I'm on the way to figuring out what to do! Thanks!

Seen on the walk to work, March 23, 2012, in the Voodoo Doughnuts No. 2 parking lot

If I sit on my first moring bus in a seat behind the bus driver, when we go by the Voodoo Doughnuts, I get a quick glimpse of the parking lot, then the building, then they're gone. Over a week ago, I spied this "monster," an imaginative creation which certainly matches the creativity with which the Voodoo Doughnuts people treat their doughnuts. Ipiccy, cropped, resized, and altered with the effect neon glow, overlay. The base neon color is red, believe it or not. I like what happened with I chose overlay as part of the process! Ipiccy, cropped, resized, and altered with the effect orton. Sort of made every thing smooth and creamy looking to me. I like this version, too. SOOC, Ipiccy, cropped and resized only. So, here's the original image, just for you so that you can compare the alterations with it. And it lets you see that the "monster's" arms, head and body are made from vines! His eyes appear to be plastic tubs with the vertical slits either painted on or drawn on with Sharpie markers. His mouth and teeth must be some sort of plastic, too, or else the rain we've had lately would have already turned them to pulp. Day-glow orange is painted around his mouth. The car which looks as if it has come to either worship the monster or give itself up in sacrifice is some sort of Honda. Enjoy!

Seen on the walk to work, March 23, 2012

If I were of a mind to, I could turn right a few feet past this pink sandwich board sign and enter ... ... this pink, mid-century-looking building where I could buy myself a Voodoo Doughnut. However, to do so would defeat the purpose of walking. I've lived in Northeast Portland since the last week of January, 2011, and have yet to walk over and buy myself a doughnut. Not only do I not actually need a doughnut, I haven't been in there since the last time I stopped by with Mama in the car, to pick up a couple of glazed for her. She loved to stop on the way home from a check-up with one or another of her doctors, most of the time with Lamont as her driver. Sooner or later, I'll go on in and buy my favorite Voodoo Doughnut, the Chocolate cake, a plain cake doughnut with chocolate frosting. Click here to read all about Voodoo Doughnuts, including the expansive and eclectic menu. Here's what I found on the Voodoo Doughnut's Web site: There are three locations. This one is #2. Voodoo Doughnut Too 1501 N.E. Davis St. in Portland Oregon, U.S.A. phone 503.235.2666 MAP OPEN 24 hours 7 days a week, Cash only, ATMs available Voodoo Doughnut Too is located where Sandy, Davis and 15th meet. We are just across the street from Portland's famous Sandy Hut. You can't miss the pink box building! 20,000 square feet of parking, 800 square feet of seating inside. Bubble Hockey too! P.S. I HATE the new BLOGGER whatever they call it because I cannot get any blank lines to show up between what I consider to be paragraphs. HATE IT! Paragraphs are necessary entities when one is writing. Get real, Google! And I'm quite certain that back whenever it was that they announced this new whatever they call it, I went to their comments or some such and complained up one side and the other about not being able to have a blank line in between what I consider to be paragraphs. Did I hear one word in answer? Nope, not one word. WISE UP, GOOGLE! I've tried indenting what I consider to be paragraphs, leaving an untold number of blank lines on the post as I'm working on it, between sentences to try to force the formation of a paragraph. NOTHING HELPS! RATS, GOOGLE! If I could get this to work, my P.S. would not be jammed up against the rest of this post. Can you notice the bold, italicized section? Every bit of that, copied and pasted from the Web site, was single, short lines, up against the left margin. See what I mean? I HATE the new BLOGGER interface!

A few more views from on high

August 23, the afternoon found Milton, Kay and me in downtown Portland on the 30th floor of the Big Pink, at the Portland City Grill. After a snack and a drink, I stood up and walked from the bar to the dining room to take a few more photos.


Looking northeast across the Willamette River. The rust-colored bridge is the Broadway Bridge. The sweeping arched bridge is the Fremont Bridge. And in the foreground is the magnificent Union Station which is undergoing some sort of work on its exterior. I altered the photo in Picnik with the exposure and the sharpness tools.


