Food Storage When You Don't Have A Pantry

I feel like almost everyone in America has a pantry in their kitchen. Unfortunately we don't and that was a bummer when we fell in love with our house. The good news is I can share how we are creating more spaces for food storage and how we make it work in our house. Let me know if you have a pantry in the comments!

We have a double cupboard we have dedicated to food storage. It originally had three shelves inside but I decided not to put one back in after we painted our kitchen cabinets. I thought this was a great idea but in reality it made more sense to have all three shelves for more storage so I ended up putting it back in this past weekend. 

Let's start by cleaning up and cleaning out! I pulled everything out of the cabinet to throw away anything expired and organize what we wanted to keep.

We have so much candy right now. There is still leftover candy from Halloween and we accumulated more candy over Christmas. I guess we will be sharing with guests for quite some time!

At this point I had emptied out the bottom shelf and put all the contents on the counter. See how much room the bottom shelf had? It was a little ridiculous and I felt like we were just piling things on top of each other and it was just creating a huge mess!

Here's the after! It's certainly not as Pinterest perfect as many pantries I see on The Home Edit Instagram page but it is functional and works for now! With having three shelves there is less room for stacking and that will hopefully keep us a little more organized!

Our basement door is right next to this cabinet so I use the back of the door for a little more storage. 

We purchased this unit from The Container Store back when we lived in our apartment. It worked great in our pantry there and also is doing a great job on our basement door.

It works really well for canned goods and other condiment containers that are unopened.

The last place we are storing food is on shelves on our basement stairs. 

Tim and my dad installed these three shelves from Home Depot and I am so thankful for this extra storage space.

This area is great for rice and other unopened grains.

We also use it to store pasta, unopened chips, potatoes, and coffee.

The built-in shelf underneath holds all alcohol, which we have a ton of and I'm not sure how we accumulated all of it!

So that's how we store all our food without a pantry. It may not be Pinterest worthy but it certainly woks for us while we don't have a pantry! 

Let me know if you have a pantry and how you store all your food!

Have a great day everybody!

Boston Pizza Festival

It's Monday again friends- how does that always seem to happen to us?

We had a great weekend here and went  on an adventure to Boston! Months back I had seen a Facebook event for the Boston Pizza Festival and told Tim about it since pizza is basically his favorite thing on Earth. (besides me of course- haha) So we both had it on our radar. This past week Tim brought it up again and we decided to take a weekend away in Massachusetts!

After he got home from work on Saturday afternoon we packed our bags and headed towards Boston! Since Tim had booked us a hotel slightly outside of Boston we decided to not head into the actual city until Sunday but we kept ourselves entertained and headed to Patriot Place.

In case you aren't aware this is the home of the Patriots (my team) and we had fun wandering through the stores there and stopped for lunch at Scorpion Bar.

Saturday was such a beautiful, sunny day with perfect temperatures so we didn't mind walking around outside at all. We've been to Patriot Place before so after a few hours we were ready to move on! We decided to check into our hotel The Westin Waltham which was very nice. We debated what to do that evening since we wanted it to be pretty low key and ended up at the Natick Mall which was a ton of fun. We have the best time wandering around together just looking in stores and checking everything out. The mall was HUGE compared to our Rhode Island standards so it was a fun change.

We headed back to the hotel fairly early to get a good nights sleep because we planned on heading to Boston fairly early in the day to get some walking in!

We took the T right to Government Center and from there took a walk around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market.

Boston is such a walkable city and I always feel so impressed with the history that surrounds me when I'm there. It's also beautiful with its waterfront areas and architecture. 

They also do a fantastic job of creating green areas where you can enjoy gardens, grass and other bits of nature. 

Please ignore the sheer ridiculousness of my hair in this picture. It's out of control. Also, I really need to work on my posture..and wedding diet...

There's always so much to see!

When we were walking through the Boston Commons I saw this Cookie Monstah truck drive by... I heard about it previously and wanted to try it...I really hoped we would see it when it finally parked somewhere.

After we finished our walk around the commons it was time to head to the Pizza Festival!

Tim was so excited as we strolled towards the entrance.

I love this Boston sign- how cool is it?!

The festival took place at City Hall Plaza and it was a great outdoor space for the festival to happen.

There's Tim in his element- hanging out with a slice of pizza. 

Look how excited he is! We meandered through the festival trying different types of pizza. Tim at a ton, I tried a few different ones. There were definitely a lot to try and all of it was free with your admission. Drinks and other items were not included which is where we spent our money- particularly on waters since it was so hot!

We watched one of the shows where two boys were flipping pizza dough around, we entered a few contests, got a ton of free swag and then decided we were good to go!

One last picture with a giant pizza and it was time to go!

Before leaving Boston though I did get my Cookie Monstah treat! A chocolate chunk cookie on top of Oreo ice cream, yum!

We had a great time in Boston and there is still plenty there to do that we didn't have time to do on this trip so we will definitely be going back again in the future :)

What are your favorite things to do in Boston?

Our Wedding: Tasting with Blackstone Catering

One aspect of our wedding that Tim and I were excited for was our tasting. We made an appointment for a Saturday afternoon so we could have lunch and enjoy trying what Blackstone Catering had to offer. 

When we walked in Shannon, our event manager had our table set and ready. We made our choices ahead of time and a chef prepared plates specifically for us to try. I loved the mini menu they created for us. I wrote all over one of them as I took notes and the second one I kept as a souvenir for a possible wedding planning scrapbook.

Our table was super cute and very simple- perfect for my taste!

