SkyWatch Friday: Before the Skies of November Turned Gloomy

Around here November's been a month of contrasts. It began with days bookended by colorful sunrises and sunsets with sunny shirt-sleeve weather in between ~ more reminiscent of mid-September than of November. Then it suddenly morphed into a January-like monster, with a bitter, snowy week of leaden skies, single digit highs, subzero lows, and wind chills too nasty to mention on a family-friendly blog. 

Since much of this week was spent finishing my fall cleaning, curled up in front of the fireplace watching Netflix or reading, and trying out new (and delicious!) curry, mushroom soup, chili, and muffin recipes rather than risking frost bite to photograph a lot of nothing, I'm sharing some of those colorful sunrise and sunset photos I took during the balmy first week of this month but didn't have time to post last Friday. And with no time today to do anything other than slightly crop a couple of them and reduce their file sizes, these are SOOC. Enjoy! 

Sunrise, Nov 1

The early morning clouds didn't linger, but provided a dramatic dawn sky

Sunrise, Nov 2

The dawn sky looked none too happy about Daylight Saving Time ending

We get fewer dramatic sunsets here than we do sunrises, but when we do get one it's a doozy. This series of photos, taken from our front porch and posted here in the order in which I took them, occurred over just a two-minute period…

Sunset, Nov 6...

And finishing up the week with another sunrise, this one taken with our iPad…

Sunrise, Nov 8

Wishing you a week of beautiful skies wherever you are…

SkyWatch Friday: Thunderstorms & Toadstools

I've only got a couple of sky photos from this week, so I thought I'd also toss in a couple of photos of some very weird mushroom/toadstool interlopers I found in our front flower bed this morning and see if anyone out there might help me identify them. I've never seen anything like them growing here before, and they seemed to spring up out of nowhere during our overnight thunderstorms (magic mushrooms, maybe?) Anyway, I thought "Thunderstorms and Toadstools" was a much nicer title than "Mushroom Clouds," though I confess that was the first title that popped into my head! :-)

It's been a week of unsettled weather, to say the least, and unusually humid for our usually dry climate. I took this first photo Wednesday evening as the sun was going down behind the mounting storm clouds - I thought the contrast of the dark clouds against the sunlit blue sky was striking. I suppose those three white streaks of varying widths are crepuscular rays, but they didn't look like any sunbeams I'd ever seen before...

After several days of flirting with and skirting our area (but wreaking havoc in neighboring ones, as well as with my sinuses!), last evening the thunderstorms got down to business. We were surrounded by severe thunderstorms that were trouncing those in their path with large hail, high winds, heavy rains, and a lot of lightning, and we were under a severe thunderstorm watch all evening. I'm sure it was thanks to the fact that BW and I ran our Defcon 5 Storm Drill late that afternoon - bringing everything inside that wasn't actually rooted in the soil - that all we ended up getting were some breezes, gentle rain, enough thunder to make our dog Tess nervous, and an amazing lightning show in every direction. Oh, and these very ominous skies...

The little white specks are raindrops, lit up by my camera's flash

Hey, it's Friday. There are skies. You know the drill… 

Now about those toadstools. There were about half a dozen of them hiding beneath the foliage of one of our violas and one of our bergamot plants. They were growing at the very base of the plants, in a couple of cases so entwined with the plant stems and roots that it was hard to extricate them without digging up part of the flowers. I was just weeding the flower bed yesterday and swear they weren't there then! 

Here are the two largest ones, which measured about 3" tall and a little over 4" wide...

Shown with one of my beloved Merrell Mix Master Glides for scale! :-)

And here is what their stems and gills look like (you can see a stem of the bergamot plant, whose roots were entwined with the toadstool)... 

So, anyone know which agaric (gilled mushroom) these might be? I tossed them, of course, but it would be a shame if it turned out they were edible, especially since we're planning to make this for dinner tomorrow! :-)

Have a great weekend, everyone, and Happy Canada Day to our neighbors to the north on Tuesday, eh? 

Birthday Boy, Blooming Blossoms, Big News!

I may not have been blogging lately, but I have been gathering blog fodder! And now I finally have an opportunity to start sharing from my stack o'goodies!

