As a Massachusetts resident who went to school not far from Boston, this week has been so surreal.  It’s incredibly strange to see updates from my friends who live near the city about what they’re experiencing.  In light of the incidents there and in Texas, it seems inappropriate to write about my new kitchen or the experience of moving into our first house.  It’s amazing how quickly one’s priorities can change.  Still, I keep thinking back to Adam Robert’s post from earlier this week, “Why The Small Things Still Matter”.  This week has been anything but normal, due to the never-ending flood of crazy news plus moving everything we own to a new place, so I’m desperate for a tiny bit of normalcy, even if my thoughts are often elsewhere.

What We Ate The Week We Moved

Despite my excitement about our new kitchen (photos in an upcoming post, I promise) I knew that I wasn’t going to feel like cooking after a day of moving heavy boxes.  Luckily, I had some foresight and planned some meals that didn’t take a lot of work and supplied awesome leftovers.

Easy Springtime Crockpot Minestrone Soup

This soup from How Sweet It Is was the perfect thing for this week.  I set up the crockpot on the kitchen counter at the house on Tuesday morning, prepped the vegetables and starting cooking them before the serious moving began.  By the end of the day, we were tired and hungry and dinner was ready.  This soup was good but even better was the fact that the recipe made so much food we were able to eat it for dinner twice and lunches twice.  That’s 8 servings.  And sometimes we had seconds. 

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Of course, we couldn’t survive on just soup for a week.  Last night, having enjoyed our first full day living in the new house and a fair amount of unpacking, I revisited this tuna noodle casserole.  This time around I substituted shallot for the scallions, spicy brown mustard for the Dijon, herbed cheddar for the aged, Townhouse crackers for saltines, and basic tuna (in oil) for the fancy variety.  I made all of those substitutions because that’s what I had on hand and, in the midst of moving who has time to grocery shop?  The casserole was still excellent though and provided us with another 2 meals (we had big servings—moving makes me hungry!)

Sandwiches

Our appliances arrived on Monday, but I wasn’t sure when the rest of my kitchen would make the trip from our apartment to the house.  Last weekend I bought a couple pounds of meat and cheese which served us well this week in creating quick, easy sandwiches for lunches.  Since I don’t often buy cold cuts, this was sort of a nice change from our standard lunch fare. Brian (who, in all honesty, did most of the work) really enjoyed them.