Pumpkin and Spice

Tonight Kyle and I are heading into Orlando. We booked a room at a hotel near the airport to make tomorrow morning a little less heinous. Our flight leaves at 6:30a, which means even staying close to the airport, I'm going to have to wake up at a quarter til way too freaking early. One of the (many) things I hate about waking up early is that it throws off my eating for most of the day. I have to eat breakfast early, which then means I'm ready for lunch at about 8:00a, which then makes me sad because I know lunch is still four hours away... And when traveling that means I probably eat fast food for breakfast, and then I'll eat whatever the stewardesses toss at me on the plane (gross peanuts, pretzels, weird cookie-biscuit things, SkyMall magazine...) and I'll probably still buy a snack at our destination. All before lunch. Not really a good plan.

I decided this time to think ahead and get some healthy snacks to bring in my carry-on. I got enough for the plane, but also for our sightseeing day in Dodge City (so excited! Eeep!) so I won't have to rely on the stewardesses, gas stations and vending machines for nourishment.
I bought:

Tonight Kyle and I had a lovely meal. The food itself was nothing extraordinary- as I mentioned before, we're sort of in leftover/pantry mode, so dinner was just some leftover french onion soup with toasted 3-day old bread from the bakery I work at, some chicken from the freezer that I rubbed with herbs and garlic, and canned green beans with balsamic vinegar. (We don't eat many canned veggies, but the beans were leftover from a potluck dinner at Kyle's dad's work... long story...) The food was simple, and I tried to make it pretty and appealing. We had it with a glass of wine from the other night.

What made dinner tonight so nice was the atmosphere. I cleaned the papers and old mail off the dining room table, lit a candle and laid down placemats. We put on the "love song" music station on the TV for some ambient music, and ate dinner slowly, enjoying each other's company. I'll admit- for a long time, we didn't have a dining room table, so our only option was eating dinner at the coffee table, and the habit had carried on, even though we now have a very nice dining set. We also are guilty of the habit of catching up on our DVR'd episodes of Hell's Kitchen and Lost while eating dinner.