The first bit of news (not the Big News of this post's title, that's coming up in a bit) and main reason for my absence lately is that BW had arthroscopic shoulder surgery on May 15. He had a large, hook-shaped bone spur in the shoulder joint that had badly damaged the bursa and was fraying the rotator cuff - though fortunately the tendon had not yet torn. They removed the spur along with most of his bursa (which will regenerate). 

Other than having wisdom teeth pulled, this was BW's first surgery and he was NOT impressed. The anesthesia really did a number on him and it took him a couple of days to recover from it. He had to be at the hospital at 6:30am and we thought he'd be home by lunch, but they weren't able to release him until 4:30 - and even then, he was still a pretty sick and stoned puppy. He was also unable to do anything with his right hand (and of course he's right-handed) for a couple of weeks, which made me one busy woman! I think BW missed being able to cook most of all, while I seriously missed his ability to mow! :-) He goes to PT three times a week and does an hour of strengthening and mobility exercises at home on the other days, and though he's still limited in what he can do and still experiences pain (especially after a session with the "physical terrorists"), his recovery is going well and he's able to do a lot more now. Hence my ability to finally blog a bit! :-) Because of the physically strenuous duties of his job as a UPS man, he won't be released to return to work until at least July 7th - and he starts 2 weeks of vacation the next day! So I'm getting to enjoy the daily pleasure of his company, and staying up late watching Netflix is making us feel like kids on summer vacation! :-) In fact, the surgery and time off for recovery gave him time to reflect on the wear and tear his job of 23+ years has on his body, our financial situation, and our priorities - and he decided to retire on July 31st! So at most he has nine working days left. He can hardly wait to start using this clock! :-)

It will really hit home when Christmas rolls around. I was not terribly surprised by his decision - last Christmas at UPS was an especially grueling one, and we were both pretty sure he didn't have another one left in him. Since he worked as a part time driver at Christmas for two years before going full-time, this will be the first year of our marriage that he won't be a UPS man at Christmas (except for one year when he was in USAF Reserve training in Texas and didn't make it home to Wyoming till Christmas Eve!) So I anticipate finally getting to experience a very different sort of Santa than the one I've gotten used to…

As if all that weren't enough, yesterday was BW's 55th birthday. Although we'd had more exciting plans for it, the day was rainy and windy, he had a PT appointment that was particularly painful, and I was down and out with a headache. So it was a subdued celebration (we'll make it up this weekend), that wouldn't have amounted to much of anything were it not for our neighbor Carol bringing him chocolate zucchini muffins (which she made with pumpkin instead of zucchini, because only Carol would be brave enough to make a recipe in spite of lacking the main ingredient! lol) with the frosting from this recipe, and a festive cupcake balloon!...

The eternally boyish BW!

Like I said. :-) He's almost always this happy, too - when it's not Christmas! lol

Loved the adorable silicone cupcake cups Carol used! 

Despite having feet the cupcakes couldn't outrun us and were a memory by 1pm. :-)

And in non-BW news, it's been an incredible spring for flowers! We never got a typical big spring snow that so often wrecks the tender buds, and maybe because of that the flowering trees and bushes have been the most prolific, perfumed and pretty we've ever seen! We also got lucky - we may not have had a big snow, but we did have a very destructive storm in late May that clocked wind speeds of 75mph, but it arrived just after the peak of the flowering crabapples (less than a week after I took the photos below) and just before our roses bloomed! Here's how our beautiful rosebush looks this year, with more than half its blooms still yet to open when I took this...

Here's a neighbor's amazing crabapple tree, looking dressed for a wedding...

Another neighbor's crabapple, so pretty in pink (how I wish these were scratch-n-sniff, the beautiful fragrance all up and down our streets was heady stuff!)...

And the pinkest crabapple of all, this one (of several) in front of Sheridan Physical Therapy where BW has his sessions...

There are several more blog-worthy goodies left in my stack to share, so I hope to get more blogging done this week between planting more flowers, mowing more lawn, running more errands, and several more appointments! I will definitely post at least a SkyWatch Friday post if nothing else… so stay tuned, and have a great weekend!

AdventureJo's Sheridan Adventure :-)

At long last, we're enjoying some lovely Autumn weather all week before we get belted with more cold and snow on Monday, but at least the cozy days will be more conducive to working on my annual Quilt Show posts! 

