project: organize spice shelf

There comes a time when you just have to reorganize your spice rack.  Sometimes you are the one to decide when this organization will take place and sometimes you drop a container of cocoa on your white dog and the cosmic world tells you that NOW is the time to organize your spice shelf (right after you have a chocolate-infused impromptu bath for your dog to turn her fur white again.)  Turns out, the cosmic world did not like that I kept putting this task off and I enjoyed the chocolate dog / impromptu spice organization party while in the midst of turning off all the burners on the stove and enjoying dinner much later than expected (we did have a clean dog though!)

PS - Barkley had no idea what was on her so she didn't have any urge to lick the cocoa, thankfully.  She has, however, developed a fondness for sitting right outside the pantry door to see what I will drop on her next time, because as we all know, a dog loves to be right under your feet, so I am sure there will be a next time.

Anyway, back to the spice organization.  We had to buy all new spices when we moved from Minneapolis to the Bay area - apparently the movers wanted nothing to do with my parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (did you just break into Simon and Garfunkel's song too? I did.)  While I always think that we just moved here, we've been here a while now and it turns out that some of the spices that we bought right away had expired.  So I tossed out the bad and organized the good into 2 categories: savory and sweet.  I also learned that apparently I go to the grocery store a lot to buy paprika thinking that I don't have it. If anyone needs a dash of paprika, you can be my friend.  I have 3 containers and no idea what recipe called for paprika but I think I better start finding some that do so I can start using it all up. 

Because the shelf is quite tall, I bought a smaller shelf to go over the spices to house the peanut butter, flax seeds (which we also have enough to last through Armageddon (I'm feeling a bit like one of those doomsday preppers - only I have the flax seed and paprika, which pretty sure won't help me elongate my life too long after a change in the earth's axis, or whatever they worry about on that show.)  (Seriously, have you ever watched Doomsday Preppers? It's kinda like watching Hoarders, both of them I can only handle in small doses and they both make me itch.)

I'm a big fan of my new spice system.  No more cursing under my breath when I can't find what I need.  It's all there in plain sight and very easy to find something/put it back right where you found it. And I'm pretty sure I will be able to fight the urge to buy paprika again for a long time now that I've taken inventory of what spices we have.