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Heart to Heart
The Cluttered Kitchen Revisited
San Diego Jewish Times, July 14, 2006 .
By Gert Thaler
Don’t do it. Don’t let me give you inspiration. You’ll regret you
ever got started, and worse yet, you’ll end up calling me, and, even worse,
hating me.
Go for a walk. Take in a movie. Read a book. Phone someone you really don’t like and take her/him to lunch. Paying that lunch check won’t hurt as much if you had done what I have done in the past eight days.
Emptied all my kitchen shelves. Started all over again. The dining room table was covered from all sides with dishes, cups and saucers, fancy napkins, paper napkins, matching plates and cups, and seven boxes of unused Chanukah candles.
I kept emptying the shelves in the other room where I had created a pantry and brought everything (but I mean everything) into the kitchen. The beautiful black granite counters were invisible, covered by jars of jam, cans of beans (you name it; every variety of bean was represented) and nine jars of mustard.
I am a one-person household. You figure out when I will be running out of mustard. There is the traditional French’s yellow kind, the famed Poupon, horseradish mustard, and a jalapeño flavored one. I must have thought I was going to make hot dogs since a jar of relish mustard and another of mayo-mustard was found.
Not to be left out of the game, I counted beans that were sitting on the shelves waiting patiently for their turn to satisfy my appetite. Cannelini beans, kidney and northern white ones as well as black, and garbanzo beans (for hummus) sitting side by side with pinto beans. There were limas too and lentils. Oy vey! I always put beans in large jars so I can see them clearly without searching for them hiding inside a box or package.
No bean is really safe from me when I am in a soup making mode. A good cook will never go wrong as long as she tosses some beans and barley in a soup pot.
Cramming another shelf were my Japanese connections. Regular soy sauce, unsalted soy sauce, very salty soy sauce. Tempura coating, hoisin and ginger sauce.
Being alone one evening and hungry, about five years ago, I went to that sushi place on Girard Avenue in La Jolla, sat down at the bar and got hooked on watching the chef/artist create the culinary beauty that makes up the California roll and the sushi delicacies. His artistry was even further enhanced by the décor of the plate holding the unfamiliar food. I choked down the raw fish for the first and last time in my life. But there were other choices that appealed to me.
The next day I enrolled in a sushi class and by nightfall my kitchen was outfitted with all the necessary materials needed to form my newest passion. Packages of seaweed, rice noodles, wasabi, and expensive jars of short beads of rice were added to the kitchen shelf. That evening was spent in an attempt to challenge the Asian chef with my own creations. No matter how I tried, nothing seemed to come out that would prove a serious threat to his employment. And worse, by the end of the evening I had sampled so much that I wrapped up the whole shebang, and there all of it has sat, hidden away into the never-neverland of a pantry shelf.
So here I am with three sets of Japanese tools. Not to mention the fact that as I dug into the higher shelving I found I still had three electric bagel cutters.
The real puzzle is figuring out what all the odd-shaped plastic lids cover. Some are square, others round. Somehow the lids survived but the bowls have joined a marathon and run away. The trash bin now holds the lids, filled to the brim.
I simply must make a serious choice and decide how many sharp knives one kitchen should hold. I have two of those wooden blocks with slits filled with big ones, serrated ones and other knives that a Japanese Samurai would find attractive. I also have one slim drawer housing 11 varied shapes of knives, all sharp and in good condition.
When it comes to the “getting-rid-of” decisions, I fail the test. Having sat in that drawer as though it was their final resting place, I should have sent these knives on their way long ago. But I am a believer that knives and the clothes in my closets will all be put to good use “someday.” Those knives, and the size 12 dresses stay firmly in place, along with the South Beach, Atkins and Zone diet cookbooks.
Yesterday I bought Dr. Phil McGraw’s Ultimate Weight Solution Food Guide featuring his Rapid Start Plan. Here I go again!
It has taken over a week for me to complete this job. I kept looking in the mirror berating myself for having started the task in the first place. Now that it is finished, however, I can see what 14 cans of tomato paste, 11 cans of tomato sauce, four cans of pineapple and three giant boxes of kosher salt look like. Manischewitz matzoh ball makings are stacked one on the other waiting for an occasion, looking forward to joining the six packages of noodles next to them. There are also four packages of kugel-shaped noodles in case the Israeli army should drop in unexpectedly.
Not long ago I had a serious electrical failure and my garage freezer fell victim. From misery comes good fortune. That was the day I was forced to clean out my freezer. So now with all in order I turned northward toward the clothes closets.
There is no wrath like a woman facing a reality show of her own. I am determined to have a farewell party for the size 12’s. Pushing my luck lower than a 14 is asking too much, trusting Dr. Phil’s book keeps me in that size. He claims he has the ultimate weight solution.
Here’s hoping Dr. Phil can do more than that, and then some.
Footnote: The above column was written two years ago. The closets kept waiting and waiting. This past week, I dove in head first. I never made it with Dr. Phil’s diet (or anyone else’s as a matter of fact), so along with the outmoded size 12’s I have tossed all the 14’s and the closets never looked so good. Next job is getting rid of six shelves of cookbooks, which includes seven different diet plans. Any takers?