Talk of weather, quilt shows and quilts is a perfect introduction to a few of the highlights of Joanne's fun 5-day visit from Michigan a couple of weeks ago. I met Jo (whom some of you know as "AdventureJo" in the comments) in AFROTC at the University of New Hampshire our junior year, so we've known each other for *gulp* 31 years. Not possible! But I have proof of how young we once were...

Me helping pin on Jo's new 2nd Lieutenant bars on May 19, 1984 ~ 

the day we were commissioned and graduated. (Yo Jo, who's the guy?)

I wasn't even wearing my own rank yet, but eventually got it after 

my pitiful parents finally quit arguing over where on the epaulet it should go! 

Dad: "I've been a Marine for 34 years, I think I know where the rank goes!"

Mom: "And I've been sewing for 30 years, I think I know what an inch looks like!"

Jo ~ an award-winning and prolific quilter, member of multiple quilt guilds, teacher of quilting workshops, and aspiring future quilt show judge ~ always enjoys my posts of our library's annual quilt show. So this year she timed her visit to coincide with it so she could see it in person, and those photos will be my next posts. But that doesn't mean this post won't have a quilt or two in it! In fact, let's start with the generous housewarming gift Joanne made and gave to us when she arrived, a lovely wall-hanging from a pattern by my favorite quilt artist and designer, McKenna Ryan (hey, just because I can't quilt a stitch doesn't mean I can't have a favorite quilt designer!) :-) This block is from McKenna's "Faith Hope Love" quilt pattern...

We love the colors Jo chose, no easy task for someone who only had photos of our new house on this blog to go by! We found a few perfect spots for it, eventually choosing a great spot in our upstairs hallway where it's out of the sunlight but is enjoyed every time anyone goes upstairs. (Jo also brought me my birthday gift which she'd created and which deserves a post of its own once I've got it framed and displayed! It's SO PRETTY!)

Though we'd hoped for more nice days than cozy ones since Jo and I both love to go for long walks and had lots of exploring planned, we ended up with some truly abominable weather. So while that was great for all the cooking, baking and Netflix-watching we enjoyed, we had to squeeze in some bundled-up outings between the rain, snow and wind. We went to the quilt show on Jo's first full day here, and afterward walked over to Dragonfly Cottage (whose neighborhood has changed mightily since we lived there, with a house now crammed onto every tiny lot!) and Whitney Commons, across from the library, where Jo posed with Mr. Whitney himself and some fellow book-lovers...

Jo looks delighted because she'd discovered the bronze book her little buddy is holding actually contained some "writing" in it. (The pages were a bitch to turn, though!) ;-)

Fortunately, our nicest day fell on Saturday when BW could join us on some sightseeing around town, an exploration of Sheridan's beautiful and historic cemetery, and a nice long walk to downtown Sheridan with the girls, photographed here by their Auntie Jo during a pit stop in Kendrick Park...

L-R: Josie, Willow, and Tessa. 
Josie and Tess asked me to assure you that they are fluffy rather than fat, 
plus the camera adds ten pounds. Which is 70 pounds in dog weight. :-)

Though most of Sunday was cold and windy with another winter storm moving in, the day began with crisply cold sunshine, so Jo and I took the girls for an early long walk through a lovely neighborhood. Fortunately, Jo had brought her camera and so was able to capture this handsome mule deer buck's photo when I noticed him watching us from a front yard...

I love that she captured his pluming breath in the frosty air!

Not only did our new friend pose this way very patiently for several photos, he followed us when we turned down an adjacent cul-de-sac, bounding ahead and posing for Jo again, this time with the scenic backdrop of the Big Horns behind him (but the lighting was much better in this photo)! This guy's got star quality and needs an agent! :-)

Despite our recent snows, sub-freezing temps, and no sprinkler action since Labor Day, our grass continues to grow and was in need of mowing. At home, Jo works out every day and so had requested a chance to take our reel mower for a spin for the workout it provides. I'd be a terrible hostess if I'd robbed her of the joy, don't you think? :-) So after we got home from our walk, she mowed while I did the edging and photography. She did a great job, but I must say after BW and my summer of very sweaty mowing, it looked odd to see her doing it bundled up in winter coat and gloves! (See those clouds hovering low against the mountains? That was our next wintery storm moving in!)

