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Bug Chocolates from Delysia Chocolatier

Emily — Sun, 31 May 2015 22:11:24 +0000

My Delysia bug chocolates in their innocent-looking trappings.

I am interested in all food and culture, and in some parts of the world, this includes insects. They are cheap to raise and/or easy to forage, high in protein, don’t require vast swaths of land for grazing, apparently, can be delicious. I’ve never found any restaurant in Atlanta or my travels that features bugs on the menu, but it’s something I keep an eye out for, because I know it is a broad category of cuisine that I am missing out on – over 1,000 species of insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world’s nations, according to Wikipedia.

So when I was contacted by Delysia Chocolatier about sampling their new line of chocolates that include insects, I said absolutely!

Bug truffles! Top to bottom (my guess): mealworm, cricket, grasshopper.

First up were the truffles… the first I tried was what a presume is the grasshopper. This was a spicy chocolate which I was not expecting and did not enjoy the flavor of vey much, but it was probably due to more to surprise and less to the inclusion of grasshoppers. Overall, really not too bad.

Next was the cricket, I think. This one I enjoyed a lot. It tastes just about like any chocolate you’d find, maybe with a little more texture, but not nearly as much as a Symphony Bar or similar. This one gets two thumbs up!

Last up was mealworm. Now, this time I made a mistake. Instead of popping the chocolate into my mouth, I bit it halfway. When I casually glanced down at my hand, there was a big ol’, totally intact mealworm hanging out! I was definitely a little freaked out and disgusted, but this is for science here so I pulled it out, threw it away and ate the rest. I did not enjoy this one though, whether due to the psychological fallout of biting it in half or the chocolate itself.

Adam has no problems at all with the mealworms. He feels like her could catch the texture of the grasshoppers and the crickets, but that it didn’t bother him.

After Adam and I each had one of each flavor of truffle, there was still one of each left to be had. So we volunteered our friend Steve to try them out. He had the mealworm first, and didn’t think much about it one way or another. He could tell the texture was different, but didn’t love or hate it. Next, I gave him the cricket and he immediately threw up! That reaction surprised all of us, probably most of all Steve, haha. But he was man enough to go for the third flavor even after the upchucking. Even though we all watched him closely and I even took a movie because I am a little bit evil, he had no trouble at all with the spicy grasshopper chocolate. The texture didn’t bother him and the spice that I didn’t care for he actively enjoyed. So there you go, a completely different take on the buggy chocolate truffle collection.

Sadly, my truffle box experience did not end on a high note since I didn’t like the mealworms at all. But that was okay, because there was still cricket bark to be had!

Cricket bark.

I really, really enjoyed the cricket bark. I liked it even more than the cricket truffle. It was just like any “bark” candy you’d try anywhere, and the varied textures created by the soy beans, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, and currants completely masks/distracts from any texture that could be specifically identified as a cricket. I could eat this stuff all day.

The good news is that if I want to, I presumably can eat this cricket bark all day. Delysia Chocolatier operates an online store – in addition to having brick and mortar sales in stores in California, Colorado, and their home state of Texas.

At the time of this writing, I am unable to find the bug chocolates on their store, but they were just publicly debuted at the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival this weekend, so perhaps this new product hasn’t made its way to the online store just yet. I do encourage you to keep looking or to write them a line expressing your desire to try their chocolates with insects if it sounds like something you might want to try. At this point in time in this country, it’s a very unique experience!

Just like to some, some weeds are a nuisance and some are pretty wildflowers, for some people insects will never be edible. But I figure 80% of the world’s nations can’t be completely wrong, and certainly Delysia’s bug chocolate offerings haven’t changed my mind for the worse just yet.

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Bacon Week 2015: Choco-Bacon Filled Donuts

Mary Gezo — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:00:34 +0000

This recipe came to me after a couple of my previously planned ones totally flopped (don’t expect to be seeing bacon-filled pierogies until next year, that’s all I’m sayin’!). I think donuts full of chocolate and bacon, however, are a reasonable substitute, yes?

I don’t eat doughnuts very often, but when I get the chance I always jump for the ones full of chocolate. Here was an opportunity for me to learn to make them myself!

