Back in the UK.
Blog-mind filled with unwritten posts.
Like that Tuesday in Washington DC.
We’d been on the Amtrak train since 5.30am Sunday morning
– passed Gallup and our Dine (Navajo) friends (another blog to come)
– woke that morning in Kansas station where I stretched my legs in the light and sun
– ate three meals a day in the dining car and watched Amerika‘s gigantic land roll by.
Planned to do the tourist thing at Washington DC.
Its railway station heralded grandeur.
But by the time we reached our hostel, we were exhausted.
After two days of train-rocking, all we wanted was stillness.
A night-in.
What a night-in!
Turned out we were in the funkiest hostel in the funkiest part of town.
On a empty parking lot, surrounded by modern neighbours, the 19th century wood-panelled brick house with sash windows (first sash windows in six weeks of US travel!) that had belonged to the National Advancement of Colored People.
To add to the hostel’s homeliness, a shared (modern, paint-white) kitchen.
A good place for gossip: a TV journalist showed us a picture on his phone of David Cameron’s visit that day to the White House.
While cooking my staple stand-by, brown rice, I found a unopened packet of interesting Indian spices and spinach from Trader Joe’s. A previous guest had labelled it: “to share”.
I debated with myself: was it selfish or unselfish to use it?
A young Danish guest urged me to. He said I reminded him of his mother, also a brown rice ex-hippy. (And like my children would have done, encouraging me to think of myself).
Enter the hostel manager, Kevin, who turned out to be a would-be blogger for the hostel (and I about to give a social media workshop when I got back to the UK) and into real food.
So we shared the brown rice and spicy spinach, and Kevin invented a crunchy-soft topping of avocado and peanut butter. Like most home concoctions, its looks belie its taste.
Since arriving in the US, six weeks before, I had been watching reality TV show, Top Chef DC, marvelling how the US, as mired as the UK in obesity and junk food, is as obsessed as the UK with food on TV.
Now I was in the foodie capital, eating the kind of spontaneous, messy, healthy, tasty concoction I would eat at home.
And here’s a picture of my bowl of porridge the next morning – real-life reality food, and my take on Top Chef DC.
Thank you, Capital View.
Real Food Lover 