Blue Sky and Daily Bread

Gutted Wonder Bread building

Wild clematis icing the rose of sharon

When I saw the sky through the open roof of the old Wonder Bread building at 641 S Street NW, I just knew I had to snap it as after the building is developed there will be no chance to do that again! It's a big building -- about 98,000 square feet -- that will become stores and offices. I actually looked up the history recently, to find out that the Wonder Bread Factory opened in the early 1900s as Dorsh's White Cross Bakery. Then it was bought by Continental Baking Company in 1936 and used  as a factory for Wonder Bread and Hostess products (Twinkies perhaps!) until they relocated to a larger plant in Philadelphia, closing the DC factory in 1988. When I first moved to BloomingdaleDC I do recall smelling the baking aroma as far away as North Capitol street sometimes and hearing that they gave away "stale" or "overrun" baked goods to anyone who got there at the right time.  Then again, the sky has looked wonderful lately almost every day so I found myself snapping my usual flowers and plants and things, all with the sky in them.   How wonderful is our daily bread of blue sky!

Wonder Bread is Morphing

Just like no one really is supposed to eat that lovely puffy perfect-for-french toast white Wonder bread anymore as our collective taste in bread is moving to whole wheat "healthy" loaves, the building where they used to make it is changing right before our eyes. When I first moved into our neighborhood, you could smell the bread baking from several blocks away.  A delicious sweet aroma that always made me think of buttered toast with jam or some other sandwich deliciousness.  And, I'm not sure if it was every day, but they would give away the 'stale' bread and rolls periodically and you might see a line of people queuing up for these. The building has stood empty for years but now it's being gutted and transformed into something else. I  haven't taken the time to see what the development board nearby says but I'm speculating it will be condos or fancy offices or something. I'm glad they are keeping the brickwork and framework and I'm really wondering ( ha ha, did you get that?) what they will do with the red and blue lettering left behind.

Dinner at the Monocle During Lent

Inside the Monocle

Saturday night I just didn't feel like cooking so Hubster said let's go out for dinner. So, off we trekked to Capitol Hill and found ourselves at the rather dark and clubby looking The Monocle, a restaurant tucked away alongside a parking lot for the U.S. Senate.  Looking at the building you know it's all that's left of what probably used to be hundreds of similar 19th century brick buildings that used to  be on Capitol Hill. I'd been there once before but Hubster hadn't so we had a great time selecting from a menu we hadn't seen much of before. Since I'm not cooking meat over Lent I did allow myself a very juicy and delicious filet mignon steak with a wine sauce that we shared since Hubster only ordered an avocado salad (he too is on some Lenten dietary limitations).  Don't you just hate "avocado salads" where there are only two or three squishy little bits of avocado? This one was nothing like that. His salad included a full sized fresh avocado sliced with lettuce and tomato and a plain oil and vinaigrette and just what he wanted. They also provided us great bread and icy water and good service, not to mention a substantive vodka martin for me and a dark Amstel beer for Hubster. We ordered fresh fruit for dessert but it turned out not to be fresh so when they asked how we liked it we said "it's not fresh!" and they took it off the bill.  I like good food and good service at pricy restaurants, don't you?