Thursday, September 13, 2012

Decluttering!!!!

Yesterday I cleared out and donated the bread pans.

I know to some, this seems small, but maybe their lives didn't revolve around bread and other healthy whole grains as much as mine did.

As soon as I went out on my own, I get several popular vegetarian cookbooks, a grain grinder, some bread pans, a few sifters, and a whisk.

I started grinding the flour and making bread weekly.    I made at least four loaves of wheat bread a week, and a dozen or so oat flour muffins that were to last the week but usually lasted only a few days.  I usually made two large sheets of thick-crust pizza several times a month.  When I was too busy, I just went to the bread outlet store and filled my freezer with stale Bobolis.  Later on when I became a consultant, my schedule was flexible enough for me to make some kind of bread every day.  Real authentic bagels, pita, chapatis, tortillas, nut roll.

Pretty soon I started receiving all sorts of bread-related gifts for every occasion:  fancier whisks, kneading boards, spring-form pans, fancy cast-iron muffin tins, baby loaf pans, cinnamon-roll forms, a gingerbread house mold, crumb-catchers, cutting boards, fancy artisan bread-slicers.  I was easy to buy for.

During the 2009 Locavore challenge, I even grew wheat.  And if the movie is ever finished, you'll get to see me stomping all over the stuff in my crocs, trying to remove the chaff.  What fun!  It is just like making wine, only drier.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that I was finally finished with bread when I offered to help a friend with a party.  She needed food.  What could I make?  She suggested cookies and I had that deer-in-the-headlights feeling.  I couldn't even articulate how I felt about it.  Speechless.

All I could think about was trudging to a conventional grocery store.  What do I need?  Flour, chocolate, baking soda?  Of course, I would complain about the prices.  I would make tons and they would smell wonderful and we would eat the broken kinds and fall back into the wheat abyss.  I would gain 40 pounds before Christmas.  It would be very ugly.

OK, time to do something about this.  I feel lighter already.

5 comments:

  1. i'm sure you're wise! there are just some things it's better not to have around....

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  2. I thoroughly enjoyed this, it almost felt like you were writing about me and laughed out loud a few times. You are a great writer and I look forward to more.

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  3. I gave all mine to my DIL that lives on bread and pasta and vows she will never change. I kept two for meat loaf.

    I was much like you were, a kitchen filled with every baking and pasta item possible. I have had a hard time with my adult children's disappointment when they come home. I got over it fast, by pulling the guilt card and asking them if they would rather have me dead, what is more important a piece of homemade bread or your mother?! Shame on me, but eventually they stopped complaining.

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  4. Kat, thank you so much for your comment. I AM writing for you!!!!!!

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  5. Oh, Erin, I did keep my speckleware, and that is what I cook meatloaf in now. For some reason it tastes better in a wedge.
    And you reminded me, I still have the pasta attachment for my "kitchen center". I'd give it away, but I don't know anyone who has this machine anymore.

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