The Pantry

I recently cleaned out our hallway pantry and I thought it'd be a good time to show how I like to organize it. Now if only it would stay organized. I'm bad about just shoving things in there when I'm unpacking the grocery bags and eventually it starts to look like this...

 

 

It was due time for a good purging and cleaning

 

 

I try to go through the pantry every couple months to check expiration dates and to see what I need to buy more of. This is the hallway pantry, I also have the regular kitchen pantry which is the exact same layout. I prefer to keep open items and what we typically use everyday in the kitchen while this pantry holds most of the unopened items or the big bulky type products.

 

 

It always makes me so happy to see everything organized

 

 

I started with the top shelf and worked my way down. Before, the top shelf  held the medicine/bandages and miscellaneous pitchers and vases I had. I kept the medicine and bandages but moved the rest to another spot. Now I'm also storing unopened chips/cookies, extra spices (yes in a shoe box) that don't fit with the rest and a container that holds some baking supplies like cookie cutters/dyes.

 



 

 

Next I went on to the middle shelf. I like to store mainly baking/cooking supplies here. On the left I keep the flour and sugars on top of the wire shelf. Underneath that I have pastas and rice. If I open up a box of pasta and don't use it all, I keep it in the kitchen pantry so that I'll remember to use it up.

 

 

 

 

On the right side of the middle shelf I keep the rest of the baking/cooking supplies like oils and vinegars. Any canned goods that you would typically use for baking like pie filling, condensed milk,  I also store on this shelf. Anything I buy for a recipe I put in this spot.

 

 

 

 

The bottom shelf is used to store canned goods as well as condiments. On the left I keep the condiments and any miscellaneous items. On top of the little shelf I have canned beans while under it I store any bagged beans. I don't keep the opened bag of beans in the kitchen pantry because I really don't use them as often.

 

 

 

 

The right side of the bottom shelf holds most of the cans. On top I have vegetables and fruit. See what happens when you can't see what you have in your pantry? You end up with 27 cans of mandarin oranges. Underneath I have soup type items and tomato based items.

 

 

 

 

And we've finally come to the floor. This is where I keep beverages that don't fit in the fridge. In the small box I have the opened bags of flour and sugar that don't fit into their containers. We also store a small container of cat food in here. We buy the big bags and we kinda wanted a way to seal it off but I didn't want a huge tub of cat food in there. So I have a larger box in the garage that holds the large bag and then we fill this up as needed. It even has a little pour spout. Fancy right?

 

 

 

 

And lastly we have the door of the pantry. My mom gave me the holder when she moved out of her house. I didn't want the full organizer hanging here so I just took the bottom part off. Up top I keep our not as often used paper type products. The next shelf holds more baking supplies, the more common items I reach for. And the bottom holds the beverage items and packets.

 

 

 

This closet really has tiny, narrow shelves. I have a lot of available space, I just need to find out a way to use it. It's hard to get a shot of it since it's in the hallway, but you can see how much unused space there is.

 

 

But at the same time I don't want it to feel too crowded either, so for now this works. Plus I still have the kitchen pantry, which I will show sometime soon.

 

 











 



Weekly Menu July 29th 2013

Our weekly menu is not a set in stone schedule that we follow, sometimes we do all the meals and sometimes we barely follow it at all. On those weeks where the menu just doesn't fit our taste or schedule I will push those meals on to the next weeks menu. So if you see the same meal for a couple of weeks that would be why, or I guess we could just really like that meal but it's usually the first of the two.

Here's our weekly menu for July 29th ( I can't believe it's almost August!)


1. Sweet & Sour Chicken with roasted broccoli and jasmine rice (roll-over from last week)

2. BLT's with roasted potatoes

3. Baked Ziti with corn, garlic bread and a salad

4. Vegetable Stir Fry with jasmine rice

5. Breakfast for dinner (usually omelets and bacon, I might make some muffins too)

Zucchini Bread

This past Saturday I tried my hand at making some zucchini bread. I only have had it once before, I think, and I remember loving it. So when my parents handed over some of their excess zucchini I knew I had to give it a try for myself.

I browsed online for a recipe to go by since I didn't have one on hand. I came across this recipe and after reading the comments (which I always do if available) I decided to give it a try. I did make a few tweaks as I went along but I'll explain later.

