With the cabbage nearing completion, Drew and I decided to start making ourselves at home by eating some of our meals up there. As much as we enjoy sharing meals with Mom and Steve, sometimes it’s nice to sit down and eat as a couple. Over the course of the last few months, we’ve eaten out a few more times than we should for that reason. Shifting those meals up to the cabbage is a lot easier on our budget, not to mention my waistline.

Cooking without a kitchen

We don’t have a functional kitchen at the cabbage yet( although the plumbing is pretty much done, thanks to Steve, and our range has been ordered), but we weren’t about to let a little thing like that stop us. After all, we DO have electricity!

Enter the slow cooker.

One day while my parents were at work, Drew commandeered their empty kitchen to make soup.

I’m not kidding — he made ALL of the soup.

He froze it after portioning it out into smaller containers (each of the big ones holds just about the right amount for two people). Now, when we want soup, all we have to do is heat it up in the slow cooker. We tested it out for the first time last week.

We dined in our future bedroom, since it was the closest to being finished, with a sub-floor and painted walls. A couple of sawhorses and a leftover chunk of drywall served well as a stand-in for our dining room table, which is currently residing in my in-laws’ basement. It didn’t make sense to open our box of dishes without someplace to safely unpack it, so we sipped Drew’s butternut squash and ginger soup out of plastic cups. Some crudités, a box of Ak-Mak crackers, and a little wheel of goat cheese rounded out the meal. The resulting spread wouldn’t have won us any decorating awards, but it felt monumental just to eat in our own space.

Look at the spread, not at me!

Was it crazy to go to that much trouble? Yeah, probably. Do we regret it? Not at all. Cooking and eating together has always been one of the cornerstones of our relationship, and we’ve missed it. We’re looking forward to many more delicious meals to come.