So today marks the fifth anniversary of our first date. This is the actual date of the day. The day of observation would be the Monday after Thanksgiving. Either way it's five years. It has gone by quickly. So much has happened. So much yet to happen. Let's not get too far ahead. Enjoy each day as it comes.

Again with the walking! A bit colder today but still dry when we arrived in West Seattle. We did our usual 1.25 mile walk to the Farmer's Market and met Sally at Coffe To A Tea With Sugar. Weird name for a place. The baked goods look fabulous. All made right there. Haven't tried them yet. The coffee can be iffy but that is more the fault of the ditsy barista we have encountered on our last two visits. Overall we like the place and the space. The market didn't have too much going on but will remain open into the winter this year as part of an experiement to gauge the demand for winter markets. We'll conitinue to go for winter veggies when we can.

Our plan was to cook a big piece of salmon for dinner and have a nice bottle of wine. After we got home we did some house work, I knitted, wrapped a few more gifts. Sure, there was wine, but after J made this very yummy turkey noodle soup we were very stuffed. She brought home both turkey corpses from Wrin and Bruce's house. All day Saturday she had two big pots going creating stock. Today she completed the soup. Yummy!

Then later in the day she made this recipe I posted a while ago for Pumpkin Oatmeal Bread, healthier alternative to holiday breads. The ingredients speak for themselves. You can go even further and replace the oil with unsweetended applesauce and the sugar with brown rice syrup or more chopped fruit. I don't like these types of baked goods terribly sweet. I really enjoy this bread as J made it. She thought it could have been sweeter but I love that I can taste the ingredients and not just sugar. Granted, it could use more spicing. But there is far too much sugar in things these days. So I like this break from oversweetend bakery. We used chopped dates because we had them on hand. No nuts. About a tablespoon of currants because, again, they were there. And we baked it ten minutes longer than suggested and I still think it could have gone another five. We will definitely make this again utilizing the above-mentioned substitutions. I will let you know. But we ate some of that too.

By the time dinner should have happened, we weren't hungry. But J had already prepared the salmon with the spice rub. So we had to cook it. J accomplishes this by cooking it on the grill on a wooden board. Basically, you are smoking the fish. It's amazingly delicious but we only had a few nibbles and never bothered to prepare the rest of the meal. We played a whole game of Hand & Foot (a card game - nothing kinky!) and had some wine. It was a quiet, relaxing, uneventful anniversary. Just what I wanted.