I started out getting all my ingredients out and making sure I had everything I needed. Minus the zucchini which I had already shredded and just forgot to place in the picture.

 

Then it was time to get going. I started with placing all the dry ingredients in a bowl of their own.

 

 

 

And I placed the remaining ingredients minus the zucchini into another bowl. I went ahead and placed these directly into my mixing bowl, because why not? Here is where I made a few changes. Instead of a full cup of vegetable oil I did half of a cup vegetable oil and half of a cup of apple sauce, purely for the health benefit. I also used some brown sugar instead of all white sugar, I did one cup brown and the rest white. The sugar was my own personal preference. 

 

While my wet ingredients and sugars were mixing, I stirred the dry ingredients together. Then I slowly spooned the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, stopping to scrape the sides as I went.

 

 



 

Once all that was mixed together I got out my zucchini and folded it into the ingredients. And here's where my next change comes in. I didn't have loaf pans to bake this in so I used my muffin pan instead. I wasn't quite sure how'd they turn out but it worked great. I baked them for 25 minutes instead of the recommended 40 because they're a lot smaller than loaf pans would be. I also didn't realize it until I just now looked at the recipe again, but I baked mine at 350 degrees instead of 325. Oh well, I guess it turned out alright either way.

 

 

 

 

 

Next time I might try upping the apple sauce to maybe 3/4 cup and 1/4 vegetable oil. I also might reduce the sugar by 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup.

 

I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. I ate a couple of them right after they came out of the oven, with a generous helping of butter for each, that's my favorite way to eat them. I filled the muffins about half way with the batter and I ended up with 3 dozen of them.

 

 



Bathroom Decor

Before our company (that is now gone) arrived I new I needed to do something to the wall above the toilet in our guest bathroom.

I used to have a shelf up in about the middle region, but as much as I wanted to love it I didn't. It bothered me every time I was in there, so I took it down one day. But then I was left with an empty wall, and while there's not much, decoration wise in there, I knew that wall needed something. The problem was that I'm not sure what direction I want to go in the space, décor wise. So I didn't want to  invest a lot of time or money into a project that I might would be taking down in a few months, plus I just didn't have the time for a large project.

I decided to do two pictures frames, stacked on top of one another. I didn't have any pictures I wanted to use in there so I decided to do scrapbook paper. It's an easy change out when I get bored with one design, and easy to change for the holidays as well.

 

I picked up two of these frames at Wal-Mart for I believe $10 to $12 each. They come "ready to hang" with a picture in them. The boat picture isn't bad, but they had a brown frame there with a picture of a green rolling pasture, I really did like that one. I went with the black one instead though because for one I wanted black, and I also like that the black ones had the mat to them, the brown didn't'. 

 

I also went by Hobby Lobby to pick up some scrapbook paper. I was initially going to go for a neutral tan or gray but I thought this green print was pretty and the room could use a little color. 

 

I just placed the glass on the paper and traced the outline. I made sure to use the same corner of each paper so that the design would match up as much as possible.



 

 

I also went ahead and took the mats out so that they'd make a bigger impact. The frames were about $25 total combined and the paper was on sale for under $1 for all three sheets ( I got an extra just in case). It's nothing marvelous but it's a little pick-me-up the bathroom was needing. As I said, I have no clue what I want to do with this room and who knows when I'll get around to it but for now this is holding me over. 

Weekly Menu July 21st 2013

Company is gone and my life has returned to normal, I love it. I was able to plan out a full five days of meals and I couldn't be more excited to be eating some home cooked meals again. Give it about a week and then I'll be dreading it but for now I'll take advantage.

Last week I mentioned making zucchini bread for the first time. Well yesterday I gave it a go and I loved how it turned out, although it's not really bread but muffins instead. I'll share later this week the recipe I used for it and some little tweaks I did to make it work better for us.

They were tasty

Here are the meals I planned for the coming week:


1. Baked chicken with brown rice, butter beans and a salad

2. Fried Rice with either egg rolls or some chicken thrown in

3. Beef tips & rice with green beans and rolls

4. Sweet & sour chicken with jasmine rice and roasted broccoli

5. A large salad with roasted corn and black beans