Today's Thought:
I love cooking. I love making up my own recipes and cooking for fun. I can be pretty creative with what I've got on hand at any time. Lately I have been cooking from Jamie Oliver's cookbook "Happy Days" (see my first post) to expand my cooking horizons. I would never have made a salad with Daikon or raw artichokes before I started this adventure. Now here I am and I'm enjoying new ingredients and hunting for said ingredients in the farmer's market.
I have one major pet peeve however, that I want to share here. I never seem to have one or two things that a recipe calls for. I'm not talking about the perishables here. I'm talking about food "staples".
For example, I currently have 5 different vinegars in my cupboard. Yes, FIVE. White, balsamic, red wine, apple cider, and tarragon/peppercorn in white wine, vinegar. But I don't have plain white wine vinegar. Oh yes and the next recipe calls for Rice wine vinegar. So off I go to the grocery store to buy this and now I have SIX different vinegars. I have an entire shelf in my kitchen dedicated to vinegars. My kitchen is not that big. Let me tell you that my spice shelf or should I say, shelves, has what I think is everything I need. But no. No. The next recipe needs something I don't have. Well, maybe I have it and it's buried behind the turmeric and red pepper seeds. Or maybe it's beside one of the 2 different kinds of paprika that is in there. Why are there 2 kinds of paprika in my pantry? Because I couldn't find the first jar and went and bought another one, which turned out to be different.. by the way does anyone know how many kinds of paprika there are? I thought there was only spanish paprika.. apparently I am wrong.
I have things in my pantry that I used once and never looked at again. This is my pet peeve. I think that I'm fully loaded and ready to go and then a new recipe calls for something I don't have. My kitchen is becoming a grocery store. Maybe even better than a grocery store. You can't buy a tiny amount of dried spice for one recipe. I bought a container of anise for the last post and I know I will probably never use the rest of them. They will go stale, I will throw them away, and then I will find another recipe that calls for them. The cycle repeats.
So that's my bitch. If anyone needs some spices or vinegar, let me know. I think I have everything, at least until the next recipe! :)
I've had a few people come to me and tell me that they have the same problem with recipes and groceries. I got a really good tip that I will use in the future: Bulk Barn. Why didn't I think of that? No, seriously: why didn't I think of that for spices? Ok, you can't use it for vinegars, but spices.. yes! Just make sure you label the baggie of green-stuff really well... who knows what you can confuse it with! :)
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