When the weather drove us indoors and we weren't busy catching up, watching several movies and the first few episodes of Breaking Bad (got Jo hooked on both it and Pinterest during her stay, so we may have seen the last of her online for a while, LOL), we were cooking, baking, and eating. Jo treated us to lunch at the Good Earth Food Co-op's deli in Billings the day we picked her up at the airport, me to a lunch of delicious vegan burritos at Oliva's after the quilt show, and BW and me to a dinner of vegan fajitas at our other favorite restaurant in town, Las Delicias. Yum! But the rest of the time we cooked. Boy did we cook! And bake, because Jo and BW both have major sweet teeth! :-)

Before she came, I'd made Confetti Muffins, Hearty Spiced Cocoa Muffins, and Banana Date Walnut Muffins (they all freeze splendidly), which we snarfed on a daily basis. BW had made chocolate sorbetto, and whipped up a batch of Chunky Apple Oatmeal Pancakes on Saturday morning. Jo and I also made a batch of Pecan Leprechaun Shillelaghs (so what if it's October?) and Chocolate Pudding Cake, and I made a batch of Banana Chia Pudding.

When we weren't eating sweets (like, when we were sleeping, lol) we snacked on fresh fruit, homemade kale chips (torn kale leaves spritzed with tamari, sprinkled with garlic powder, a bit of cayenne, and a liberal amount of nutritional yeast and dehydrated at 160ºF for a few hours till crispy), two kinds of pumpkin hummus, and Smoky-Cheezy Walnut Spread. For our main meals we enjoyed Tempeh Salad sandwiches, Cadry's Lemony Baked Tofu with Rosemary (always a huge hit!), steamed kale with walnut dressing, basmati rice and Roasted Delicata Squash with Rosemary "fries" (subbing No-Oil Oil for olive oil), "Weenies and Gravy" with BW's homemade boule, super-deluxe tossed salads, and even an early Thanksgiving dinner - the only meal any of us photographed! Good thing Jo thought to grab her camera or I wouldn't even have it to share...

Quinoa & Red Lentil Cutlets, butternut squash, smashed organic red potatoes with 

Road's End Organics Shiitake Mushroom gravy, organic peas, BW's basic boule, Girasole's Sangiovese wine for me and Rogue Ales Mocha Porter for BW and Joanne.

Though it goes without saying that we never went hungry, we all wished we'd had time to make even more dishes for her to try. So much yummy vegan food, so little time! (At least we sent Jo home with lots of recipes!)

And last but not least... I know I've yet to share any upstairs photos of our new house (now just over a year old), where the bedrooms are located. One reason is that Jo had said she wanted to see it in person before seeing photos of it, so now that she's gotten to do that here's a photo of the guest room...

I took some photos of the guest bathroom too, but wasn't satisfied with them so will make another attempt next time I think of it. 

The quilt on the bed (LL Bean's "Timeless Floral Quilt") provides a great segue to the first of this year's quilt show posts, coming up next and hopefully soon(ish!) Thanks so much again for making the trip out here to see us, Jo!

Petite Pears

Happy weekend, everybody! BW and I swear this past week had an extra day in it. If only the weekend would, too! :-)

Anyway, just popping in with a quick update. We had a fun visit with Joanne, and photos from the quilt show and other highlights of her visit will probably be my next posts (need to snag a few pics from Jo's camera to add, she got some good ones!) But for now I wanted to share this photo of the adorable wee pears that Jackie and Al brought us yesterday (just a very small sampling of the huge bag full she brought!) They're so sweet! No really - they're so sweet! And juicy! A lot of flavor packed into a very petite package...

