A holiday-themed week

Work was so busy last week that I had no chance to even think about this blog. Wednesday night, however, was our company party at the House of Sweden on the Potomac River. The copy desk arrived late (since we had to finish the next day's paper first), but we still managed to get some drinks and appetizers and mingle a bit. After the party, some of us went to Martin's in Georgetown for a few more drinks.

Movie and dinner
On Saturday, I saw the British movie "An Education" at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. If you haven't heard of it, you should check it out. The girl, Carey Mulligan, had been touted as a Best Actress contender.

Later, I ate at Jackie's restaurant in Silver Spring for the first time. I had heard a lot about it but didn't know what to expect. It's an old auto garage or warehouse transformed into a restaurant. It has an uncommon atmosphere of exposed ceilings, cement floors and brick combined with bright chairs, cushions and pillows. And, delicious, fancy food. (It doesn't take too much to be "fancy" food for me, since I normally cook for myself or go out for pizza or Chipotle. But the changing menu and food were presented formally, with most entrees costing $18 to $25. It's not pub food.)

Wine and spices
Today was the third D.C. wine club. We had dessert wines and cookies — so sugar overload. We tried a variety of dessert wines including muscat, black muscat, ice wine, Sauternes, cream sherry and a blueberry dessert wine. My favorites were the Sauternes and ice wine, though it reminded me that I don't have a great love for dessert wines in general. (And most of the rest of our group would probably agree with that.)

Tonight I worked on some homemade holiday gifts that required combining some heavenly spices. My kitchen smells amazing right now. Also, in the course of purchasing some of those spices, I realized that Whole Foods has VERY CHEAP spices (compared to other grocery stores such as Giant). I was going to buy a $13 bottle of ground cardamom at Giant. I found a slightly larger bottle (of organic ground cardamom) at Whole Foods for only $5. Does anyone know why that is? Or other basic things that are much cheaper at Whole Foods?