Hi Friends! I hope you are having a great week! Woo, so much going on over the past week! Let’s recap:

Eats

I’ve made 2 meals at home this week that I think you might like. The first is a new pasta dish using this pumpkin pasta and butternut squash sauce from Trader Joe’s. I like making my own pasta sauce when I have time, but this TJ’s one looked interesting and the nutrition label wasn’t too offensive. I decided to keep the dish meatless and added kale and mushrooms to up the veggie intake. I like that the pasta was high in protein (although not a whole grain). The sauce was very creamy and I really liked it!

Something great about the pasta was that it held up well for leftovers. Using 1/2 pk of noodles, 1 jar of sauce, 1 container of mushrooms and 1/3 large bag of kale made enough for 4 meals.

The second dish is a fall favorite: black bean soup. I’ve been making this recipe for years and it reminds me of football season. I like that it’s made with legumes but still has the bacon to make the recipe a little more fun. You can make it a little healthier by using half of the amount of bacon and purchasing low sodium beans (and rinsing them).

A trick I like to do is use my emersion blender to blend up some of the beans. It makes the consistency thicker. This recipe also freezes well if you want to save a few portions for leftovers.

B and I also had lunch at Kabab-Je in Matthews. We ordered the chicken shawarma and a veggie platter with grape leaves, hummus, falafel and tabouleh. We shared everything and it was delicious. We also split an appetizer of friend cauliflower. In hindsight we agreed that we over-ordered, which is easy to do when you’re at such a great restaurant!

RD 2 Be Meeting

Last night I sat on an RD panel to discuss advice for future dietitians. I love being able to share my experience about becoming an RD and give advice to students. And I met a fellow Hokie!

Car Shopping

Most of the weekend and the earlier part of this week was dedicated to car shopping. B and I have been talking about going to a 1-car household ever since we moved in together in February. Neither one of us drives very much so it doesn’t make sense to have 2 cars. But after realizing that we both dislike each other’s cars and not being able to settle on which car to keep, we thought it might be better to trade both of our cars in on something that is more appropriate for a 1-car household. Not sure why B doesn’t love my Honda Civic with cloth seats, that he might hit his head  on the side when he gets in because it’s so low to the ground?!

We looked at a lot of wagon / hatchback / compact SUVs and ended up deciding on…. nothing!

All of the car shopping ended up stressing us out a little bit. We realized there were a lot of decisions that we hadn’t really thought about- lease or buy? New or used? Do we need 4wd? We have a lot on our plates right now with house, work and wedding stuff, it was not a good time to be throwing another big decision into the mix. So I think we are going to sell my car for the time being and revisit the topic later on.

Side note: my dream has always been to have a nice little convertible so that Lily and I could ride around the city with the top down. B noted how I completely left him out of that scenario! woops

Weekend Plans

We are both on the way to Chicago! I am going to the Food & Nutrition Conference Expo (fnce) and B is coming as my guest. I’m excited to see Chicago and meet other awesome dietitians!

What are you up to this weekend?

Cars: do you prefer new vs. used?