This and That

Life has been pretty busy lately, with a lot going on. After the link, you’ll find a photo montage of random things that have been occupying my time lately!

We did our cake tastings, and settled on our cake flavors and designs. One more thing off the checklist! Matt takes his cake tasting very seriously.

We also spent some time working on a wedding registry, by request of several friends and family members. We registered with the charity registries at the I Do Foundation (they allow guests to donate to some of our chosen charities in lieu of gifts – neat!) as well as a couple other places. These are the everyday place settings (plus wineglasses) that we settled on. Can’t wait to have real “adult” dishes! There are also black square dessert plates, but we didn’t have space to fit those into the place setting we mocked up on an open display…

We were in New York (some time ago) for Passover, during which I got to visit with Dar and shop for bridesmaid’s dresses, and Matt spent some quality time with his “other cat.” (Don’t tell Tabi.)

Sheila and Matt and I have burrito night at least once a week. We got tired of this taking up all the bowls and spoons in the house, so Sheila invested in this great burrito night plate! (The beans and tortillas still get their own serving dishes.)

My car got into a bit of a scrape with some local vandals and a bunch of rocks. It’s been in the shop for about a week and a half now (there are more dents than the one shown here, they just didn’t photograph as beautifully!) , so I’m hoping to have it back soon. The good news is: my insurance is covering it, minus the deductible, and I can drive Matt’s car to work in the interim (since I’m too young to rent a car without huge insurance fees, and he takes the train to work).

I attended Sally’s bachelorette party. It was my kind of day! We went to knit brunch in the morning, then the local sheep shearing festival, followed by tapas-style food and “vintage cocktails” at this 20′s themed bar.

The next day, Two weeks later (thanks to Sally for pointing this out. Clearly she knows her own wedding schedule better than I do, and the busyness of the last month or so has melted my brain), Matt and I were ushers for Jon and Sally’s wedding. (I swiped the photo from Sally’s flickr account!)

For Matt’s Christmas present, I adopted him an olive tree from the Nudo farm in Italy. He was a little suspicious at first because he hates olives pretty passionately, but in reality, they send you all of the cold-pressed olive oil produced by your tree – and Matt loves extra virgin olive oil for cooking, salads, etc. We got the first delivery this month. Yum!

Shown here are the two unopened containers. We had one more this size (16 oz), and a smaller one that are already in cooking-friendly containers. We weren’t sure about using the containers it comes in for everyday cooking, so we picked these reusable ones up at the Container Store. The cruet on the right has a twist-open pour spout to keep the oil away from as much air as possible, and the one on the left is a pressurized mister. It’s one of my new favorite cooking gadgets! Great for oiling pans, or adding a spritz of oil instead of needing to glop it on to stir fry or cook stuff with. Also from the Container Store, but I’m not seeing it on their website at present.

We’ve been continuing to enjoy our deliveries from Boston Organics. Lately, it’s been zucchini season and we’ve come up with all manner of ways to eat zucchini. One of my recent favorites was from this month’s Real Simple magazine: Pasta with Zucchini and Goat Cheese. Hard to tell here because our sauce was a little runny, but you reserve some of the pasta water and melt most of the goat cheese in it to make a light creamy sauce (an oxymoron? no!). Paired with sauteed zucchini and garlic, this makes for a delicious light summer meal.

I’m still working on knitting a pair of socks, a cardigan, and the chuppah…all are coming along slowly. However, what with everything else going on, I mostly find that I have remaining only enough brainpower for knitting small, repetitive projects. So, I knit dishcloths.

Lots of dishcloths. They multiply sort of like tribbles.