I threw the penny on the plate for size comparison - the pears are less than an inch and a half wide. We've been munching on them as snacks, but I plan to use most of them in batches of Res-pear-ation Sauce and Ginger Cinnamon Fruit Salad. (If only Jackie and Al had a pomegranate tree, too!) :-)

And speaking of Jackie and Al and their trees, when she brought over the pears I asked her how their wounded maple tree was faring. She said none of the leaves have died - in fact, the leaves on the splinted branches were turning fall colors just like the leaves on the rest of the tree! They won't really know till spring if their unorthodox first aid method worked, but so far, so good. :-)

Today is a beauty (unlike most of our weather lately), so we plan to do some outdoor chores and take the girls on a long walk on a section of Sheridan's wonderful Pathways System we haven't explored yet. Fun stuff! Hope you're having fun too! :-)

PNW Road Trip: Day 2 - Wanapum-Lymans-Seattle

Welcome to Day #2 of our road trip from Sheridan, WY to the PNW!

Ah, road signs... we adored many things about Washington State, but their road signage wasn't one of them. When it came to giving an adequate heads up or marking street names, WA seems to follow what my college communications professor called The COIK Principle: "COIK" = "Clear Only If Known." And since it was all new territory to us and definitely not known, and we don't have GPS, we wore more baffled looks and executed more bat turns than we'd have liked! (It wasn't just Washington, we had issues with Missoula, too! And while I'm the first to admit I have no sense of direction, BW was a highly trained and skilled USAF navigator so I'm pretty sure it wasn't our fault). :-)

Anyway, our whining about Washington's inadequate signs began when we crossed the state line from Idaho the day before. I'd intended to get a photo of it like I did the giant welcoming Idaho sign, but we got a foreshadowing of things to come when we saw the barely noticeable (and completely unphotographable) "entering Washington" sign. It was on the left side in the median (who puts them there on a 70mph Interstate?) and might - MIGHT - have measured 18"x24". Washington was far more friendly and welcoming than their official welcoming sign would lead one to believe!

But the little town of George (get it? I love that!) did a much better job 150 miles later...

Frankly, it wasn't till George's exit sign that I realized the highway number background

was George Washington's profile instead of just a random blob! :-)

I also thought their water tower was clever in its simplicity and clarity (and I like to think I know a good SkyWatch candidate when I see one, lol)...

Or when I see another one! ;-) ...

Wind farm near the Columbia River

Our friend Andrea in Seattle sent me an email the day before we left home that suggested "stopping at the Columbia River Gorge in Eastern WA. It's kind of a rest stop (with no facilities) but it is very beautiful to walk the paths leading to the cliffs overlooking the river. You have to actually walk down, not just look from the parking area. The vegetation is more like what you'd expect in New Mexico than Wash. — very desert-like and beautiful. I don't think you can access the area on your way home so try to stop. It's worth it!"

And so we did, and she was right! These next few photos are from our 30-minute stopover overlooking the Columbia River and Gingko Petrified Forest/Wanapum State Parks in the Wanapum Recreational Area. We were glad Andrea told us about it, otherwise we'd have driven right past the turnoff to it (I doubt I need to mention how discretely it was marked)...

The informational sign at this spot identified the winding dirt road below as a remnant of an early day "post road," the pre-railroad dirt (and later macadam) roads built for the distribution of US mail, and went on to say, "The first roads in this area were constructed in about 1918 and followed the contour of the hillside down to a ferry landing." This road served until 1930, when an improved highway was constructed.

And do you know what this is?...

Why, a fork in the road, of course! Every road trip comes upon one eventually. ;-)
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

It was still morning but already getting to be hot and hazy, yet I still think this was a lovely scene looking down the Columbia River past the Vantage Bridge (which we crossed shortly after resuming our trip)...

The Columbia, meanwhile, flows on past Wanapum State Park, Yakima Training Center, and then winds around the notorious DOE Hanford Site where dreadful things threaten it, but thankfully devoted people are working diligently to protect it. 

Speaking of devoted people working diligently to protect what's important... we stopped in Ellensburg for a wonderful visit (and delicious lunch) with our friends Howard and Willow Jeane Lyman...

We've known Howard and Willow Jeane since August 2000 when we met them through our neighbor Vistara, who's known them for decades from their mutual hometown of Great Falls, MT. The day we met and spoke to Howard is the day we went vegan, so how appropriate that I'm getting to post this on the first day of our "veganniversary" month! :-)

Howard and Willow Jeane are not only wonderful people and generous hosts, they also have a delightful home and garden that we really enjoyed getting to see. Willow Jeane is an extremely talented and prolific quilter (as is her daughter Laura, who owns a huge quilt shop in Billings, MT), so I wasn't surprised to see that she has a fantastic and colorful quilting room which I photographed not only for this post but also for my friend Jo (aka AdventureJo), also a quilter extraordinaire...

