Works for Me Wednesday: Kitchen Organizing

Rocks in My Dryer is hosting a themed blog carnival, and the theme for this week kitchen organizing. What perfect timing! I'm on the cleaning binge right now, and the kitchen is on my list for this week.

Here are my top tips, most of which I follow myself, most of the time...

1. This is a biggie.  No paper allowed on kitchen counters.  Cookbooks are allowed in shelves and on the counter while you're using it, but that is it.  I've found keeping the paper out keeps the counters much more organized.  
2. Clean the fridge once a month.  For me, it's the first week of the month.  I was being really good about it and keeping it on the first Monday of each month, but that didn't work for me.   This month, fridge day falls on Thursday.   
3. If at all possible, I like separate food items and non-food items (cooking utensils, etc).  In my house, when they get mingled in a cabinet, they get muddled, and so do I.
4. Don't buy bulk if you can help it.  I used to be a horder, but we ran into problems with food expiring.  And then last year we got a pantry moth infestation from some petfood...ugh.  I never again want to have the disappointment (and disgust) of throwing out big quantities of baking items, etc..
5. Start cooking with a clean kitchen, and everything goes much more smoothly.  

Flowers to brighten my day

My husband is a man of many talents--have I mentioned that before?  One of them is reading my mind.  I was dreaming of a purse for fall, thinking of an elongated shape with oranges and flowers.  In my mind, it had browns and was made of either corduroy or leather or some silky blend...I was trying to figure out how and when I was going to make it.  Then, what does he bring home to me as a surprise?  This purse!

He does not, as a rule, buy me flowers.  He grows them instead.  But he made an exception for this amazing bag.   It was a squeal-worthy gift, it was so perfectly out of my wishes.   Now I'm going to make a little cell-phone cover and a little business card holder from my remnants.  

Like everyone else, we are on a tight budget this year, and this is an extravagance that I wouldn't usually indulge in for myself.   That makes it that much sweeter.  Aren't all great surprises like that?

Bookmark: pink gardens

Pink gardens are cheerful and so is this bookmark, I think.  The latest from last week's bookmark craze around here.

More snails?

Okay, I said this blog wasn't all about snails, and it's not. I swear!
But who could resist posting about these tiny little guys? Ada found them outside this morning during a break in the rain. They are soooo tiny! I used the macro lens to get a nice view of them, and Ada added the penny for perspective.



What I can't get over is how she found them. Think of trying to spot something as tiny as the question mark on your keyboard. Imagine trying to find them on slick stones that are the same color of shells. In the rain.   This is one of the many magical abilities of a seven-year old.  Why do we lose this as we get older?  I'm working to get that attentiveness back.



Take a look at their little translucent shells. Ada found 22 baby snails, and they are now in what she is calling the "snail nursery."  If they are anything like the 10 big snails we have, they will flourish under Ada's care.

Johnny Appleseed

Happy birthday, Johnny. Not really the hokey character he is sometimes made out to be, John Chapman was an innovator and a man who ran against the grain. A free spirit, he wandered the east coast of the US for most of his 80 plus years, without possessions or pretension. He did ride along the riverways in a hollowed-out log, and he prided himself on living without traditional comforts. The stories you might have heard about him giving out appleseeds and building nurseries are true; what you might not know is that he was quite talented in land acquisition. When he died, he had over 1200 acres to his name.

Why do I like him? Okay, he was bit of a nutter, and that against-the-grain thing appeals to me. As does his idealism. He was someone who made a difference for thousands of people, and he did it without too much fanfare for himself. I remember reading about him in school a bit, but I really was inspired by him by reading Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, which is one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite writers.

To honor Mr. Appleseed (or Chapman), I baked an apple tart. The apples are Macoun and Honeycrisp, two varieties unknown to Chapman's time, but increasingly popular today. I made my own puff pastry (Thanks again to Jacques Pepin's Celebrations), and I made up my own little pastry cream for the filling using applesauce, flour, sugar, salt, and cream. A bit of cream and sugar glaze on the crust, and voila! Johnny might have thought it too fancy, I'm sure, but we all thought it was pretty festive and delicious...

Vignette - Poem

Poetry is one of my first loves, and I find some poems are constant companions. Some old friends, like this one, visit me in snippets while during the day, popping into my head unbidden.  Tess Gallagher's poem, "I Stop Writing the Poem." is a recent visitor of mine. I got it from Garrison Keillor's edited collection of poetry, Good Poems, which is one of my favorite anthologies of poetry. Reading an amazing poem is like eating a great piece of chocolate for me--I swoon. This one does it for me.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do. 

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in m hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.

Paris bookmark, version 2

This one's for me! And so fun to make!