Enough about that. Now to my spice shelves and how having a plethora of well-organized spices blesses me at meal making times and my family when it's time to eat. First, some photos.
Savory spice cupboard before and after. Both are pretty crowded, but now I know how to find everything savory. This is where I keep season salts, garlic, spicy sauces, pepper flakes, and a whole lot of other kinds of good cookin' love.
The sweet spice cupboard used to hold all sorts of items besides sweet stuff. Now I can see what I'm looking for and if it's something like cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, vanilla, honey or malt, I go to this cupboard.
It may seem like I've got too many condements and additives. But honestly, if I have to live off of plain rice, pasta or potatoes for a while because there's severe winter weather, a job loss, or some other unexpected event, I know these spices are going to be my sanity. If you want to find some great blends and prices on bulk spices and mixes, go to San Fransisco Herb Company and check out their offerings. Atlantic Spice is a sister company and is more condusive to east coast ordering. Both offer high quality products for a lot less than grocery store prices. One more list of items to permanently erase from your grocery shopping list.
Now, here's a great document or two on spices I use that gives my family the variety we need in our life and diet. Always something new and surprising, often good enough to enjoy again. I've included some of my favorite spicy recipes.
What are your best spice strategies and recipes? How do you use spices to liven up your meals and menus? Please share, we could all use a little spice.
I always forget the before picture, so here they are mid-process spraying out all of the gross stuff in the fridge. I also got a great photo of them washing shelves and drawers in the sink, but since one of them isn't mine I figured I better not publish it till I talk to her mom.
This is the pile of food, minus the stuff they threw away. They wipe down the sticky stuff, consolidated the butters and condiments, decided on new homes for old items and got it all back in a very organized way. they even made a game out of tossing the oldy, moldy stuff in the trash. It was good fun in the kitchen this morning.
This is their stack of clean shelves and drawers. It's precariously perched, but it was clean and dry when they returned it all to it's home.
This is a photo of our sandwich supply drawer and our leftovers tote. I used to keep sandwich stuff in the tote and leftovers scattered throughout the fridge, but then we forgot what we had and couldn't find it half the time even if we remembered where it was, so I'm hoping this new system will cut down on waste.
Here's the finished product. Fridge and freezer clean and reorganized; full but with room for things to come. The inventory was a cinch once everything found its new home. Now I know what I have and what I need for another month of No More Grocery Shopping. As you can see we are doing pretty well and I won't have to stock up too much more with the perishable foods.