Kitchen Cure: Week 2

a week late (!) and here it is folks, my mess:

Basically my cabinets had stuff shoved anywhere from when we first moved in and I went through a bout of I.just.need.to.put.things.away. - at midnight. They pretty much stayed where they were,  because I have a pretty consistent flight pattern around the kitchen that I'd like to keep, but things that barely ever get used moved to top shelves or basement storage (God help me if they ever do Basement Cure)

In the space of about and hour, I had straightened, wiped down, pitched and edited to make my life a little easier:

next up is stock the pantry, and 'special projects' Im seriously contemplating painting the canbinets, before it snows and I cant have the windows open again until spring....but Im torn between dark cabinets and light ones...(light ones being much more work)...what are your thoughts? More...

Kitchen Cure Week 1

Clean out the fridge and the pantry...

The best part of cleaning out the fridge? I got to really decide what was going to go back into the fridge. In went our fresh veggies, and yes, all of the hot sauces (harissa, frank's, tabasco, and sriracha, if you must know) out went the old half full jars of salsa, out went the old cupcake that even though it was months old, was sitting in tupperware and looked eerily edible (no, i didn't eat it, but i thought about it). Out went a whole lot of moldy leftovers (for shame), odds and ends and things I popped into the freezer for stock months ago. I did, in fact buy a rotisserie chicken on Friday night, (thats a horrible story I'm NOT goint to tell you about. - The night, not the chicken) and made chicken stock with all those frozen leek tops and parsley stems).

So on top of joining the kitchen cure to clean, we also bought a new fridge (its almost like cheating)  and now it looks like this:

...talk about an improvement. My homework tonight is to clean the spice cabinet...Then the pantry will be done, and I'll be on to step two.

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Weekend Food

This weekend was 'use it up weekend'. The man and I went out and did something I consider a major step toward adulthood: we bought our first appliance: a fridge. The sales guy at Sears even teased us about it. "Is this your first appliance?" Yeah, it was that big a deal for me. Our old fridge was literally twnety - plus years old, it wasn't energy efficient, and it wasn't going to make it to next summer. So out we went, three times, to price and hem and haw over eighteen cubic feet of cold storage. In the end, we ended up at the Sears counter, totally overwhelmed and just ready to Buy. A. Damn. Fridge. In the end we actually did a good job picking one out, I think.  It came on Sunday morning, and its shiny, its white (not, ahem, 'bone' colored like the former one) and maybe most importantly, I experienced what it is like to really see what it is we eat.

Seriously, all laid out on our table. I wasn't that shocked, organic meats, wedges of cheese, four different kinds of hot sauce...all that I know about. The four jars of pickles, suprised me. All the greek yogurt did too. I'd apparently been hoarding it in the back of our refrigerator, in order to stage a yogurt culture based bid for world domination. I'll come back to cleaning the fridge later this week, as I've signed up for Apartment Therapy's Kitchen Cure (its only been six months since I got my own kitchen and it needs a cure. Thats only a little sad)  On the menu this weekend was a whole lotta leftovers, salmon burgers rescued from the deep freeze, eggs, and fruit. I also made my first loaf of toasting bread. You'll get to hear about that tomorrow. More...