We started with appetizers which were amazing. The first two were a pizza with creme fraiche, caramelized onion, arugula and bacon and a roasted filet of beet crostini with creamy horseradish and crispy onions. Both were delicious and were definitely contenders for our appetizers.

We accidentally ate our buffalo chicken bites with housemade blue cheese before I took the picture. They were good but not our favorite. What you see on the plate is panko chicken satay with sweet chili sauce. We did really like this but it tasted a bit like chinese food- not what we were looking for.

Our last set of appetizers was truffled macaroni and cheese in a porcelain spoon and grilled chicken quesadilla with chipotle maple mayo and cilantro. I was the most excited about the macaroni and cheese which we added to our yes list immediately. We nixed the quesadillas because we preferred the pizza and the crostini to it.

Once we had made our decision on our appetizers we moved onto our pasta station selections.

My choice was the penne in vodka sauce with fresh black pepper and pecorino ramno. It was amazing! This is what I'll be eating on our wedding night for sure- bring on all the carbs!

Tim's choice was penne bolognese with rich tomato meat sauce, veal pork and beef, creamy ricotta. I didn't try this one but Tim loved it and we decided this will be our second pasta. We are switching up the pasta type however.

The pasta tasting was my favorite part of the entire tasting.

Next up was our grill station tasting. The grilled vegetables were amazing and think will be a great side dish.

The honey barbecue chicken was very tasty and I think it will be a great choice for our guests.

Another one of our side dishes will be roasted fingerling potatoes and they were delicious! Tim joked we should just have a huge bowl of potatoes for everyone to eat. They were THAT good.

Lastly we tried the grilled flat iron steak with chimichurri sauce which we ended up not choosing. We wanted to try it but ended up deciding on steak tips. We are positive it will be delicious.

The chef did a great job at make our plates look gorgeous too. We had the best time trying all this food and planning out our wedding night. Shannon has been an absolute delight to work with and we are so happy she is working with us.

We had to take a picture in front of the huge fork outside the office- well I did- I don't think Tim cared either way but he's a good sport.

What did you serve at your wedding? Also what did you do for dessert? We are thinking of doing a small cake just for us to cut and then a dessert table for everyone else.

Paco's Tacos, Proclamation Ale Company and Iron Works Tavern

I love exploring new places and areas in my home state of Rhode Island. Despite being the smallest state with the longest name we have so many places to explore.  I had previously been to Proclamation Ale Company when it was located in Wakefield but hadn't been to their new facility yet. 

Located right outside was Paco's Tacos food truck. Tim and I both opted for tacos and they were delicious!

I love chicken tacos and this one was great- I would highly recommend grabbing a taco from Paco's Tacos. Food trucks are such a great invention aren't they?

Proclamation Ale Company is in a huge building with arcade games to play, beer to drink and tables to sit at. If you've been reading for awhile you know that I'm not a beer drinker and only go along for the social aspect. I was with Tim, Derek and Ally and all of them loved the beer that they had so you can take that as a solid recommendation to visit and have a beer here!

After beer and tacos we headed out for a real dinner down the road at Iron Works Tavern. This is a really cool building and the food was excellent! We all enjoyed our food and had a terrific time chatting and hanging out.

My macaroni and cheese was great! If you are ever in Warwick, RI you definitely need to stop in and try it!

Have you ever been to Rhode Island and eaten here? I have a ton of recommendations on my Rhode Island page. Check it out here!

Life Lately

Hey everyone! Hope your week is going well and you are still enjoying the summer heat. I absolutely love summers here in Rhode Island since I can't stand the cold. We've been trying to get out and do as much as possible on the weekends so I'm back to share some more of our fun!

Our weekend started off pretty rocky when last Friday I tried to eat my cereal with a fork, my boss was transferred to another division, and I unexpectedly had to work a second job cleaning after work. However everything ended up fine- I grabbed a spoon, work will be fine, and I had a great time cleaning with Sue!

Saturday was eventful in a totally different way. We met up with Ally and Derek for dinner at Outback and after stuffing ourselves with delicious food we headed to Blu On The Water a restaurant in East Greenwich. I'm not sure what I expected it to be but it was quite the party scene. At one point an extremely drunk man crashed his head into mine and kept saying "sorry, sorry sorry" as he threw all his weight onto me. When I took a step away he fell straight onto the floor. 

You can see his legs in the back of this picture...he was sleeping on the couch behind us. What a strange night!

We ended up leaving Blu after two drinks and walked down the road to Harborside where the crowd was a little bit older but the band was playing Tom Petty and everyone was dancing. It was definitely a fun night and I was tired by the end of it.

On Sunday morning we decided to go out for breakfast and ended up at Red Stripe in East Greenwich. It was an expensive meal and I wouldn't recommend it as much as other places we've eaten. It was just okay.

I do have to say that the coffee was delicious though!

After a nice breakfast we walked around East Greenwich for a bit before heading to my Papas birthday party at my parents house.

We lounged a bit in the backyard where my brother has quite a few tropical plants. It was pretty relaxing!

I love seeing my family and getting the chance to chat with everyone. We even had an old family friend come which was a surprise to all of us! 

I also made worms in the dirt and made my cousin Andrew take home the leftovers!

My papa is 83 and is still incredibly active! He is constantly out in the woods doing consulting (he was a forestry professor for years) and is amazing.

We had a great time and it was so nice to spend time wth everyone!

I also wanted to share this dinner from Monday night. I love the french onion soup at Richard's Pub in East Greenwich and get it every single time I go. Doesn't it look amazing?

We've also been binge watching Game of Thrones and are officially in season 3. It'll be awhile before we are caught up to everyone else though! :)