What a Difference a Week Has Brought

There's been very little cooking in the Harrington household this week, but there has been kitchen progress on two fronts. First, my green friends have developed into bona fide plants (note the towering beans). Even the watermelons have sprouted. The arrival of a book on food preservation, So Easy to Preserve, muted the disappointment of yesterday's snows. The planning of last year's garden was haphazzard. The garden was started late. When the crops did come in, we ate what we could, but didn't know what to do with the rest. This year, we have a better idea of what to grow; the plants that need more time have been started indoors, and I'm boning up on food preservation.

An avalanche of pasta boxes and small bags fell out of dry goods cabinet last week, occasioning a ferocity of cursing rarely heard in our home. It was not the first time. After finding the rancid pine nuts not too far from freshly purchased, non-rancid pine nuts, I decided I'd had it. That chaos had to go. The second item of the week's kitchen progress is part of one of my new year's resolutions -- re-organize the kitchen. I picked up about seventy-five dollars worth of Rubbermaid containers and begun tackling the dry goods cabinet. I transferred dozens of twist-tied and rubber banded plastic bags of bulk items (rice, almonds, pistachios, garbanzos, specialty flours, nature's burger) into very clear, stackable, resealable, reusable containers. I had four varieties of rice in six or seven bags, two bags of slivered almonds, some unsalvageables and a very, very opaque inventory.

School, work and family has kept me from experimenting with recipes, ethnic groceries and ingredients, but it's nice to make progress on other fronts.