Willow Jeane's impressive "fabric stash"

Note her prize ribbons (probably only a small sampling!), and her ironing board cover, because here's a closeup of the same fabric, designed by her local quilt guild and also used for her sewing machine cover...

The ladies all represent the guild members, with words and phrases that have personal meaning to them. Of course, the words "Road Trip" jumped right out at me! :-)

This gorgeous quilt, which rightfully has pride of place in the Lyman's living room, took Willow Jeane about 2 years to complete, though she said she set it aside from time to time when she "got sick of it." I understand, I've got cross stitch projects like that. Heck sometimes this blog is like that! :-) ...

Here's the beautiful spread that Willow Jeane and her sister (who was there on her annual summer visit from Great Falls) had prepared for us! Lots of local organic produce - including two varieties of heirloom tomatoes - from the Ellensburg Farmer's Market, lemon-blueberry scones with homemade preserves, breakfast casserole, and crispy hash browns. Need I say it was all incredibly delicious? Didn't think so...

Willow Jeane was kind enough to share her recipes for the lemon-blueberry scones and breakfast casserole (pictured below on the left), both of which you'll find here. She also passed along her great tip for putting the crispy "brown" in oil-free hashbrowns (pictured on the right): Grate cooked & cooled potatoes. Toss with onion granules and bake on parchment paper for an hour or so. It's the onion granules that brown so you need to cover the potatoes well...

We filled our plates (with the first round of helpings!) and took them outside to dine al fresco under their shady Wisteria and Virginia Creeper-covered arbor (a bit of which is visible on the right) in their lush and lovely back yard they created from bare dirt and rock since moving here seven years ago...

I loved this beautiful suncatcher mobile under the arbor, made by a local artist from found bits of glass and a piece of driftwood...

All good things must end, so after a very fun visit we had to grudgingly depart and finish our drive to Seattle, where we planned to stock up on Remedy Teas (which I'm addicted to thanks to gifts of it from my friend Rose!), check into our hotel, and then meet our friend Mike for some fun activities (like a ride on the Seattle Great Wheel) before our 6:30 dinner reservations at Sutra. But we left the Lyman's an hour later than we'd planned, and shortly afterward got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic driving through the Cascades at an average of 2mph (when it moved at all). So instead of arriving in Seattle at 3pm, we barely made it in time to grab the tea, check into the hotel and make it to the restaurant on time. Such a bummer, especially since it was the only time we were going to get to spend with Mike, whom we hadn't seen since he stayed with us during his move from Portland, ME to Seattle 10 years ago! Oh well, all you can do (besides cuss the traffic jam, which I did impressively) is roll with it. At least the scenery was even more impressive than my cussing! :-)

On our way to our whirlwind stop at Remedy Teas, I got my first glimpse of the iconic Space Needle and insisted that BW detour a block and stop so I could get this photo - dinner reservations be damned!...

I'm smitten with the Space Needle, so you'll be seeing much more of it in the next posts!

We stayed at the Watertown Inn, which was wonderfully located and surprisingly affordable (thanks in no small part to their generous military discount), not to mention clean and comfortable, friendly and attractive...

But the best part was our room's awesome views!...

Seattle's skyline, with the Space Needle on the right

and Mt. Rainier (taken through our window at dawn the next day with my telephoto)

We had a few minutes to gape out the windows and snap the photos, hurl water on our faces and toothpaste at our teeth, and then it was off to meet with Mike - who'd been parked outside patiently waiting for us - and zip off to Sutra...

BW and Mike with their biggest fan. *snork*

Sutra's pre-set five-course gourmet vegan dinner menu, whose content and pricing varies daily, was a relatively extravagant ($40 per person + tax and tip) experience that interested BW more than it did me. As a simple woman with more frugal dining habits, I'd had my heart set on eating at PizzaPi for years - since Mike used to live just down the block from it and would torment me with emails about it - but since Sutra gets rave reviews and is a very popular and pretty unique dining experience, when Mike suggested it for dinner that night we agreed.

