So much busyness!!!

I have officially entered “moving” mode and haven’t been buying anything that I’m going to have to move later.  I’m also making an effort to eat up some canned goods so that I won’t have to carry those when I move as well.  I made a vegetable pumpkin soup a few days ago, but I hate to even link to the recipe because I changed it so significantly it’s hardly the same recipe.  I didn’t have turnips or rutabaga but I had lots of cabbage, so I put in about three times the recommended amount of cabbage and no turnips or rutabaga.  I also had way more than two zucchini (more like 8 zucchini) so I chopped them all up and threw them in.  (That’s the beauty of soup, right?  You can throw in whatever you want.)  Likewise I didn’t have a pumpkin, so I used canned pumpkin.  (I realize that kind of wrecked the presentation aspect, but it also made preparation significantly easier.)  I also didn’t put any sausage in and put extra chopped up parsley in (as much as I had).  It turned out ok.  Just ok.  Not every recipe can be a winner.  And quite frankly as much as I modified this recipe, the recipe itself might not be the problem.  Ultimately if you throw an entire cabbage and 8 zucchini into a soup pot, you deserve what you get.  🙂  A day or two after I made it, I added some pumpkin pie spice, cayenne pepper, and cumin seed which actually helped it a TON.  So if any of you try the recipe on your own, definitely put in those three spices to taste.  I’m getting a lot better at modifying recipes apparently… I used to feel like I had to follow them to the letter.  🙂

Today I’m planning on making Sausage, Zucchini and Two Pepper Pasta for Mike (except with extra peppers in place of the mushrooms).  I’m also planning on making a green bean fennel dish because I have both green beans and fennel to use up.  🙂

Last Thursday night Mike and I went to Paddy Coynes for dinner and to decide what to do about a wedding.  (We have seriously waffled back and forth between so many ideas that it has stopped being funny and has just become distressing.)  It was a relaxing time, and we had a table in the middle of the restaurant so we felt very connected to the rest of the restaurant.  We said hello to our favorite bartender who was working.  Paddy Coynes is definitely one of the (few)  things I will miss about South Lake Union.

So, anyway.  About the wedding!  We’ve decided to go with the ultra simple Seattle justice-of-the-peace type wedding with no guests.  We’ll probably have a dinner the next time we’re in Michigan, and we’ll invite family and close friends to that, but it’s looking like it will be a lot of work and expense to get anything (even a small wedding) coordinated in the next couple of months.  Since I know there are family and friends who did want to see the ceremony, we are going to have Mike’s friend from work who’s a pro photographer take wedding pictures.  He’ll provide a great photographic memory of everything, and we’ll write blog posts about the event itself.  🙂

Things have been very crazily busy lately.  Mike and I are trying to coordinate moving and getting a car and figuring out how to combine our possessions.  For instance, do we really need two of all of our kitchen tools?  Probably not.  And then there are those things that I bought for Mike and never bought for myself, so I’ll now have access to them.  Like the garlic press.  And the soup ladle.  Life is just a little bit better with a soup ladle.  I’m going to let you all guess how I currently get soup into my bowl with the tools I do have in my kitchen at my disposal.  I’m a creative person.  🙂

Mike and I went car shopping in Tacoma yesterday, but it was honestly kind of a frustrating experience.  Getting out of used car dealerships without agreeing to buy a car just isn’t how they’re set up to operate.  Mike was concerned about a noise in the clutch pedal of one of the cars, and the dealer drove it around the block with us to hear it himself.  He told us it was nothing… just the exhaust system, and then got out of the car and told his sales associates that we were ready to look at numbers.  We were kind of frustrated by the time we left.  The pressure was ridiculous.  Very similar to when Mike and I went car shopping with Lia in Las Vegas.  They just cannot take ‘no’ for an answer!  Fortunately, the more they try to pressure Mike and me the more mulish we get and the less interested in buying anything.  When we left one of the guys said, “Do we have your phone number?  We can call if anything else comes in.”  Um… no way we’re giving you our phone numbers so that we can be badgered constantly and told that our concerns about various noises in the cars are invalid.  Sorry.  So, long story short is that we haven’t figured out the car situation yet.  We’re still waiting for the right one to come along!  🙂

On our way back from Tacoma we stopped at an Applebees for dinner.  It had seriously been so long since we’d been at an Applebees.  Over two years.  Mike remembered most of their menu, though, and had to catch himself before he corrected our server on whether or not the seasonal veggies could be prepared without butter.  🙂  On our way back we accidentally exited I-5 and wound up in west Seattle.  Thanks to my smart phone, however, we got reoriented and got the zipcar returned before our time on it ran out.

Mike has decided to go into work today to get some stuff done.  I tried waking him up earlier so that he could get a fairly early start and get back sooner, but he sleepily pushed his finger into my shoulder, said “snooze!”, and rolled back to his stomach.  🙂

Oh well!  I expect to be spending most of today cleaning, getting rid of stuff in preparation for moving, and cooking up the recipes that I linked to at the top of the post.  We’ll see how much of all of this stuff I actually get done!  Hope everyone is having an amazing weekend with gorgeous weather!  Fall has certainly arrived in Seattle, although so far it’s still a fall without any rain so it doesn’t feel like winter is really on its way yet.