Saturday all day!!!

Another brilliant day and mild enough that it may be safe, later on, to run Harriet-the-Echo through some lucky carwash somewhere... she is filthy all the way to the roof.

I am making a running start on the cleaning bee scheduled for this afternoon by gutting my kitchen drawers. So far, done the two little ones. The principle here is to remove the artefacts which are merely ARCHIVAL...as well as the long since completely useless.

For example -- do I NEED to store my bulky, awkward, used-annually-if-that jar-lifting tongs in the small drawer with the spoons, ladles, etc. that I grope for when I'm actually working at the stove? Answer comes, not at all.
On the other hand I have not relinquished the thought of doing something more in the pickles'n'jam department, one of these summers.
Hence~! tongs go downstairs and are stored out of harm's way in the big canning kettle, with the appropriate jar racks, spare lids'n'rings, etc.

By the way -- here's a linguistic question for you -- what do YOU call the flat-bladed tools that you use to lift and turn food that you are frying -- eggs, pancakes, hamburgers? (see picture above) Are they "lifters"? "turners"? "spatulas"? (I think there are geographic markers in the vocabulary here but I'm not sure!)

Part of the clean-up energy is also the fruit of purchasing a FOOD PROCESSOR yesterday (at an advantageous price, about 1/3 off)...and re-thinking pantry storage for appliances and serving pieces...still somewhat traumatized by the New Year's Eve stand-off with the elderly blender, doing its Danny Glover imitation, "I AM TOO OLD for CHICKPEAS"...it is silly to think I paid $90 for a tool to make hummus with...but every time I watch a cooking show, it seems that at some critically interesting and inspiring juncture, whirr whirr, a food processor is totally necessary.

Meantime Nefertiti-the-cat is having a heyday with the shopping bag I'm hoping to use to deposit relegated kitchen tools on the doorstep of Nameless Parish That Has Rummage Sales. Also having a heyday with the nice fat sparkling-wine corks I am removing from storage. Her mega-fun of the morning was trying to pursue a thrown cork without emerging from her shopping-bag cave...better than the circus, this one.

While I am in this Tomb Raider mood, I'll try to tackle the (shudder) drawer under the stove as well...


and presently I shall have a lovely read of Monk Habits for Everyday People in preparation for a session with university students tomorrow evening, on the virtue of STABILITY. "Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you all you need to know. And while you're waiting, clean out a few drawers, eh?"