I am looking forward to the next few weeks, especially the new few weekends, and realizing that there is barely going to be time to breath in amidst everything we currently have scheduled. So it is good that we made this past weekend as non-busy as we possibly could, just to have a reference point between now and March.

We went to see a few of the kitchens done by the designer we talked to last weekend, and we like the ways he used the space (or in one case, the distinct lack thereof). So Wednesday morning I gave him a call and said ‘When can we get started?’ and Saturday afternoon he came over and we signed some paperwork and I gave him a deposit and then he tramped around the kitchen and the back porch and took copious pictures and measurements and in a few short weeks we’ll have some sketches to play with. It’s all very exciting, except that now that the process is officially started, it makes me dislike the current ugly and extremely dysfunctional kitchen that much more.

My youngest nephew turned 7 this weekend, so I drove up to Napa on Saturday night for the family gathering for his party. He had a sleep-over – five first grade boys all in one house, staying up late and getting themselves too wound up, so both boys were pretty tired by the time we were done with dinner (although they’d have adamantly denied it if asked). The nephew had a spiderman themed party, so all of us adults got to go outside and have a little Silly String fight with the leftover cans from the party the night before. It was goofy, although we’ve now all learned that Silly String is next to impossible to clean up off of wooden decks and lawns if one leaves it overnight to dry and crumble into neon colored dust.

This past week I finally tried Nutella for the first time, and between the two of us, Richard and I managed to polish off an entire jar. It is amazingly good on that dense, hearty oatmeal whole wheat bread I’ve been making lately. Needless to say, we have not bought a second jar, because part of that whole ‘responsible adult’ thing we’re trying to achieve includes not eating Nutella on toast for dinner more than three nights in a row. Why, oh why, can someone not come up with something just as tasty that is actually good for you?

Not much in the way of cooking this past week (see above reference to eating Nutella on toast for dinner). I made another batch of the oatmeal whole wheat bread Sunday afternoon, and we had waffles on the new waffle iron on Saturday morning, and Sunday night we had individual pizzas using veggie meatballs and low fat cheese, and portabello mushrooms instead of pizza crust, and if there was a way I could mass produce those and take them for lunch every day this week, I would. So very tasty, and (unlike Nutella on toast) much more in line with the sort of dinner that a responsible, health-conscious adult should eat. There might possibly have been chunks of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough afterwards, for dessert, but let’s just pretend that never happened.