Taking a Bite Out of Our Nation's Capital

The week was fairly standard at the office with a few lunch hour highlights. On Tuesday, we met up  at Farragut Park (a park that is halfway between Kelly and Ben's office) to go to  the "DC Empanada" food truck. We split beef, chicken and pork empanadas and unanimously voted the pork the best.  

Tuesday's culinary highlights continued as we observed National Pancake Day for dinner.  Unfortunately, our sourdough starter had gotten a little funky - so sourdough pancakes were out.   Fortunately, Ben found a great recipe for buttermilk pancakes.

On Friday Kelly got to experience the P.O.R.C food truck. Overall, it brought a lot to the table.  We have been very critical about BBQ in DC, but this food truck provided an above average pulled pork sandwich.

Our friend Paula, formerly of Missouri and currently of Rhode Island, stayed with us Friday night and we spent a busy Saturday out and about in D.C. We stopped by the Botanical Gardens to check out the Orchids exhibit. It was an entire greenhouse full of beautiful orchids.

(Ben offered this kid 10% of all the money he pulled out of the fountain as a finder's fee.)

We wondered through the other four greenhouses including the "jungle", "dessert", "medicinal flowers" and "Hawaii".

(Who knew what cocoa looked like before it gets hot?)

(Kelly is a little suspicious of the bird of paradise.)

Next up was the Portrait Galley. Paula had never been and it is our favorite museum so we are always up for a visit. There was a great exhibit "In Vibrant Color" that included color photographs from the early to middle half of the century. It was interesting to see color pictures of people that you see all the time in black and white.

(Ben contemplating how to get bacon this big.)

With a fair amount of touring already under our belts, we decided that lunch was in order.  We went to the nearby Rosa Mexicano.  We were enticed by the other patron guacamole and the fact that it was apparently somewhat of a signature starter.

(The Original Guacycle.)

It was pretty delicious as was the rest of our meal, particularly the shredded chicken sandwich we had.  Full and rested, we headed over to the MLK and FDR memorials. While Paula looked around, we further discussed our obsession with the cherry blossoms and how excited we are for them to bloom. The trees have buds on them and should be blooming in just a few weeks.

Our final stop for the day was Eastern Market. We looked around, indulged with a canoli and stopped for a cup of coffee before heading back to the apartment.

After a long day of exploring, we took Paula to Union Station so she could catch the red eye train back to Rhode Island.

Sunday had highs and lows. After sleeping in, Ben made biscuits and gravy for brunch. We searched for something to watch on Netflix and settled on Die Hard. Kelly had never seen any of the trilogy. While enjoying a lazy afternoon, we ended up watching all three Die Hard movies which gave each of us the confidence to save the world if called upon.  We also watched most of the final round of The Honda Classic, including Tiger Wood's 62 earning him second place behind Rory McIlroy. Kelly is fond of watching The Honda Classic because she played PGA National, the host course, when she was in high school. After procrastinating all day, we finally set out on a 6 mile training run to the Washington Monument. It was a bit chilly, but overall a great night for a run.  The dogs were especially happy to go on the run.

(Dex only wished we would have run farther.)

And finally, this is the first installment of a new feature we will call "license plate of the week" - though it will probably not appear every week.