in the absence of champagne

Tonight, I finally cooked our inaugural dinner in this home.  There was a little bit of scampering as I adjusted to the way the stove heats and how much less space there is between the flame and the pot, as well as my frantic attempts to find everything I needed to set the table...including a chair and actually setting up the table.  It was fun, moving around my new kitchen, learning the idiosyncrasies of a new stove - well, "new" would be a relative term here.  While I was boiling the pasta water, Mister came to visit and observed with some nostalgia that he had a stove like that somewhere else he had lived; his tone indicated it was somewhere he had lived a long time ago.

I thought it would be fun to make one of my own recipes the first time I cooked in my new kitchen, so I pulled out my little golden book and set about making the pantry-spectacular Rotini with White Bean-Tomato Sauce.

Another thing I'm getting used to is the lighting, so please excuse me if my pictures look like garbage for a while as I'm figuring it all out.  Mister is kind of a pasta sauce minimalist, so there was a little too much red stuff on his rotini/ziti blend for his liking.  In my zeal to have an appropriate vegetable to carb ratio, I sometimes forget that he doesn't care about that; he cares about having his uncorrupted pasta.

Bit by bit, the apartment is starting to look like a home.  We're starting to display signs of actually living here.  It's still very clean, which is good, because there are still boxes everywhere in various states of being unpacked (from Not-At-All to Empty-As-Angst's-Head).  Speaking of Angst, he seems to be a little weirded out by the hardwood floor, so when he is not hanging out in Mister's room (where there's carpeting), he kind of tiptoes around.  He found a familiar spot, though, and allowing his guard to relax for just a moment, staked his claim:

After eating my Pietro's leftovers for dinner last night, I threw myself into emptying as many boxes (in organized fashion) as I could.  I made a lot of progress, including setting up my spices.

They took up an entire shelf of my kitchen trolley and there are still a few that I haven't found!  Because I'm kind of a geek, I put them in alphabetical order.  We'll see how long that lasts, but for tonight, it sure made it easier to locate the Basil and Marjoram.

At some point last night, Mister took a field trip to our new neighborhood drugstore because we'd used up the last of the travel-sized toothpaste I found in my suitcase and a few other things.  He returned with a gleeful and victorious smile, showing me his prize with no small amount of pride:

Yes, Mister was excited because he found gummy vitamins meant for adults.  I really don't think there should be gummy vitamins at all, much less for adults, but whatever makes him happy (and healthy!).

Even though there are boxes everywhere, including the few that are folded and shoved behind the dining table, I still thought our table looked so pretty after it was set and the food was down.  The lighting is horrendous, but like I said, I'm adjusting.

By the way, in case you're wondering about the title... in the absence of champagne, I opened a bottle of Centine SuperTuscan to accompany our premier in-home meal.