Not quite spring cleaning
It’s not spring here just yet, at least not according to the outside temperature which still prompts me to wear thick, long-sleeved shirts. (Chopper, meanwhile, wears shorts, but then Chopper wears shorts in a blizzard, so this means nothing. Well, nothing other than my constant ability to admire his shapely Chef Legs, but that’s neither here nor there.)
(Is there such a thing as “Chef Legs?” Chefs do a great deal of standing, and do therefore tone their muscles, rather like soccer players, who have, in my humble opinion, the best legs in the world… but I digress.)
So. Cleaning. Not quite spring cleaning.
The short of it is: we’re mired in it. I spent yesterday organizing our spice drawers, liberating old jars for new spices, and creating a new set of labels which I then slapped on the jars so that they’d all look pretty, like they matched, like they were part of a set or something. (From a distance, they even fool people!)
Today, we threw out things around the house and surveyed the garden (much, much pruning to be done), but more importantly, I’ve wallowed myself in deep reorganization regarding the computer and the website.
Short version: Blogging may be somewhat light until I get reorganization work done.
Long version: One gig of free space left on my computer and I’ve got how many photos and graphics I want to play with? Time to bite the bullet, snag a new hard drive and shuffle everything around so that Photoshop says nice things to me like “yes, I have room to play, thanks much” instead of “holyfreakinghell are you insane trying to save that huge-ass file?”
Second half of long version: Blog changes coming up. Things could get weird around here. I mean, weird, cuz, you know, we’re not at all weird now.
February 23rd, 2006 at 1:31 am
You are so organized. I do this once in a while too but not often enough. My main problem is that the cabinet that houses all these spices is messy and the jars stick to the cabinet, usually b/c of honey. ha ha
February 23rd, 2006 at 2:07 am
The thought of trying to organize around here makes me weep. Too many households trying to combine. Why is it that we have three of something and, for some reason, all of something else got packed away??? Can you say, “poor planning”?
Good luck with everything. I don’t envy you.
February 23rd, 2006 at 6:48 am
Crazy Chef Legs, Huge-ass photo files and weird blogs changes…….Cool
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:56 am
Miz D,
You and chopper are indeed a solid rock of conformity and predictability amid the sturm und drang of the virtual food world. A veritable bastion of basic black and Oxford button-downs offering haven from the siren-call of perverse culinary Web sites with their décolleté temptations of ripe fruit and cheesecake.
February 23rd, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Aw, man. The only blog redesign I could come up with was throwing away all the old junk.
Meh. I like the simplicity.
Can’t wait to see. Apparently you know a little something about this new-fangled CSS/HTML thingie!
(Mrs D: Don’t think; just answer: Pink or Black?)
February 23rd, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Gia, we didn’t have the honey problem, but cleaning our spice drawers did require the vacuum. (Honey is kept near the tea, and I imagine someday I’ll clean that shelf and find a layer of congealed tea leaves.)
B’gina — that sounds all too familiar. Would you believe I found five jars of ground cinnamon and two more of cinnamon sticks?
Barbara… me too, me too. (You know, Crazy Chef Legs would make for a good blog name. Hmmm… Naaah. :-))
That’s right, Kevin. Not a scrap of decadent cheese cake in these parts! I’m wearing a poly-blend grey suit dress as I type this, you know.
Cookiecrumb: Pink, no black. I don’t know! Aaaaahhh…
Okay, pink. But only the neon ’80s kind, and only because I have this perverse desire to listen to Kim Wilde right now.
February 24th, 2006 at 2:12 am
my spring cleaning involves defrosting one of two whole frozen turkeys… spices are the least of my problems…
February 24th, 2006 at 11:59 am
i love the idea of personalizing your spice shelf. and the labels are great-i especially like the font-what is it if you don’t mind my asking :)
February 24th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Hey Mona,
The font is called Dark Ages. It’s one of my favorites. :-)
One thing I’ve done with these labels is use moisture-activated label paper I picked up at a wine & beer supply shop. The drawback is I’ve got to cut out each label by hand, but the big bonus is that the labels come off easily in water so that I don’t have to scrub goo off the jars when I need to relabel them!
February 27th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Cool tip about the labels. I use clear address labels that work really well as long as the jar has something in it. Plus they are really easy to remove. The font is VERY cool looking! You are stylin’ Mrs D!
February 27th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
You reminded me that I have some spices in my spice jars that have got to be over 10 - maybe even 15 years old! Thyme, for example. My jars are the Schilling/McCormick ones, that have gone through three label styles–my thyme label is the old pale green with gold lettering label. Ack. I think I’ll keep the jars, since they’re now so expensive, and put new herbs and spices in them. But even with two large spice cabinets, I still don’t have room for all my spices! They’ve overflowed into the other cabinets. I’ll get started on them this weekend.
February 28th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Cyndi, I found a few of those too: jars where the formerly green herbs had turned gray and if they smelled of anything at all it was cupboard dust.
March 5th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Hi, Mrs. D.
An organized and uniformly labled spice rack is a sign of near-enlightenment in my book. A state I fear I may never reach.
Thanks for your comments on Tea and Cookies. I’m not sure what I was making in that photo–crepes or scrambled eggs (my first culinary masterpiece).
I’m loving your pet photos (the expression on that puppy’s face is priceless), and I must agree with you about the legs of male soccer players. The really are the nicest:-)