Exceedingly Mundane

Tuesday afternoon, since Hambones was down, I tried to get a few odds and ends done. I was catching up on some stuff on the DVR and was watching an episode of Rachael Ray. She said, as she has said before, that the best way to clean a wooden cutting board is with fresh lemon juice and kosher salt. So, I decided there was no time like the present.

I squeezed a whole lemon, one half at a time, and then spread sea salt on one side of my Boos board. It made a bit of a mess, but it seemed to do a pretty good job of cleaning and deoderizing it. I need to do the other side soon. I let it dry good and then wiped it down well with board oil. I’ve done the oil several times before, but had never cleaned it with lemon and salt.

I should have blogged about my board before. I have a set of plastic color-coded cutting boards that I use (actually, it’s my second set, I wore the first one out), and also a smaller wooden cutting board that I like. But for a while now, I had been wanting a nice board. All of the cooking shows that I watch, they seem to all use the Boos brand of cutting board. So, since Tim is always wonderful to me, he surprised me this past Christmas with one. I love the thing, I know it was a splurge but I plan to use it for a very long time to come. And after all, he had given me my Wusthof santoku knife for my birthday last October, so getting the board for Christmas seemed rather logical 🙂

I often joke with Tim about the saying “hunter/gatherer”, because that really shines through with the two of us. Tim is a hunter, but only goes out to get what he needs. I’m definitely a gatherer, and some would probably say, a hoarder. I don’t like to run out of things, like toilet paper, dishwashing soap, shampoo, and mostly – food! Tim is always joking, telling me, you’d think you lived way out in the boonies, instead of a mile from a grocery store, the way you stock up on stuff!

I have a big pantry, but mostly, it is just really deep. I know I should be grateful to have a lot of storage space in my pantry, but it’s sooooo hard to find things because whatever I put in the front of the shelf, obscures whatever is stored or stacked behind it. I’ve been going back and forth for a while now, wanting to declutter it and reorganize it, and I finally got around to it.

I threw out almost half a garbage bag of food. Things I had bought for a certain recipe and never used. Hey, if I haven’t used them in the past couple of years, I’m probably not going to use them now. Half opened packages of various seasonings. Cans that were past their expiration date. Etc.

One of the main goals was to clear up room on my counter-tops. I have a pretty set of white canisters to hold my flour, sugar, etc. But, I don’t have a lot of counter space and Tim was always fussing that we need more room. So, I bought a couple of the Oxo Good Grips storage canisters, and packed up my pretty ones “for when we get a bigger house, and I get a bigger kitchen”. 😀 I made more room on my counters, and right now at least, I have more room in my pantry.

I did NOT take before pictures. I would like to say that I forgot, but it’s more like I was ashamed. I had stuff packed in and really had no idea what was buried in the back of most of the shelves. I’m not sure how long my nice, clean pantry will last, but right now, I’m really enjoying it! It makes me more motivated to keep it this way, but I know that sooner or later, my hoarder/gatherer gene is going to kick in and I’m going to make a massive buying trip to Sam’s Club, and that will be the end of my clean pantry! LOL! 🙂

Here’s a couple of after shots…

Bottom of the pantry, the bottom shelf is so deep, it has a lot of wasted space, but, oh well!

A close-up of the Oxo containers, I really really like their products, and these are no exception:

Top of the pantry… I really like having that rubbermaid small basket on the top shelf. I can’t reach that shelf without climbing in a chair or ladder, but I can pull down that basket that has some small bags of rice and pasta in it. Works really well for me 🙂