January Miscellany
This is what my lap usually looks like on the way to a family gathering.
Those are Honey-Glazed Pan Rolls, by the way. That's simply the best yeast roll recipe I have! The only problem is, the glaze gets sticky overnight, so the rolls have to be made the day of. Which means they're usually hot from the oven when we're heading out the door.
Thus, the pan in the lap.
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I love the way Zoe lines things up. Pistachio shells, markers, erasers, stuffed animals....anything she owns in multiples ends up in a row at some point.
Did you notice her dog Chloe has a friend now? Zoe found the other dog (a genuine Build-A-Bear dog) at Goodwill for $4, dress and ear-bows included. She had some Christmas money, so I let her buy it.
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Do you want to clean out your kitchen cabinets with me? I had this on my last goal list, but it seems like a good thing to do in January, not in December.
Regular pantry/cabinet cleaning helps prevent food waste because it keeps you in the know about what you've got on hand. So, join me! It'll save you from Things-Falling-Out-Of-Your-Cabinet-Every-Time-You-Open-It syndrome, and it could save you money too.
I'll post my before and afters next Wednesday (that's a week from now!), and I'll put up a linky at the end of my post so you can share if you blog about your cabinet cleaning.
Get busy organizing!
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Speaking of organizing, I need to do a thorough fridge clean-up. It got a little out of control in there over the holidays, and I want to get it ship-shape because a cluttered, disorganized fridge is a breeding ground for food waste.
If you resolved to work on your food waste this year, I highly recommend cleaning out your fridge. It's like declaring food waste bankruptcy, and you can have a fresh, clean start.
Also, if you're a food waste newbie, check out my 10 Ways To Stop Wasting Food post. And don't stop at the post...there are some helpful ideas in the comments too.
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Today's 365 post:Two-fer
Joshua's 365 post: Hmm. I see Joshua has no post ready to go.
Anyone have any tips for cleaning the actual fridge? We discovered some funky looking spills - dried and crusty now - under the produce drawers this weekend. The drawers come right out, so fortunately no problem there. In my experience, cleaners don't seem to work as well in a cold fridge. Any tried and true tips to share for cleaning out the white monster in my kitchen?
I have found that the best way to clean a dried crusty spill in the fridge is to take a sponge or washcloth, soak with hot water, just barely squeeze it out and let it sit on the spill for a few minutes. I usually go about my other fridge cleaning tasks like rinsing the drawers, etc. Then I check it, squeeze out the washcloth, wet it again, soak it again. Eventually, it will dissolve the muck... it might just take a few tries.
Best way: empty fridge, defrost, use hot water.
More pratical way: let a hot towel or sponge sit on the spill till the crud softens enough to wipe away, then clean as you usually do.
Two more hints:
1) Vacuum the fridge coils, accumulated dust really diminishes the fridge's efficiency.
2) Get into the wrinkles of the door seals. It can get really cruddy in there (at least, mine always does).
If it's one of those "empty the entire fridge" kind of cleanings, it works good to heat some water--3 cups or so, maybe?--then put it in the refrigerator uncovered for 5-10 minutes. It steams the refrigerator up nicely and makes the stuck on stuff easier to get off with a soapy dish cloth.
I should have said heat the water to boiling--oops!
Try baking soda and vinegar. The fizzing chemical reaction loosens a lot of crusty messes and makes it really easy to clean them up.
Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll try some, one, or all of them tonight!!
Kristen no word of a lie - I promise hand on heart and all that jazz (no joke)... I looked in my cupboards today and decided to do a post on before and after. I did this post last year on my blog, showing off 🙂 my organised pantry supplies. My cupboards are mega organised normally (as you know I'm a no waste gal) but after the abundance of the holidays they need a good sorting through.
I'll definitely be taking part....particularly as I have my new camera - the "proof will be in the pudding" as to whether it's my skills or the camera that makes any difference to the quality as I have a direct comparison!
Bummer, I just did this and didn't have a *before* picture. You are right! Doing this on a regular basis will avoid food waste, and quite frankly I've had a bit too much of it lately!
This morning is my fridge cleaning day too. I usually empty it all...spray with a vinegar, detergent, water mix. Let it sit, then scrub. I need to see what's lurking in the back and on the door shelves.
ah... just did one of my cabinet (well a few shelves in a few cabinets.) Put stuff over the fridge (cabinet) that doesn't get much use, since that cabinet is harder to get to.
In the cleaning, freecycled, a 4 cup coffee pot, some insense, and a wicker basket!
more cabinets to go......
yea my fridge could use a good scrubbing! i guess that is on the list some place.
That bread looks so good!
I don't have a blog to post to, would you consider posting a pix for me? I might be disqualified, though: I'm one of the slightly (ahem) retentive types whose food cabinets are usually organized so I don't have a before pix. (My struggle spot is my office, always has been, probably always will be.)
My January project is to learn to do without the standing freezer. I've added a chest freezer to the mix of fridge&freezer and standing freezer. I *shouldn't* need both a chest and a standing but I'm accustomed to the standing, so I need to revamp my habits of a decade - it's not going to be easy.
I have a small chest freezer and used to have a large one. I don't know how I could do without one but it is easy to lose stuff in there. Have had to resort to making a list of things I need to use up at times.
My standard freezer list includes dates. One problem is that the standing is in the kitchen while the chest is downstairs in the basement. Another problem is that the chest didn't come with organizing boxes or anything (just a couple of small baskets) so I need to find something efficient to organize that large space. Milk crates were a fail.
