2013 in My Kitchen

How should I get a fresh start, kitchen and cooking-wise, this year?  Resolutions are to easy for me to ignore soon after I make them, so I decided to pose 10 questions to myself.  Are they rhetorical?  Maybe.  Should I learn from them?  Definitely. 

These questions probably tell you too much about the state of my kitchen and my cooking life.  But hopefully they’ll also give you courage to ask yourself a couple of hard questions about your own situation, or at the very least give you a cause to smile at my foibles.  

10 Questions for Me in 2013

1. Is it possible to create order out of the chaos in my pantry?  
2. Can my refrigerated food remain orderly for more than 10 minutes?



3. Are there items in my freezer that should be carbon-dated?  



4. Will I ever use up (or pitch) the paprika, cloves, and bay leaves that we bought years ago because they were such a good deal?  (I have no doubt that we’ll use up the crushed red pepper.)  



5. Can I disguise matzo meal in enough ways to use up the boxes that I have from last Passover before their “best by” date of January 27, 2013?  



6. Will I ever throw out or give away the “extra” zesters, cherry pitter and miscellaneous items I haven’t used since the beginning of the first Obama administration?  
7. Which spice or condiment will be the next one that I buy a duplicate of because I can’t find the bottle or jar of it I’m sure I have somewhere? 



8. Will I ever make even 1% of the recipes I clip out of the paper, bookmark on my laptop or email to myself?  
9. Will I learn how to use a pastry bag and accessories in 2013 or will the ones I bought last century sit unused in the drawer for yet another year?
10. Will I learn to love, like, or at least not-hate okra in 2013?

 Happy Friday and welcome to 2013 in my kitchen!