Looking more north than east across the Pearl in the forefront and a sort of light industrial area that brackets the train tracks as the head north out of downtown Portland, not far from the river. See there in the distance where the hills meet the river? Two dark, upright shapes? Just to the left of the leftmost one, there's a dimmer upright shape. And between the two dark, upright shapes there is a dim shape that goes from the dimmer upright shape on to in between the two dark, upright shapes and parallel with the surface of the river. OK. The two dark, upright shapes are part of the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge, a truss bridge with a vertical lift. The dimmer upright shape and the dim shape parallel with the river are part of the St. Johns Bridge, a photo of which is included in my September 19 post. When I rode the SP 4449 on July 3, we crossed the Willamette River using that railroad bridge. Milton and Kay crossed it as they entered Portland. I altered this photo with the HDR-ish effect and put a frame around it.


Looking straight down to the east at Voodoo Doughnuts' original location on the corner of SW 3rd Avenue and SW Ankeny Street. See the tiny people in line from the red truck, along the front of the building and ending almost beneath the pink sign? Those are a few people in line for doughnuts in the middle of the afternoon--that's the hold that Voodoo has on folks, some folks anyway; to tell you the truth there are usually a whole lot more people in line. And the small, almost school-bus-colored items side-by-side in SW Ankeny are actually wooden picnic tables, while the black and white spots farther on are actually umbrellas over additional picnic tables. Portland decided in late July to make this portion of SW Ankeny car-free, a sort of patio area. The bit of a bridge that you can see on the left is the Burnside Bridge. See the MAX train in the trees, about two thirds of the way up from the bottom of the photo? It's crossing alongside the Skidmore Fountain in what's known as Ankeny Plaza. All through those trees where the three cars are parked you'll find the Portland Saturday Market which continues to the white arches topped with bricks and across the street and beneath the rest of the trees. The gray area between the trees and the river is the sort of plaza just south of the rest of the Saturday Market.

A mid-afternoon line at Voodoo Doughnuts

Voodoo Doughnuts is on SW 3rd. It's in the middle of the block where I managed to correctly complete the back-in-angled parking with the Buick. The dark arched doorway on the left of the photo is the entrance. I doubt that the waiting/ordering area is any larger in square footage than two side-by-side Buicks, thus the line from the doorway to the corner. If you look at the link about the parking, you'll see the Buick. Then if you look closely to the right of the white container being carried by the woman wearing the brown top, you'll see a small portion of an automobile just past the white car, not the Buick but it's parked exactly where I had parked the Buick previously.


From the Voodoo Doughnuts Web site: Famous for their girth, our doughnuts are made fresh with love and care. You can pay us more for our product which is locally made, locally owned, and an honest dream come true, or you can buy cheaper, megalacorp, machine cut, rebaked, defrozen, warehouse doughnuts and pastries.

What would you decide? I myself have eaten very few doughnuts lately--I'm trying to kick the habit.

Before I forget, see the sign at the right of the photo, Berbati's Pan? That's where Lamont first worked when he moved to Portland in 2000. He was a one-man grill person, the line cook, prep cook, waiter, cashier, bus boy and dishwasher. Whew.

By the way, Mama made it fine Tuesday. She says that is because she didn't do anything much at all. Tomorrow she's going to try dust mopping but promises to be careful. I got about 80% caught up at work which is good.

For supper Tuesday night I chopped up some Vidalia onion, sauteed it a little while on high heat, then added some rough chopped cabbage, orange bell pepper and yellow bell pepper, stirred it all up pretty good, making sure that all of it had some oil on it, let it cook for a minute, then I poured a little bit of water in the skillet, turned down the heat, and put the other big skillet on top as a lid, turned upside down and balanced just right--hey, it works. They cooked for a little while, then I placed six frozen, skinless chicken tenders on top of the pile of vegetables. I sprinkled some salt and pepper onto the chicken and put the lid/skillet back on. A few minutes later, I checked the jumble (Mama's name for it), turned the chicken, and turned up the heat, leaving it uncovered. Soon, I looked at it again and called Mama in to take a look. I asked her if she'd like the chicken cut up into bite-sized pieces. Her answer, yes, so I did that. In our hammered aluminum Dutch oven, I had steamed asparagus and broccoli. Mama likes broccoli but refuses to eat asparagus, so I put broccoli and the jumble on her plate, asparagus and the jumble on mine. I warned her that I had no idea what the jumble would taste like, so when she heartily approved after one bit, I breathed a sigh of relief. I like it, too, and best of all, we've got left-overs!