Sorting and schlepping and pouring and washing

 

I am seriously sick of schelpping stuff from one end of the kitchen to the other and sometimes back again.  This week I've been rearranging all my cabinets, and in the process, washing every dish and glass, and wiping down the insides of the cabinets.  I've moved half the dishes into the cabinet where I kept my packaged food, and all my baking supplies and part of the packaged food over to where the dishes were.  It's really a much more efficient use of space, but boy it's a boring process. My friend, Karen, would say otherwise; she loves cleaning and organizing things. When confronted with a household task that chaps my hide, I ask myself, What would Karen do?

I did actually enjoy the part where I found jars for all the bagged spices and herbs I had sitting here, and then made labels for them with our Dymo label maker.  I felt so accomplished as I surveyed the rows of neatly labeled and stacked jars!  I also made an inventory list of what I have in that cabinet.  Karen would be so proud!

Needless to say, now virtually every flat surface is covered with stuff waiting to be put away.  I got the herb and spice cupboard assembled thanks to a new two-tier lazy susan I found at Amazon.com for $12.  Everyone was complaining it was too big for their cabinets, but because I was going to put it into the corner of a corner cabinet, it was exactly what I needed.  The cabinet holds two of the two-tiered lazy susans, and two one-tier ones, plus a lot of plain old surface space on the second shelf, so I've got all my oils and vinegars in there as well as extracts, salts and 
syrups.   The best thing is that now I have more room, so if I need some ground this or cracked that, I have a space to put it, and I won't lose it.  (I swear I had ground ginger at Christmas but I can't find the jar anywhere.  It's gone on my Spice House shopping list.)  I was sad to find that my vanilla beans had all but dried out so I'm going to be making a jar of vanilla sugar with them.

In any event, the whole point of this is that I'm sick of arranging and incidentally also sick of editing.  I have four of the five sections on the Scrooge book edited and I think they're in good shape now.  The middle one -- Adagio: David Tarried at Jerusalem -- was the worst, but it was the last to be finished and the one that had kicked my butt right from the get go.  The emotions I'm trying to deal with there are difficult for me because I've felt them, and it's hard getting that down without making it sound whiny and self-pitying.

So what did I do to ease my ennui?  I baked.  When I was cleaning the cupboards I found a package of Bob's Red Mill 10-grain bread mix, and figured I'd give that a shot since I could just reach my mixer. I added millet, oats, chia seeds and raw honey to it, and for the oil, I used some herbs de Provence olive oil that Glinda's sister had given me.  It's in the oven on proof right now, and should be finished rising in another 30-60 minutes. Of course there was a lot of stuff added and I'm not sure how old the mix was so who knows if it'll turn out?  The dough was awfully wet, so I had to add about two tablespoons of flour.  Eh, what's the worst that could happen?  I could end up with a high fiber brick.

It actually looks pretty good, I think.  Now if it’ll just rise.

Oh, and that red and purple thing in the first photo?  That’s my vacuum.  If it wasn’t enough that I’m cleaning all the cabinets, I spilled a lot of mustard seeds and had to vacuum them up.  I had to sweep anyway, but I’d have preferred to wait until all the schlepping was finished.  Basically there's nowhere to walk in my kitchen and nowhere to set anything down.

 

I'll get there.  I always do.  And when I do I'll have a much better arrangement for my kitchen than I do now.  Moving from a larger place to a smaller one means you have to find analogs for the space you had or get rid of a lot of what you brought with you.  I've already done the latter; it's time to make a real effort to do the former.

 

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• Spice Cupboard Style: What Do Your Spices Reveal About You? (thekitchn.com)