Tuesday Roundup

 It has been a very busy day with me being in the kitchen for the majority of it, tidying stuff up, still sorting some cupboards trying to get the stuff that I use all the time out and easily accessible rather than me having to sort high and low for it.  

One of the problems I have is that I cannot get everything stashed away at present as I am minus two under worktop units. I am having a completely new unit put in where the fridge and freezer were originally and I can add to the one that is already there but it will have to be stripped out when the units arrive which will be on the 4 December 2021.  However I have the dining room and the dressers to sort out as well so hopefully quite a lot of the bits and bobs can go in there.

Needless to say the food plan went out of the window for this evening.  We were supposed to have had Italian sausage and roasted veggies.  We ended up having a fry up instead and will have the Italian sausages tomorrow.

In one sense it has been quite productive as this evening I have managed to get two extremely large plastic storage boxes emptied out and the contents put away, which is a result as they have been in the storage boxes for sometime and which I am pleased about.  However the downside is that I have made a further mess in emptying and dragging the boxes out.  A needs must situation it will get worse before it gets better.

It has been lovely though as I have found things that I knew I had bought but had been unable to locate them.  They are now in my kitchen storage tower as I keep all my utensils and hand equipment together.  However that needs sorting out too.

I am hoping to get things squared a bit more tomorrow and a lot more items stashed away in the kitchen as well.  I am still of the opinion that some of the kitchen equipment is going under the stairs out of the way. A lot of it is specialist equipment that I use when making certain types of preserves. I will do as much as I can in the kitchen and the dining room tomorrow then the next job will be under the stairs to sort that out.  It needs painting out and the shelves need recovering, then everything can be tidied away. It is going to be painted white and then the covering for the shelves is a green polka dot vinyl. No doubt there will be further faffing as well and re-siting pieces as I go along.

I have also come across items that were lost.  One of the cat carriers has been missing its door.  I knew I had had it, but could not locate it.  Tonight have found it. It had dropped behind one of the storage crates I have emptied this evening. 

I have a large cream reproduction bread bin, and it would have been nice to use it but could not locate the lid.  Found, it which means that the bread bin is now back in service thank goodness.

I know that there are other items dotted throughout the house.  This evening I have found more baking tins and also rubber cake moulds etc that can be used for baking and making ice creams.  If I can get everything organised as I want it to be, it will mean that I will really be able to play come the New Year on the baking front.

Here are some of the tins and moulds have located this evening.

Alongside of doing all this I also have the second Batch of Cranberry and Apple jelly dripping in the kitchen  which will be made up into jelly tomorrow.  However I did experience a problem in that I could not locate my large jelly net.  In the end I made do with one of the drawstring vegetable bags that I bought recently from Waitrose.  It worked perfectly and is the one in the picture.  So I may well get some more of these as they were not terribly expensive to use as jelly nets on a regular basis and the nets you can buy for them are tiddly compared to what they used to be.

I had to use a second jelly stand as well as I could not get all the contents in without the jelly stand falling over which is a big no no.

I have also strained and decanted the first batch of Mint Vinegar into their original bottles as I have recycled them for pantry use.  This is to go alongside the long keeping mint sauce I made recently.  

I also have Tarragon, Blackcurrant and Raspberry vinegars to decant as well.  Hoping to get to them tomorrow.  I used a sieve and muslin today to strain them but the Tarragon looks as though I will need to use a coffee filter as it is a little cloudier than the others.

So quite a productive day, but I need to be up early tomorrow to carry on with what I have started this evening.  Its lovely to have my saucepans in one cupboard again.

Catch you all later.

Pattypan

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