Photo Essay of Tuesday Lunchtime in DownTown DC

Lining up for lunch at the food truck

Lunch time I had an errand and went across Farragut Square to get a sandwich and some cookies for our staff meeting. Somehow I just knew it was going to  be a great day for photos as the park was filled with people eating their lunch, buying their lunch and chatting and just generally enjoying the sun. So I snapped a half dozen photos as I thought this captured downtown Washington DC in the summer very well. From the pigeons, gnarly trees, food trucks and flowers, it all seemed youthful and joyful and I wished I could have spent more of my day outside.

Pigeons ready to pounce

Interesting gnarly tree

View from K Street across the park

Pansies hanging in the  balance?

View towards the White House over Adm Farraguts Shoulder

Diagonal path across Farragut Square park

Christmas Eve Cookies

The very pretty twin girls who live on our street came by on Christmas Eve day to give us a plate of delicious cookies they had made with their mother. They were accompanied by their dad and carried in a plate full of marvelous goodies --  English toffee crunch brownies, gingerbread spice cookies, sugary Christmas tree cookies and chocolate mint biscuits. They were the best cookies to have with either a cup of milk or a glass of white wine! I hadn't got around to making any sweets to nibble on throughout the Christmas holidays -- except for apple jelly and English plum pudding -- so it was wonderful to receive this gift. We've known these girls since they were three years old and now they are in college so it's wonderful to see what lovely young women they've turned out to be. Smart and pretty and know how to make cookies! Isn't that what girls should be! Thank God for girls who bring sweet gifts on Christmas Eve!

Cropping the Basil

Late this summer I planted some basil seeds that someone had given me from their garden and by the end of September I had a good yield. Here's a photo of these little plants that I just harvested before they flowered.  After washing them and brushing off any strange looking yard bits, I pulled the leaves off and put them on paper towels on a cooking sheet to dry them. To speed the process I put them in the oven after I had finished cooking dinner, and so they slowly dried out overnight.  I noticed the next evening -- when I went to cook dinner again in the oven -- that the leaves were not completely dry, so I put them back in the oven overnight for another drying session (that is, after the oven was turned off!).  By the third day they were nice and dry and I could crumble them into a sterilized dry jar. So now I have home grown basil to cook with.  I threw some of the leaves into a soup the other day and when we next make pizza you know I'm going to use these then! There's something very satisfying about growing your own stuff and eating it! Praise the Lord for warm ovens and green basil!

Side Trip to Philly, Dinner in the Dining Car

View from the diner window

Lamp over each booth

On our way back from visiting our son in Pennsylvania, we occasionally stop at a diner, The Dining Car, for a quiet meal and to avoid the local traffic that clogs up Route 95 during the dinner hour. One of the reasons we like to eat here is that the food is edible and cheap, it seems clean, and the service is quick and they serve just about anything you might want in a diner. It's also barely a stone's throw from the main road so we don't feel like we are getting too far off our way and of course, it has lots of parking and you can tell from the car number plates that it's a local favorite. I can get a nice martini with my Cobb salad or french fries and it seems like the portions are not too large and not too small. My husband can get his onion soup too and he will settle for a Pepsi there, although he'll give the waitress a hard time about it being a non-Coke establishment. The customers don't look like customers in DC restaurants:  there's lots of groups of older people eating together, families with teen kids, twosomes of 60 year old guys, or trios of women in their 70s eating together so the ambiance doesn't feel like the capital city.  It makes me realize how the DC Demographic is quite different comparatively.  What's nice is the decor has some very nice deco elements too, such as in the lamps and the overall appearance of the building. We've also gotten our favorite BLTs and bought cookies in the bakery shop on our way out. So you can see, this is a very useful place for us to go on our travels.100 miles away from the capital city and you are in another part of God's country.  As it turns out, this diner is featured in Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip, a book listed on Amazon.com!  Who knew! I never read it but I hope the author gave them a good grade!