"Vita Bella"

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore."
-Dean Martin

Yesterday was our 15th wedding anniversary. Throughout the day, I spent some time thinking about our marriage and the time we've been together; how much has changed, what's remained the same, and about our actual wedding. It was neat to be able to know exactly what I was doing 15 years ago, because I remember it so clearly.
After consulting my gastronomical advisor, Mannix, about what to make for dinner, and getting lots of great advice, I went on to do absolutely nothing he told me to do. This kind of behavior, incidentally, is something Troy has tolerated with great patience over the years -- he claims that I will ask his opinion and then do the exact opposite, but of course that's not the case. All discussions leading up to my decisions are helpful & meaningful to me. The bottom line was that I wanted to make a nice meal to celebrate our anniversary, but didn't have a lot of time and did not have much energy to boot.
Of course I got Champagne. I also threw in a little root beer for the boys, since they were celebrating with us. That's something different; when we started out together, we had one cat.

When we were at the grocery store, the boys begged me to buy them TV dinners, and I caved. TV dinners always seem a little festive to me because of the colorful packaging and the fact that my sister and I rarely got to eat them when we were kids.
For Troy and myself, I grilled swordfish and asparagus, made a fresh herb salsa verde, and mushroom risotto. Really good.

One sweet surprise, was that I'd bought a bottle of Frog's Leap wine, which we served at our wedding, to have with dinner. Troy was thinking along the same lines, and came home bearing a bottle, too. Another nice thing was that our divergent musical paths crossed during dinner prep, when we decided on The Police as our evening's soundtrack. Hm..."Don't Stand So Close to Me," and "I Can't Stand Losing You." "Murder by Numbers."
We had a chocolate wedding cake, and I always get fanatical about homemade cakes on special occasions, but a valuable lesson Mannix has taught me is to never feel silly about buying one, either. That's good advice. So I got this Pepperidge Farms chocolate layer cake from the Frozen Foods section. Hey, it was pretty good! (I didn't make our wedding cake either, after all.)

Lucky and the other animals enjoyed the feast along with us.

Those vows were no joke -- our marriage really has been for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health. The dress code last night was pretty relaxed, with the boys showing up in their underwear. I was once again inexplicably wearing white. Cheers!