I use reusable shopping bags in my chest freezer to keep it (at least sorta) organized. I just sort things into rough categories, raw meat, cooked meat, bread, veggies, fruit, etc, and put each in a bag. This makes it easy to get to things near the bottom of the freezer because you can just pull whole bags out. And because the bags are a lot more flexible than boxes or crates, it doesn't take a lot of space.
Yup! Just email me a picture. 🙂
Looking back at your linked post ... you say that freezer burnt food will be bad and therefore must be thrown out. This isn't always true - sometimes it can be rescued, generally by heavily disguising it.
* Freezer burnt meat can be simmered into a thick soup: simmer it for a very long time, then pull it into shreds.
* Freezer burnt fruit can be added to a smoothie or pureed and used in place of applesauce in low-fat baked goods.
That's true...it's just that it won't be good for most places you'd usually use that food when it's not freezer burnt.
I'm very sensitive to the freezer burnt taste, so I'd have to HEAVILY disguise it. And when I'm faced with a piece of food like that, I worry that the disguising efforts will fail, and then I'll have wasted more food than I was going to waste to begin with.
I actually have clean the pantry on my list of goals for January. It is quite a mess. I also need to go through my freezer, because there is some pretty old food in there.
In your picture of the rolls, what is the green clothespin for?
I don't even remember! I think I had brought a bag of something that needed to be clipped, and I stuck it on the pan so I could keep track of it.
Before Christmas I was working on using up our food supply and doing quite well at it. After having 3 families with 5 grandchildren over a 2 week period (the last just left yesterday), I have a lot of stuff that needs to be used up. Again. Oh well, it will be nice to only grocery shop for perishables for a while.
I organized my pantry befor Christmas and surprisingly it still looks pretty good. I do need to tackle a few cupboards though. Hopefully by next Wednesday!
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I have to tell you that I made your Honey Baked Rolls over the holidays for several gatherings and it was a hit!!! Someone told me that it never occurred to them to make homemade bread ever. Silly... I make your wheat bread all the time and when I get lazy and serve my 10 year old store bought bread she lets me know. I love bread making...
I smiled to myself when I saw the papers on the inside of your cupboard doors. I'm not that great at remembering amounts for recipes, so I have some that I use often stuck on the inside of my cupboard doors. (Your directions for yogurt is one of them!) It saves having to get the cookbook out quite as often.
I have 8-10 recipes on little post-its on the inside of a cabinet. Lessee, donburi, waffles, chix brine, ...
I'm not organizing my cabinets so much as I am clearing them out. I'm doing a pantry/freezer challenge this month and trying to live off of what we have as much as possible. It's amazing how much extra food we manage to accumulate!
Please tell me that your pan is new. It's soooooo clean!
Katy
Yep! Mr. FG gave me two of those for Christmas, and I'm so excited, I'm going to talk about them in a dedicated blog post. Hee.
Katy - Isn't that a wonderful GIFT that Kristen received? (Just kidding, really)
I have two of these pans. One which I received as a birthday gift from my sister, the other from the pay-by-the-pound Goodwill.
They truly do deserve their own blog post.
Katy
Ooo, I really need to do that. I'll do it this weekend so I can link up!
I love what you said about how cleaning out your fridge is like declaring food waste bankruptcy, it's true!
I think I just might join you in the pantry challenge. I'm also wanted to stock my pantry with healthy things that would be good in an emergency, too. That's another goal...but the idea of a clean/tidy pantry is good 🙂 🙂 Love and hugs from the ocean shores of California, Heather 🙂
I have a real love/hate relationship with my pantry. I love having one, but I hate that the shelves are fixed, and that the pantry is too deep. I have lots of little shelves to help utilize all the space, but since I've recently started baking, I need to reorganize. I have a rack mounted on the inside of the door, and bought another rack at a yard sale, so I want to mount that somewhere, too. I really think I'm going to become unemployed this year, so I'm stocking up on all non-perishables. The extra rack is good, but again, I'm not sure how best to organize all the stuff.
I think I'll just take everything out, clean the shelves, and sit down with a cup of coffee. I'm sure inspiration of some type will strike eventually...
I love Tupperware, but I hate spam!!!
Just removed it...it was one of those iffy types of comments. If it was from someone who regularly commented, it would be one thing, but since it was the first I'd ever heard from that person, I'm more inclined to view it as advertising.
Must have those rolls SUPER soon 🙂
I did a bit of pantry cleaning this week, but I have yet to write about it. I definitely will be more motivated now though!
my pantry is actually in pretty decent shape(I tackled it a few months ago) but my fridge is starting to accumulate bagsa nd bags aren't good - that means stuff I took to work and brought back so it's time to sort through and toss what's not good and get the good stuff where I can see and use it - also need to replace some condiments I think.
Just wanted to chime in -- I made those rolls for our Friday night dinner (Shabbat dinner), and they were a huge hit! Thanks for the reminder about that recipe. They were delish!
I missed cleaning out my fridge this last Friday, I think I'll go do it right now! Still no Food Waste...Yea! But, it takes diligence all through the week for me! Sigh. My husband is very involved in this also and a.) is always asking how we're doing for the up-coming Food Waste Friday, and b.) is very willing to be the family garbage can eating all little bits n' bobs I place in front of him! 🙂
Since following Jo at Simply Being Mum, I now empty out my fridge and scrub...makes such a difference, not only in feeling good about its shine, but also in my grocery shopping! I KNOW what is in every nook and cranny! This last Friday, I slipped up and am so sorry as it does make a difference!
Thanks Kristen for this great idea: Food Waste Friday! I'm off to empty out the fridge to be ready for the next Food Waste Friday! Cheeryshirley