Run or Dye and Memorial Day Weekend in DC

You can see in the About Me section, I used to live in DC and I started running because it seems like EVERYONE runs there.  So once a year, I try to schedule in a trip to visit my friends there.  This year I visited over Memorial Day Weekend.  When I arrived on Friday, my friend picked me up from the airport and we immediately went to Old Town Alexandria and had an amazing lunch at a Greek restaurant that I loved. I highly recommend it!

Later that afternoon we went to the packet pick-up for the Run or Dye race, which was taking place on Saturday at RFK Stadium.  In addition to our white cotton t-shirts, you also receive a color packet to use during the race, but my friend decided to invest in a few more color options.

Before color

At the Start Line

My friend's daughter getting colored blue

And our group after the race

The timing of this race was just PERFECT!  It was a fun race that I could participate in with my friend and her family and it got them into the city from the home in the suburbs.  Color runs are a great way for families to participate in an event together, so I would highly recommend trying one near you!

Towards the end of my weekend, I got a cooking lesson from my friend's husband who is a chef.  I wanted to learn how to properly prepare fish (since I love fish but tend to overcook it )and learn a few new recipes for soup.  When all was said and done, I learned how to purchase fresh fish, descale a fish, pinbone a fish, prepare a white fish in multiple ways (fish sticks, fish cakes, fish fillets), and cook a whole fish.  What you see below at the top is Cod and the 2nd plate is Rock Fish. 

The results of my fish cooking lesson

We also made three soups: carrot and ginger, tomato and tarragon, and cauliflower and curry.  For dessert we made honey lavender ice cream, as mentioned in the movie It's Complicated.

I LOVE ethnic food, so my friend and I also took advantage of a Groupon to my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in DC, Meskerem, which is in Adams Morgan.   

If you are going in a group, I recommend ordering the meat or vegetarian platter so that you get to try several entrees.  You typically won't use silverware in an Ethiopian restaurant.  You pick up the food and eat it using the injera bread.

Meat and vegetarian dishes on injera bread

Injera bread

To counteract all of the eating I did, I also ran in my friend's neighborhood once or twice.  The 5-day weekend flew by and before I knew it, I was back in St. Louis but I look forward to my next visit in 2015!