Sutra is a very small place. Only open for dinner and with just 1-2 seatings a night, reservations are pretty much mandatory and they turn people away on a regular basis. Their web site says they can comfortably accommodate 35, but we take issue with the "comfortably" part. In their defense, it was 92º in Seattle that day, which doesn't happen often and so they weren't equipped for it. No a/c, no windows that open, and that fan you see in the photo with BW and Mike? Just a prop, really - the door was closed when everyone was seated and there were no fans operating that we could see or feel. And it didn't help that they served us warm water! The place was filled to capacity and we were squeezed into a tiny table in the far back corner right near the kitchen, which is open to the dining area as you can see from this photo I took from my seat... 

Hot as it was where I was sitting, I can't imagine working over that hot stove!

The dining room has high ceilings and hardwood floors, so when it's filled with the noise of chattering diners, the extraneous background music, and the bang and clatter of the kitchen, the acoustics are awful. We had to strain to hear each other and make ourselves heard over the din. Add to that the stifling heat, warm water and cramped seating, and it wore us out. So, low marks from us for ambience and comfort, at least on a hot summer evening.

As for the food... 

All the dishes were creative, interesting, beautifully plated and very tasty medleys of textures, colors and flavors. We love that it's all vegan (of course), organic and local, and prepared fresh daily. 

In the interest of space, I created a collage of the meal's five courses. But those of you who enjoy oogling food porn (and you know who you are!) can click on each course title for the larger version. I've also typed up that night's menu verbatim, but please don't ask me what most of these ingredients are (e.g. shunkyo radish, scape, urfa, aprium, mofongo), for I was clueless in Seattle. nyuck-nyuck!...

Tonight's Menu

First & Second Course (plated together)

English Pea-Hempcream-Yuzu Soup served aside a Salad of Frisee-Shunkyo Radish-Pickled Scape-Sonata Cherry & Candied Sunflower with a Lemon Balm Dressing

Third Course

Miso-Urfa Biber-Zucchini-Tokyo Turnip "Lasagna" with Grilled Aprium and a 

Sea Bean-Arame-Shiso Slaw finished with Truffle Oil and a Balsamic Reduction

Fourth Course

Fava Bean & Fig Roasted Cauliflower-Spinach-Parsley Mofongo with Cashew Cheese Stuffed Grey Morel, a Chile-Saffron-Saskatoon Sauce & Fried Caper Berry

Fifth Course

Pistachio Brittle Crusted Cacao-Coconut-Rose Tort and Fresh Strawberry Blueberry

Sounds pretentious (or elegant, depending on your perspective) as all get-out, doesn't it? (But I'm sorry, am I the only one who can never hear "fava bean" without immediately thinking of Hannibal Lecter?!) Anyway, point is it was all mighty tasty, but my favorites were absolutely the meal's bookends - the soup and dessert. That soup may not look like much, but it was the best soup I've ever had! We all agreed. (Which is quite an accomplishment on the chef's part, because who wants soup when it's 125º??) I want to weep when I think that I'll probably never get to taste it again - if only they'd ship me a barrel of it every month! (Or at least share the recipe!) The dessert, subbed with blueberries when it was discovered the strawberries had sold out, was as amazing as it looks and sounds. I can't imagine it tasting any better with the strawberries. So, high marks from us for the food, very high marks for the dessert, and stratospheric marks for the soup! 

After dinner Mike took us on a little tour of the neighborhoods between Sutra and the Watertown Inn before dropping us off there at 9pm, with promises from all of us that we won't let another decade go by before we get together again! We got back to our room in time to enjoy seeing the city lights all aglow as full darkness fell, but since we had another very full day ahead of us we crashed shortly thereafter. So I'm afraid the only scenes of Seattle nightlife you're going to get from me is the pretty neon mural in the hotel lobby! :-)

To view skies and skylines by day and by night, 

you know where to go!...

Happy Birthday wishes to you on Sunday, AdventureJo! :-)

Other PNW Road Trip Posts:

Day #1, Part 1: Butte

Day #1, Part 2: Missoula-Idaho-Spokane
Day #3, Part 1: Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass