First:  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!!!  Wish I could be there with you.  Love you!!!

I am now done galavanting about the countryside, at least for a couple of weekends.  I am tired.  And ready to stay home.  And plant things.  Like flowers in pots and vegetables in a little garden.  And my clothes are feeling tight.  So it’s time to stay home for a bit.

This weekend was The Color Run, a 5k that my girlfriend, Alison, and I have done the last four years in a row.  It’s messy and fun.  Start and finish is at Seattle Center.  A colored cornstarch based powder is flung at the runners at “color stations” along the route.  At the end, you can choose to enter the color pit….a mass of bodies, loud music and a large stage with people on it throwing packets of color into the audience.  Every few minutes they stage a “color toss,” where everyone opens their packets and flings them into the air.  The colorful dust is…chokeworthy.  We can usually only handle about three tosses before making out way out of the pit.  I did lean over to Alison today as we entered the pit and yelled, “Am I getting old or is the music getting louder?”

This year I had my cell phone sealed in a plastic baggy.  That powder gets everywhere.  The view was a little fuzzy, but I wanted to capture what it looks like when you’re in the pit and that stuff gets tossed.  Thus, I bring you….a color toss:

Are you wheezing, yet?  It’s a bit difficult to breath in all of that, let me tell you. After we had our fill of the pit we made our way up top.  Here’s a color toss from a different angle:

After we’d had our fill we headed back to our hotel to clean up, then headed to Tom Douglas’ Dahlia Lounge.  I love Tom Douglas.  I would like to invite him to dinner.  I wonder if he would come?  I wonder what I would cook for him?

I started with a strawberry basil shrub.  This was my first experience with a shrub and I found it…refreshing.  I may have to experiment this summer.

Alison and I then shared an order of house-made donuts.  They are brought to your table in a paper bag, hot from the frier, shaken in sugary goodness and poured on the plate in front of you.  They were accompanied by a vanilla marscapone spread and some kind of loose jam…tasted like maybe a blackberry or marionberry.  Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

We then shared a mushroom omelet with truffle cheese and chives, served with parmesan potatoes, housemade sausage, bacon, and a buttermilk biscuit.  The biscuit was accompanied by a rhubarb compote.

The parmesan potatoes are amazing.  After I had them the first time I tried to recreate them at home…and failed.  It’s like they’re baked then smashed then fried then yummified.  I don’t know.  Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.  The garlicky flavor is amazing.  And then there are the biscuits.  I’m not normally much of a biscuit person, but I can happily eat these biscuits with nothing on them. They are flaky, buttery…simply amazing.  Try them.  You will not be disappointed. If you want them dressed up, try going to Tom Douglas’ Serious Biscuit.  That’s another treat.  And then there are the pretzels at Brave Horse Tavern.  Actually, it’s not so much the pretzels as the dips.  Pimento-cheddar, smoked peanut butter and bacon, sour cream and crispy bacon.  Oh, those dips.  I would happily spend a weekend eating my way through Tom Douglas restaurants.

Seriously, Tom.  The invitation stands.  I wish I had a compelling, heart-tugging story to share with you that would convince you to come, but the husband and I lead pretty stable, quiet lives.  If you were to come to dinner you wouldn’t even have to bring a coconut cream pie (though it wouldn’t be turned away).  And I could send you home with a cheesecake!  I’m an excellent cook, the wine rack is full and we live on a beautiful piece of property.  If you drink too much you can crash in the guest room.