The One With Deadlines, and a Recipe!

I have a lot of posts swirling around my head.  If you could see my page of drafts, you'd see a lot of half-assed  half-written ideas swirling around that I haven't finished.  It's just been an insanely busy week.  One of my best friends is getting married this weekend, and I'm in her wedding.  She has not asked us to do a single thing other than enjoy the day (thanks gorgeous!), and yet somehow I'm still running around like a crazy person trying to cram five days worth of To-Dos into four.

So tomorrow afternoon Hubs and I head out of here bright and early so I can get my mani pedi for the big day, and then we're staying in the city all weekend.  Little Man gets to go to his dad's for possibly the last time til our wedding in November, because I am at the end of my rope with the Ex. 

Hubs and I have been driving Little Man to the Ex every other weekend, which is a three to four hour round trip for us.  We've been trying to find excuses to make the trip worthwhile, like going to the mall or hanging out with my mother who lives halfway between the two points.  And we've been able to schedule a lot of fun adult activities to keep us needing and wanting him to spend time with the Ex.  But we're tapped out.  Ex has indicated that for various excuses reasons he will not be able to make the trip to us in the foreseeable future, so that's that.  I never want to keep Little Man from spending time with Ex, because he adores him and vice versa... but at some point I need this to be an equal partnership.  Gah.  Frustration. 

Anyways, since this week has been so busy most of our meals have been tossed together in a rush.  On Tuesday I went to Marshalls and found an amazing selection of kitchen spices and sea salts, so when I came home I threw together this spaghetti dish that is one of our standard "Hurry Up I'm Hungry" meals.  Hubs raved, I gave it four out of five stars.  I'm not sure it is as good as Honey Boo Boo child's mom's spaghetti (oh god, look it up, its so gross) but it's a start:

Please note, I'm writing it how I cook it, so don't be alarmed.  Your fridge may look different than mine, in which case feel free to substitute your own wilty veggies.

Spaghetti-ish 
-1 onion, diced
-1 smushed from the crisper drawer red pepper, diced
-1 orange pepper, diced
-1/2 slightly shriveled and dry container of white button mushrooms, chopped
-1 can of tomato sauce
-1 can of diced tomatoes
-Olive oil
-Everything left in the bottom of the chopped garlic container, maybe 3 tsp or so
-1/4 cup of Cabernet, from the box in the fridge
-Italian seasoning
-Sugar
-Black lava sea salt from Marshalls that you absolutely are dying to use
-Black pepper
-1 pkg of homemade basil pasta, also from Marshalls

• Have your Hubs chop and dice all the veggies while you are out shopping for shoes for the wedding.  Realize you want to spend hours at the store stocking up on spices you don't need and will never use, but sound delicious and amazing.  Then when you get home, your mise en place is done and waiting in the fridge.  BOOM take that Ann Burrell.
• Hubs has decided not to chop up the mushrooms because they look funny.  Decide that mushrooms are a fungus so they probably can't get worse.  Chop 'em up.
• Add olive oil and all the veggies to a big pan.  Let them get soft while you show Hubs how much you spent on shoes and spices.  Appease him by showing him the pair of pants you got him.  Stir veggies, change into pajamas at 5:45 PM.
• Pour a glass of wine for yourself.  Splash some into the pan first because cooks always use wine, right?  Add the cans of diced tomatoes and sauce.  Stir.
• Realize you need to boil water for the pasta.  Get on it.
• Add a couple shakes of Italian seasoning to the sauce on the stove.  Use the precise measurement of "til it looks like there is seasoning all over the top of the sauce."  Stir it in.  Add a lot of pepper, and then your black lava sea salt (yay a reason to use it!).  Taste and add more of whatever it is missing, plus a tsp of sugar.
• Add the noodles to the boiling water.  Cook til they are al dente.  Hubs is confused as to why you want to eat noodles with no sauce, he's more of a "It said 6 minutes on the box so that is when they are done" type guy.  PS: The box said 2-3 minutes but it took 8 to make them not crunchy, so I won that battle.
• Stir the pasta sauce til the noodles are done.  Have Hubs drain the noodles and then add them to the sauce pan.  He thinks this is a bad idea, but you convince him it is brilliant and saves a bowl to wash.
• Serve to all adults and eat.  Nuke 4 nuggets for the child.  If he's anything like mine, he'll be much happier that way.

I will completely understand if you try and recreate this recipe and it falls short.  It is clearly a complicated and difficult dish to master. I'd have taken a picture, but I was stuffing my face instead. 

Bon' Appetit!