Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders. Yes, it's that time again. Is it the first Picture Sunday of 2008? I do believe it is. Well, let's wait no more!

I'm getting right to the first picture. You know, it snowed here last week. Of course it's 55 degrees right now and there's not a flake left, but it was exciting to have a little white on the ground.

It was exciting for me. Not so much for the Virgin Mary of our town's nativity scene. She had a little mishap during the snow and high winds of last week. And no one in town saw fit to help her out, so I took their laziness as my own picture opportunity. I call this one, "Christmas Just Exhausts the Virgin Mary."
























Yep, there she is, unable to even kneel. The Baby Jesus is snow-covered and freezing (at least no one stole him), and Joseph hasn't lifted a finger to give Mary any aid. In fact, he has a distinct, "Well, what are you going to do?" look on his face.

So it's only January, but this is my favorite picture so far this year.

Now, let's talk home improvement. Because it's been on my mind lately, and more importantly, in my hands. I've set my mind (and my hands) to doing some serious cleaning around the Pod, and I don't mean dusting and vacuuming. (Although with all my vacuums - four now that I got a Swiffer vacuum for Christmas, I could vacuum for the entire country.) Anyway, I mean organizing, moving, and throwing away. This week it's been my cabinets. As of tonight, my entire upper tier of cabinets are done.

We'll start with the easiest to work on, and progress to hardest.

Let's go to the upper dish cabinet in my corner hutch.

























Easy peasy. Very full, but not overly taxing, was the tea and Crystal Light cabinet, which has now become my coffee cup and glass cabinet as well. That helped make more space in the dish cabinet.

























Next was the food cabinet. It was just hard because there was so much food in there that was unnecessary. Way old stuff. I kept some for future recipes du jour, but threw much away.




















Let's move on to the bottom dish cabinet in the corner hutch. That one was bad. It was one of those, "Don't open the door, you'll break your foot" cabinets. I moved all the wine glasses to the top hutch cabinet, moved all my cookbooks (which, let's face it, I never ever ever use) onto shelves in the spare bedroom, and made it the space for serving bowls and odd plates.






















The hardest two, well, the first was the Tupperware cabinet. It was a nightmare. I've been hit on the head by more falling Tupperware than any woman alive. I removed it all, matched tops to bottoms, was left with an alarming number of mateless tops and bottoms, and pitched them.

























And finally, the spice cabinet. That came today. I've never been hit on the head by falling spices, which would probably hurt a lot more than falling Tupperware, but every time I need a spice I'm left blaspheming and pulling out spice containers by the armload. I also knew I had a whole bunch of outdated stuff in there, and duplicates, but I wasn't quite prepared for what a scope it would be. Five gingers, three cumins, three chili powders, two ground mustards. And old? I had stuff that was Kroger brand. We haven't had a Kroger in our town for at least five years. It was a good clean, that cabinet.

























So there you go. Four bottom cabinets next week, including the dreaded pots and pans. Let's see how long I can keep them relatively straight. I give myself six weeks before all of them are in disarray again.

And really, how could I clean out five years worth of spices and not include it in the recipe du jour? Well, I couldn't, that's how, and so I have for you tonight a dish I think the more adventurous of you will enjoy. Just have a little Alka-Seltzer at the ready. It's from, naturally, the "Cabinet Cleanout!" file at cardland, and here it is, the Quiche L'Spice.




















The Quiche L'Spice is your plain old basic quiche recipe. Eggs and milk in a pie crust. However, to, well, if I may be sold bold, spice it up, I added liberal shakes of cayenne pepper, parsley, anise, thyme, onion powder, rosemary, chili powder, lemon peel, ginger, ground mustard, cumin seed, dill, paprika, cilantro, basil, pumpkin pie spice, a few cloves, and Liquid Smoke, since I dropped the bottle and the cap broke. Bake that up like your favorite quiche (although, really, won't this be your favorite quiche now?), cut yourself a nice slice, and top it with whipped cream and a bay leaf, just like God intended. Really, He intended to have you put whipped cream on your Quiche L'Spice.

And after this dish was done, my house smelled like the International Food Court.

Happy Week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Sad news to report - my wonderful Sherman and Peabody stickers you saw in last week's Picture Sunday did not stand up well to a week of rain, snow, and sub-freezing temperatures. Their outlines are now green, and Sherman is yellow. Even sadder, I took off my great Shag Rat Pack sticker to put on S and P.
* Wow, that was a lot of pictures to place. And I can't believe I opened up my cabinets for you people. Better now than then, though.