The Joys of Moving or In The Alternative — Where The Heck Is That Spatula??

First of all – let me just say that mov­ing over 1,000 miles will NOT be an option.  It took about 3 weeks of unpack­ing and lug­ging HUGE boxes around the new abode to find my pots at the BOTTOM row of boxes.  And, to make things worse – I’m still look­ing for things here and there.  I fig­ure I have about 10 boxes or so I need to fin­ish going through and then I can move onto reor­ga­niz­ing the den which is cur­rently known as “Mov­ing Box Cen­tral”.   The amount of boxes I’ve had to break down has been insane.

So, 3 weeks of take out, deliv­ery and micro meals does not make a happy food blogger. 

Before I left, my friends came over and kicked my butt into mov­ing over­drive.  SL, Jay & Kar helped me box up the hell known as my kitchen and also helped take a bunch of things off my hands – specif­i­cally my pantry and liquor cab­i­net; both of which were not com­ing with.  SL now has a spice cab­i­net to die for loaded with some seri­ous good­ies like truf­fle oil, meyer lemon oil, cof­fee and good­ies shipped from the Ital­ian Mar­ket.  Heck, since I could go to the Ital­ian Mar­ket on Sat­ur­days, I could replen­ish it – right?  How­ever, one thing I haven’t been able to find is my cre­ole sea­son­ing – for some rea­son they just don’t seem to have that here.  I’m hope­ful that maybe Whole Pay­chex or Trader Joe’s might have or else I’m call­ing SL to ship some to me stat. 

I can say that my kitchen is MUCH big­ger in terms of counter space and, while I don’t have an island, I might just not need it.  And, now that the pans have been located, I’ve been get­ting back my cook­ing mojo.  Won’t my neigh­bors be thrilled icon wink The Joys of Moving or In The Alternative   Where The Heck Is That Spatula??   The pantry is a bit smaller so it’s going to mean I’m going to have to find some new ways to keep every­thing mov­ing along.

Now please excuse me while I make plans to have yet another run to Crate & Bar­rel in the morn­ing for more spice jars and a few more orga­niz­ing ideas so I can actu­ally have this kitchen run­ning smoothly.  Oh, and so I can make room for the *ahem* new good­ies com­ing from RueLaLa from the Cal­phalon sale… *shhhh* just don’t tell anyone.

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Out With The Old. In With The New…

My pantry has been severely neglected. Those clos­est to me know that work has been kickin‘ me into over­drive and cook­ing and I have been estranged. Part of the rea­son for the cook­ing pause has been, quite sim­ply, this night­mare of a pantry. To find some­thing means some seri­ous expe­di­tions to find that one elu­sive ingre­di­ent as it hasn’t been orga­nized in for­ever. Not to men­tion, the light­ing in my kitchen has been hor­rid but since the com­plex finally fixed (and broke) the over­head light on the super high ceil­ing, I fig­ured I had no more excuses to avoid the pantry from hell.

Pantry Before Out With The Old. In With The New...

I always joke that for me to feel “at home” I need a fully stocked pantry and fridge and any­one who comes into my home knows that if we need some­thing, we’ve got it. How­ever, I got sick of the clut­ter and decided rather than shove every­thing in the pantry, I’d take inven­tory and clean out what was old, expired or just never would be used.

Check out the AFTER pic.

Pantry After Out With The Old. In With The New...

Yeah, I’m just as shocked as you. My trash man, how­ever, will want my head on a stake. There’s still work to be done, but I fig­ured that was a good start to change. Now I need to get to cooking.

What are your pantry sta­ples that you MUST have no mat­ter what?
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Behold the Pot Rack…

PotRack Behold the Pot Rack...Last fall, I fell in love with this pot rack when I saw it in the South­ern Liv­ing cat­a­log. My gal M. sur­prised me with it for Christ­mas and trust me when I say it’s fab­u­lous.

It was finally hung when my dad vis­ited and I’ve got it out­fit­ted with the pots and pans in my cab­i­net. He made sure it was super sta­ble so I don’t have to worry about Shadow get­ting bopped in the head.

Just to be safe, I fig­ured I’d behave and only put one Le Creuset skil­let on there and the cop­per pot along with the much lighter skil­lets, var­i­ous ladles and spat­u­las. Also, for a bit of dec­o­ra­tion, I also put some cop­per orna­ments that I bought from Williams Sonoma for the hol­i­days.

It’s func­tional and gor­geous.

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