Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Satisfying things du jour
ooh goody! a list!
- I finally, finally opened and sorted the box of Miscellaneous Kitchen Things that had been occupying too much space in a high cupboard in my pantry since we moved into this house two years ago. Lo and behold: shelf paper! Drawer liner! Candlesticks! Cookbooks! The last of which reminded me that oh yeah, I'd been wanting to switch the cookbooks and the portable coffee mugs* places in my kitchen cupboards, so I did, and then I decided that I really should sort through my recipe binder and tidy it up, and two hours later here I am, still in my pajamas (they're workout clothes, excuse me, and I just haven't worked out yet today, see), but with a tidy cookbook cupboard and a serious craving for every kind of food I've ever made during the entire course of my sixteen-year marriage**.
*One (1) person in our house drinks coffee and yet we have enough travel mugs to outfit an LA freeway at rush hour, I think. Give or take a few, maybe. It has always been this way. I have given up trying to cut down on the quantity, as I am always met with Very Firm Resistance from certain quarters.
**holy dang, SIXTEEN YEARS (in two weeks). That's, like, the amount of time people's parents have been married. How does this happen?
- This organizational spree was brought on by the fact that last night I canned seven quarts of beef stock, made from the bones and scraps of chuck roasts ($1.27/lb on sale!) used to make and can fourteen quarts of beef stew on Monday, and I am quickly running out of space in my canned-goods cupboard. Which (running out of space in the canned-goods cupboard) is one of my minor goals in life. I would love to have to add on to my house to make room for things that I have put up in lovely secondhand Mason jars. You know which ones are my favorites? The ones that have old labels clinging to them. I bought some jars at a rummage sale once, and when I brought them home I found a label that said "Tomatoes 1966", in that immaculate careful handwriting that girls learned eighty years ago, still barely adhering to the outside of one jar. For some reason, that almost made me cry. I tried to keep it, but it crumbled into pieces when I touched it. (1966 was not so into acid-free adhesive, I'm guessing.)
- After I work with the kids on their school projects just a little more, and after I spend an hour thrashing around on the elliptical machine, and after I shower and change out of my workout clothes, I am going to sit down with a novel and read it. Because I have to, see.
