What You See Is What You've Got

Last week I was so busy focusing on the Royal Wedding that I didn't have a chance to tell you about my new pantry.  Given that this little addition to my kitchen will make my life so much easier, you would have thought that I could have skipped a day of "royal coverage".

What can I say, I was on a roll.  Now I'm back in the saddle, as it were, and I'm happy to report that the new pantry is fully operational.  The guys from California Closets came last week and installed six glorious shelves in my now gutted and newly plastered and painted coat closet.  While it's not what I would build if I were starting from scratch and had unlimited space, this pantry is a whole lot better than what I had before, which was pretty much a small cabinet.

All this new space has allowed me to indulge my inner organizer.  I've made all kinds of nice little labels to put on the shelves so everything will remain organized and in place.  I've transfered lots of things like nuts and cereal into plastic containers, and I've even culled out some of the stuff I thought Kate would eat and never did.

One of the funny things to come out of all my organizing is that I come to the conclusion that  I have a canned tomato hoarding problem.  I uncovered at least 10 cans of San Marzano whole tomatoes, a bunch of cans of diced tomatoes, and even a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes.  Stewed tomatoes?  Who eats stewed tomatoes anyway? Needless to say, moving forward canned tomatoes will be on the menu.

I'm not even going to get into the pasta situation.  Let's just say that we'll be having lots of pasta with all those tomatoes.

The very best thing about the new pantry is that now I can see exactly what we have.  Maybe it will help when I go to the market so that I don't come home with more tomatoes.  Of course, I also have really good shoe storage in my closet upstairs and knowing what I have doesn't seem top deter me from bringing home yet another pair of black shoes.

I can dream, can't I?