Self Service

In honor of MLK Day I decided to do a little service for others - but first I had to do some service for myself : I cleaned out my kitchen cabinets 1)because it was time and 2) I knew that I could find some donatable stuff if I just looked. I could not look until I could see.

Here is where we started:

I'm not proud, this was a bad situation. I didn't know what was in there and I couldn't find anything. I had long given up being able to find anything when I needed it and picked up some Ikea tupperware that I kept in a separate location.

After much work this is where I ended up

Now I can tell what I have and I know where it is. I even moved my Ikea tupperware in with the rest of the plastic. Everything has a place and everything is in its place. If if I want a pot, I gots a pot, if I need a container of a certain size, its not a question of "where" its a question of "which".

There was some collateral damage. I thought I was going to find more to donate but it just wasn't to be, some stuff I couldn't give away it was so nasty and I don't think even Goodwill wants my used butter containers. I  did find a few things to hand over and I all ready had some donatables from a prior cabinet clean out so I still can get some service points. I made a itemized list and bagged everything up, first thing Monday morning I handed it all over the Goodwill. My recycle box runneth over.

I moved on to the next project, I cleaned out my food cupboard. It didn't want any photographic evidence of how bad that looked. While I was cleaning it out, I discovered that I had three half empty bottles of peanut butter. I don't like it and and Dogger can't eat it and I hate throwing away food. I was able to open up a lot of space with my cleaning projects but not so much I wanted to take up space with stuff I don't eat. I remembered that I have a lot of pine cones in the attic. I think I had a Martha moment several years ago and collected them for a project that never happened.

Now I had a project. I had some pine cones, peanut butter and some bird seed.

Its not exactly  in line with traditional public service, but birds need love too.

After all this clean out, I watched some TV and on TV I watched Two Fat Ladies and in between meals made up of  game, artisanal cheese and fresh caught seafood, they made Beef Stroganoff. I don't have access to fresh caught or just slaughtered or artisanal anything but I can get my Stroganoff on. It called for more meat than a single gal on the go really needs, but it also afforded me enough left overs to feed myself for days and I was able to freeze some too. It was really good and not all that hard to make and all it called for sour cream, onions, mushrooms, port and good beef. I substituted fajita meat and instead of the called for button mushrooms, I scored some lovely baby portabellas on sale.

The last thing I did was reward myself with some nice dessert.

The crust looks funky because apparently el cheap-o store brand pie crust wants to be used right now and does not like to kept waiting. Whatev, it was still good.