I’ve had the cookbook Flour for a few years now (written by the head chef of the famous Flour Bakery in New York), and while it’s taken me awhile, I’m slowly working my way through it. Cream-filled doughnuts are one of them, and let me tell you, I’m really excited with how well the fried dough came out.

…Alright, so they’re not perfect, but for a first stab at fried donuts (as opposed to baked donuts), not bad, amirite (what’s a little burned dough between friends)? What’s even better is that they smelled and tasted just right, and they had appropriately empty insides perfect for filling full of delicious, custardy filling.

And that brings me to the filling. Custard is another fun food I almost never make. It has the silly illusion of being difficult, but as usual as long as you have a little patience, it’s simple and super tasty. My favorite adjectives for any cooking experiment.

So, with the custard made and doughnuts fried, the final thing to do was figure out exactly how to integrate the bacon. To do that I decided to fry up about 4 pieces until they were nice and crispy and thoroughly pulverize them before adding them, along with about a half teaspoon of grease, to the filling. But alas, herein lies my one regret for this recipe: I was simply too stingy with my bacon modifiers. Having not made custard in a long time, I was afraid that if I added too much bacon grease it would negatively affect the texture of the custard, and I was afraid that if I added too many bacon bits, they would make the filling almost uncomfortable to eat. Turns out, I could’ve been far more aggressive with both.

While the doughnuts and filling ended up being very good, it simply didn’t scream “bacon”. That’s what I get for not adding more bacon to something!

The traditional annual Bacon Badge

But hey, you live and you learn – and bookmark it for improvement in BaconWeek 2016!

Choco-Bacon Filled Donuts

This is a basic explanation of what I did – I have no guarantees of its excellence, or that the custard will fit in all the doughnuts! No guarantees!

Dough recipe altered from Flour, filling taken from ByronTalbott.com

Ingredients (Dough):

2 tsp (1 package) active dry yeast
1/3 cup milk, warm
1 3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp butter, cut into pieces
Canola oil for frying

Ingredients (Filling):

3/4 cup whole milk
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips
Fry 4 pieces of bacon until crispy, pulverized into small pieces

Instructions (Dough):

In a stand mixer, mix the yeast and warm milk and let sit for a few minutes to activate.
Add the flour, sugar, salt, and eggs to the yeast and mix for 1 minute on low until the dough comes together.
As the mixer continues, slowly add the butter and mix while it incorporate.
Once the dough is soft and cohesive, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for between 6 and 15 hours.
Once your waiting is over, roll the dough out into a 6×6″ square, or until the dough is 1/2″ tall.
Cut the dough into 3 1/2 – 4″ circles and lay them on a floured baking sheet. Cover and let rise for another 1-2 hours. The dough should be puffy.
Fill pan 2-3″ deep of oil and heat it to around 350F (or, if you throw a pinch of flour into the oil, it should sizzle).
Add several pieces of dough into a pan (don’t crowd them!) for a few minutes on each side. Place the fried dough on a paper towel-covered plate to drain.

Instructions (Filling):

Heat milk, yolks, sugar, and vanilla extract over medium heat until steaming.
Reduce heat to low and add the cornstarch. Mix continuously until the mixture thickens.
Add the chocolate and mix thoroughly.
Add 1/2 tsp of bacon grease (liquified) and the pulverized bacon. Mix thoroughly.

Instructions (assembly):

Fill a pastry bag (with pastry tip) with custard.
Jam the tip into the side of each donut and fill it liberally with custard.
CONSUME!!

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Say Hello to Mary!

Emily — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:25:53 +0000

Today, I am happy to welcome Mary to the spatialdrift fold. Longtime readers know her from n00bcakes, !blog, and as the mistress of the cake at my wedding. As of yesterday we merged all of the back-posts for both of her blogs into the database here at spatialdrift, and all of her awesome content is now here for your reading pleasure.

I know Mary has a lot of great things already lined up to share with us, so I hope you’ll be as excited as I am to see what’s in store. She’ll be writing about a lot of lifestyle topics while living life on the move for the next several months, but have no fear that the noobcakes baking posts will make a reappearance at some point. So, welcome Mary! I’m so glad you’re here!

