PORTLAND: Perhaps you’ll spend your day and most of your available credit limit shopping in the Pearl District. Or maybe you’ll rent a bicycle and partake in one of Portland’s pedal-powered pub crawls. Chances are you could curl up all day with a good cookbook at Powell’s. Maybe you’ll feed your brain at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

However you choose to spend your time in Portland, you’re probably going to be thinking about dinner just about the time the last Tacoma-bound Amtrak train pulls out of Union Station at 6:15 p.m.

What’s a hungry Portland-to-Tacoma Amtrak traveler to do?

Be your own dinner train.

GET ABOARD

As the price of a gallon of gas approaches the price of a pint of beer, the South Sound’s Portlanders-at-heart – we know who we are – are filling up Amtrak’s Cascades passenger trains from T-Town to Stumptown and back.

With apologies to the sandwiches, soups and salads sold aboard Amtrak (some made by Seattle caterer Dish D’Lish), far more tempting are the take-out food options near or en route to Union Station.

And since Amtrak lets you bring your own food aboard, you can chug home and chow down to a delicious urban-foraging menu that, depending on what you’re in the mood for, could include raw oysters, hearth-baked pizzas, cupcakes and piled-high pastrami sandwiches.

AMTRAK ETIQUETTE

As Amtrak explains on its Web site (www.amtrak.com), federal health regulations prohibit Amtrak personnel from heating passengers’ food in Amtrak ovens or storing passengers’ food in Amtrak refrigerators. An agent at the Tacoma Amtrak station had this additional bit of advice for passengers who bring their own food: Don’t hog the tables in the dining car, as passengers who buy the train’s food may wish to dine there.

THE WHOLE MAGILLA

What Portland’s Powell’s Books is to book lovers, Whole Foods is to food lovers. Inside the glitzy grocery store is a food court of foodie fantasy: hearth-fired pizzas, whole or by the slice; whole free-range roasted chickens; entrees like pulled pork, meat lasagna and made-to-order tofu stir-fry; a seafood soup station swimming in lobster bisque, gumbo, cioppino and chowder; artisan cheeses from Redmond, Ore.’s, Juniper Grove; and a fresh seafood counter with take-out friendly items like unshucked Duxbury and Kumamoto oysters for 69 cents each.

Whole Foods

1210 N.W. Couch St.; 1-503-525-4343; www.wholefoodsmarket.com

Plan to spend: $4-$14.

Plan your time: Whole Foods’ rush hour lasts virtually all day. Grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, and roast chickens, self-serve soups and pizza by the slice are fastest.

GILDING THE DINNER TRAIN

Remember: You’ve got a train to catch, but if you forgot to buy an oyster shucker or cheese knife at Whole Foods, or if you’ve just got to pop inside for nice set of napkins, Sur La Table’s got you covered in mitered-hem linen. I grappled over how I would sate that sugar rush I knew I’d need long about Centralia: that $9.95 box of Valhrona guanduja or that $1.35 pouch of McSteven’s just-add-hot-water cocoa mix?

Sur La Table

1102 N.W. Couch St.; 1-503-295-9679; www.surlatable.com

Plan to spend: Valhrona and Scharffenberger are the chocolate foods of choice here, up to $10.

Plan your time: 5-10 minutes if you don’t linger over Egyptian cotton placemats.

PILES OF PASTRAMI

Gadzooks! Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen cooks up pastrami, corned beef and tongue that brought me to my knees. Meaty throughout, fatty where it needs to be, and tender at every bite. Sandwiches are two-person, two-hands affairs, piled and spilling with meat. Meats, smoked fish, pickled herring and other deli delicacies like chopped liver, noodle kugel and potato latkes with applesauce are great to go.

Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen

1038 S.W. Stark St.; 1-503-222-DELI; www.kennyandzukes.com

Plan to spend: Sandwiches are $9.75-$12.25.

Plan your time: 10 minutes in and out.

HOT LIPS, COOL SODA

The pizza’s pretty good (thin crust, not bready), but as far as I’m concerned, the pizza is just something to be washed down with Hot Lips’ locally made fresh-fruit soda pop. These aren’t candy in a bottle; they’re more like farm-fresh elixirs of excellence, with chunks of strawberry, apple, pears, blueberries and blackberries in the sodas. Sodas are sold in 12-ounce bottles ($2.25 each) or by the half-gallon growler ($3 for the growler, $6 for the soda). As Amtrak doesn’t allow beer (or wine or alcohol) everywhere except in private sleeper cars, Hot Lips soda is among the few made-in-Portland beverages you can legally enjoy on Amtrak.

Hot Lips Pizza

210 N.W. 11th Ave.; 1-503-595-2342; www.hotlipspizza.com

Plan to spend: $2.50-$9 for soda, $15-$30 per pizza, depending on size and toppings.

Plan your time: 5 minutes for soda, 15-20 minutes for pizza.

