Dinner Last Night

Last night I used my newly stocked cabinets to make one of my favorite recipes:  Cheesy Herb Potato Gratin.  Recipe adapted from this one at Pioneer Woman Cooks, one of my all-time favorite cooking blogs- hilarious writing and amazing recipes.  As she states in her version though, this recipe is extremely, even dangerously delicious.  Just look at what goes into it:

Yes, that is heavy cream AND cream cheese.  I also add extra grated cheese.  Not pictured because I forgot to take it out of the fridge right away:  an entire stick of butter.  Yes indeedy.

Just look at that crunchy, carmelized, cheesy, bubbly potato goodness.  I may not be a great photographer but I am world-class at knowing what tastes good to my mouth.  And this was, in the words of PW:     “SO.  GOOD.”

Assignment #2

I feel pretty good about most of my kitchen equipment storage.  I have a lot of it, but I use most things weekly and they are, for the most part, easy to access.  There are a couple of sticking points.  One is (of course) the lower deep cabinet of doom:

A lower version of the Black Hole Cabinets.

And the other is a couple of unorganized junk drawers:

This drawer is (mostly) bento supplies and mixer stuff.

This drawer is just... junk. Junk that needs a better home.

However, I have a great cabinet for my most commonly used dishes/pans and a drawer where I keep commonly used instruments (spoons, grater, measuring cups, etc).  If you looked in the drawer it may not look organized to you- but I know where every little thing is in it.  And really that is the most important thing.

I still have one empty drawer next to the sink… not sure what to do with that….  Maybe it will be the depository for all my missing hopes and dreams.

Just kidding.  I don’t have those! 

Assignment #1- Completed!

Here are the “after” pics from assignment 1 (cleaning out/ organizing the food in my kitchen).

You'll notice I only pictured half the fridge- my half. Roomate's half looks basically the same.

Empty space remaining in the fridge!  This space is for the potato gratin I’m making tonight (post to follow).  I always cook a lot of food and then munch on the leftovers for a few days.  Single living- yay?

Lookin good, agua.

This drawer looks so good.  I went through my apartment and found all the empty water bottles I had bought when I forgot to fill mine before leaving in the morning.  I filled them and they now have a permanent home!  So far this week I’ve been very good about re-filling and replacing when I get home.

It’s still a lot of condiments.  But there are two of us and my roomate  and I have drastically different seasoning tolerances so I feel ok about this.  They all have a place and there is extra space.

Spices!  So organized!  Yay!  This is definitely the best so far, this cabinet is barely using the “grocery black hole” area anymore.  Basically to the left of the ginger is just blank space.

 

Found it!

A bromeliad! This will be my new plant.  Mostly because I love how saying the name makes me sound like a frat guy on Saturday night in Wrigleyville.  Apparently my new bro is a part of the pineapple family, and it has pups!  We are going in for the long haul as they can take up to 3 years to flower but I have a really good feeling about this.

I think I finally found something real, you guys.

New assignment!

The second assignment is up!  I also went grocery shopping this week so I need to take pictures of my fridge/pantries, they are looking pretty good!

This week’s assignment began to talk about “Special Projects”- mine will definitely be culling spices, maybe re-organizing my counter spice rack and getting rid of stuff I don’t use that often.  Also I’d like to get some new plants in but they must be something that doesn’t need much (if any) sunlight.  I’ve heard bamboo is good but also recently got introduced to a cool desert-looking plant my friend called a “bromicilia”??  Might be spelling that wrong.  It had long green leaves and a red central stalk surrounded by red leaves.  Any ideas?

Pictures later today!

Saturday- Cleaning out the closet.

Eminem and I have similar goals today.

I had miso soup for lunch because I thought it was the only food I had left.  Mmmm, reconstituted tofu!  The only kind of tofu I like.  To be fair, I had just cleaned out my fridge and all I found in the way of food was this:

Yes, I am counting 4 kinds of jam as food.  And I ended up throwing out the carrots because they were…. questionable.  At best.

However!  The pantry proved more fruitful and I found (in the hidden narrow bit, of course) tomato sauce and two packages of half-empty spaghetti.  With the judicious application of black olives, spices, cheese and flask full of vodka left over from my Chicago SummerFest days, I have now created a delicious vodka sauce dinner.

FTW!  

Now, my fridge and pantry are cleared of old food, packages of spices I will never use, a bag of oats (????), and much more.  And they are ready to fill with organized goodness.

Assignment #1!

This week’s assignment deals with getting rid of food, both because it might very well make me sick (don’t like you never ate pizza the next day that had been sitting out.  We all were in high school.)  and because it takes up “energetic space” in the kitchen.  I like that phrase, “energetic space”.  I’ma go make some!

And, in the interest of full disclosure, here is what I had for dinner last night because I didn’t feel like cooking/got home too late/didn’t have time/ you know these excuses:

Cheesy bread AND cinnastix? Two great tastes that taste great together.

BEFORE YOU JUDGE ME!  Feast your eyes on the glory that is my current refridgerator contents:

Mostly condiments. My roomate's food is onthe right hand side of the fridge. Including the bread.

My cat is not food, you guys.  The fridge normally doesn’t look this barren, but since I just got back from my road trip across America, I have yet to go grocery shopping.  The freezer looks more promising until I realized that only the bag of shrimp (half empty, most freezer burnt) is mine.

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