Moving time
It’s moving week so there’s not much cooking and baking going on, apart from me making loaves of brown bread to try and use up some of the six – yes, count them, SIX! (and that’s not mentioning the few that are down at the cottage, ahem…) – bags of flour that I have sitting on my shelves. The flat that we are moving into in Dublin is much smaller and doesn’t have a freezer so for a while there was a mad race to finish up all the frozen foodstuffs at our current place. Then we made a quick trip to DID Electrical so we now have a new under-counter freezer and the pressure is off. It still leaves me scratching my head at some of the things that I have in there though. Who knows why I froze a brioche loaf or what kinds of curry are in all those little plastic containers that I use for lunches? Certainly not the person who should have been labelling them!
The dry food cupboards are also well supplied – too well supplied. My habit of bringing food home every time I go travelling makes every cupboard clear-out a memory trail. There’s a little leftover honey and argan oil from Morocco, along with some dukkah that didn’t get used up when the weather turned cooler. My baking supplies at the cottage have been supplemented with vanilla bean paste and natural almond extract from our December stop in Norfolk, there’s wine from New Zealand and Spain to move, not to mention the other fruits of that trip to Barcelona – membrillo (quince paste), fig and nut cake, several chorizo from the Boqueria food market, assorted chocolates and the most of a kilo of garlic. All week we’ve been eating soups and Socca, quinoa (very good used instead of bulgar wheat in this salad with Pomegranate Molasses Dressing) and a Chocolate Biscuit Cake with coconut, nuts and wheatgerm (decidedly tasty, despite being made from a ragbag of ingredients). I now have a new cooker and kitchen to break in – once I get everything out of their boxes – but, before that we’re off on a long-promised trip to try out the much lauded Old Convent in Clogheen with the cousins and their partners…
I love clearing out cupboards that have had spices stored in them, the aroma is delicious
Oh I know the feeling Caroline. We’ve moved to a smaller place with less kitchen space. I’ve bought a 2 door pantry cupboard from Placemakers and put it in the garage to keep the occaisionally used kitchen stuff in. Fortunately it is an attached garage and only a few steps down the passageway from the kitchen.
If spices were the only things I had to clear out I’d be fine, Rebecca! It was all the other shelves and cupboards of ingredients and equipment – and that was just the kitchen… still, all over now. Just the unpacking to sort out in the new flat.How is it, Barbara, that it’s so much easier to fill extra shelves than to contract your belongings to fit?! Putting an extra pantry in the garage was a great idea. I really miss the NZ pantries – I had one at our place in Christchurch and thought that it was such a good use of space. Irish kitchens just don’t have them. Wonder if the Boyfriend could magic me up a new one for the cottage kitchen. That’s currently at bursting point – and now we need to try installing a washing machine too!