JONESIN’ FOR CUPCAKES

Don’t worry if you can’t stop by Cupcake Jones. The shop donates its unsold cupcakes – scratch-baked, jumbo-sized, filled with pastry cream, chocolate ganache or fruit, covered with fresh-fruit icings – to the homeless. If you’re inclined to take a cupcake out of the mouth of a homeless person, I suggest the carrot cake with vanilla bean pastry cream and cream cheese icing. Flavors rotate daily.

Cupcake Jones

307 N.W. 10th Ave.; 503-222-4404; www.cupcakejones.net

Plan to spend: $3.25 filled jumbo cupcake, $1.50 mini (no filling)

Plan your time: 5 minutes in and out.

LIVER IT UP

Pté is prevalent in Portland. Clyde Common, the restaurant in the spare-but-hip Ace Hotel, and Wilf’s, the fine-dining restaurant adjacent to Union Station, are the places for liver lovers who have trains to catch. Clyde Common’s rabbit liver pté leaped from the bar appetizer menu with sweet pungency. It also spread nicely on toasted bread. At Wilf’s, a scoop of organic chicken liver pté is served with Wilf’s famous St. Pierre relish (sour cream, mayonnaise, garlic and horseradish), plus bread and breadsticks. I also recommend the smoked beef tongue at Clyde Common.

Wilf’s Restaurant

800 N.W. Sixth Ave., 1-503-233-0700; www.wilfsrestaurant.com

Clyde Common

1022 S.W. Stark St.; 503-228-3333; www.clydecommon.com

Plan to spend: $5 at Wilf’s, $4 at Clyde Common.

Plan your time: 15 minutes in and out, but calling ahead recommended.

COOLEST CUP IN TOWN

Stumptown Coffee Roasters’ newest cafe is in the Ace Hotel (where Stumptown provides room-service coffee). If you’ve got to get your last Stumptown fix between Portland and Tacoma (at Satellite Coffee, of course), this is where you CAN fill your thermos and buy beans for the morning.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

1022 S.W. Stark St.; 1-503-224-9060; www.stumptowncoffee.com

Plan to spend: $2-$40, depending on whether you buy a cup of coffee or a pound of beans.

Plan your time: 5 minutes

HUMMUS, BABY

Of all the pub grub in all the world, the hummus plate has to be the most healthful. McMenamin’s Ringler’s Pub and Ringler’s Annex serve a reliable plate of the chickpea-sesame-garlic spread with kalamata olives, red onions and pita.

Ringler’s Pub

1332 W. Burnside St.; 1-503-225-0627; www.mcmenamins.com

Ringler’s Annex

1223 S.W. Stark St., 1-503-525-0520; www.mcmenamins.com

Plan to spend: $8

Plan your time: 15 minutes in and out; calling ahead helps.

FAKE MEAT AND REAL VEGGIES

Chinatown’s Vegetarian House does more than cook vegetarian Chinese food. It also makes faux-meat Chinese dishes. “Beef” dishes include moo shoo, black bean and orange “beef” made from textured soybean protein, gluten and vegetable fiber. “Chicken” is made from soybean protein and fiber. “Shrimp” is made from Japanese konjak flour, soybean and wheat protein. There are also tofu, noodle and veggie dishes.

Vegetarian House

22 N.W. Fourth Ave., 1-503-274-0160; www.vegetarianhouse.com

Plan to spend: About $10 per entree

Plan your time: 20 minutes in and out; calling ahead helps.

GET BAKED

Sadly, Three Lions Bakery only sells whole cakes, but its tarts, eclairs or brownies are pretty good compromises if you want tasty baked goods with your turkey, ham or roast beef sandwiches.

Three Lions Bakery

506 S.W. Sixth St., 503-224-9255; www.threelionsbakery.com

Three Lions Bakery

854 S.W. Fourth Ave.; 503-274-7016; www.threelionsbakery.com

Plan to spend: $2-$8

Plan your time: 10 minutes in and out.

Ed Murrieta: 253-597-8678 1. Wilf’s Restaurant, 800 N.W. Sixth Ave.

2. Hot Lips Pizza, 210 N.W. 11th Ave.

3. Cupcake Jones, 307 N.W. 10th Ave.

4. Whole Foods, 1210 N.W. Couch St.

5. Sur la Table, 1102 N.W. Couch St.

6. Ringler’s Pub, 1332 W. Burnside St.

7. Ringler’s Annex, 1223 S.W. Stark St.

8. Kenny & Zuke’s, 1038 S.W. Stark St.

9. Clyde Common, 1022 S.W. Stark St.

10. Stumptown Coffee Roasters, 1022 S.W. Stark St.

11. Vegetarian House, 22 N.W. Fourth Ave.

12. Three Lions Bakery, 506 S.W. Sixth St.

13. Three Lions Bakery, 854 S.W. Fourth Ave.