What I've Been Doing..

Among the many things I've done lately (while not blogging) is organizing my pantry. Of course, it was pretty organized to begin with, but the pasta, pulses and grains were a bit of a mess - mostly in plastic bags thrown into one of several wire baskets. As a consequence I never knew quite what I had or where it was.

A trip to Sister Rose's house inspired me. She was using quart-sized spaghetti sauce jars for her rice and nuts and it looked quite tidy. On the way home, I suddenly had an epiphany. I could use actual canning jars. So, I went to Essex Agricultural Coop (because they are the only place I knew that has canning supplies all year long) and I bought quart jars and half gallon jars. At home, I transferred all my stuff to jars and made labels. It looks so neat now and I know what I've got - more than 10 kinds of rice, for example (that would be brown and white jasmine, brown and white basmati, brown and white sushi, wild rice, arborio rice, English pudding rice, red rice from the Camargue, a couple of rice blends) 4 kinds of lentils (Brown, red, yellow and Puy) etc.