If you’re thinking, “But I only want to read about food! I’m not a nerd!” then to you I say “Hey buddy, your loss,” but we understand it take all types in this world, so do check out the RSS subscriptions page so that you can customize what spatialdrift posts you’ll receive through your RSS reader of choice (personally I enjoy feedly).

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Four-Year Blogiversary!

Emily — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 10:17:06 +0000

Can you believe it? Today is the spatialdrift’s four-year blogerversary!

It all started out in 2010 with a half-baked idea to make something to write regularly, a post about making sushi at home on a free Blogspot blog, and no small amount of inspiration coming from working closely with consummate bloggers Lar and Cath of AsianCajuns.

The site was a lot more orange and a lot less thoughtful than it is now. It got gradually more tasteful, though it did have a giant tag cloud until I switched to WordPress in 2012.

Eventually, in early 2012 I got this wild idea to have a “Buford Highway Food Expedition” and eat at every joint on BuHi in order, little guessing that it – and the pursuit of other good, interesting, and/or ethnic food in Atlanta – would become the mostly all-consuming focus of the site in a matter of months. We started at the southern end at Pancho’s Mexican Restaurante & Cantina.

A few months after switching to WordPress, in early 2013, I became aware of Grant and Marie of Marie, Let’s Eat! and after a short correspondence we wound up going to Harmony Vegetarian Chinese Restaurant together. Now we’ve dined together at more than 15 spots around Atlanta, and at a handful of media events to boot. It’s been a lovely, flourishing friendship and Grant and Marie have really helped us along – getting us known in blogger circles, sharing our articles, and turning us on to Urbanspoon.

As a result, 2013 also saw the start of my blogging relationship with said Urbanspoon, an online bar and restaurant guide that aggregates reviews from professional food critics, bloggers, and diners. It is the only large and sophisticated review site I am aware of that makes it so easy to link to your blog posts from restaurants’ review pages. It’s also the only one that I am aware of that ranks food blogs– by city, by state, and worldwide.

Staring at #293 in Atlanta (and something astronomically high worldwide), spatialdrift has slowly risen the ranks over the past year or so to, at the time of this writing, #10 in Atlanta and #538 worldwide (of more than 10,000 food blogs). This has been extremely fun and rewarding to watch and I am so proud and excited about it. I’m sure it’s not the end all be all, but it’s concrete feedback for my site that I really value.

Also in 2013, I opened up the food blogging section of the site to be more than just our weekly Buford Highway restaurant excursions, but still with an emphasis on ethnic and/or unique eateries around the Atlanta metro. Around that time, Anish Patel came on as an anonymous writer, with content about his curated fine dining excursions, including recent openings of notable chefs’ restaurants.

It’s been great to chat food with him and watch him get settled in his identity as a food blogger. We have different review styles and rating systems, so I think it’s really valuable to be able to offer alternate views on here on the site. Thanks, Anish!

As if that weren’t all enough, shortly afterward in November, beer connoisseur Wayne Pelletier began sharing his expert reviews of local brews as well! As an avid beer fan, home-brewer, and grower of his own hops, Wayne introduces readers to some the metro Atlanta’s many fine breweries and their offerings. He has a lot of expertise to offer and I am so pleased to have him contributing to the site. Thanks, Wayne!

Now I am pleased to announce that spatialdrift will be gaining another very intelligent and talented writer, Mary of n00bcakes and !blog.

Over the upcoming weeks, pre-existing n00bcakes and !blog content will be integrated into the site, and hopefully within a month you’ll be seeing new content from Mary here! She has been blogging since 2009 and will be contributing baking and nerd lifestyle posts, and running her almost-famous annual Bacon Week to boot. We’re both super excited about this move, and hope you will be, too.

Along with these on-going changes, I’ll also be updating parts of the site, like the About section with nice, big photos and bios of all the contributors. I’m jazzed about the changes and hope that this site will look a lot nicer and more professional/reputable. I also really want to show off my super-smart, super-amazing contributors and for readers to feel like they know whose articles they are reading. So, yay.

In short, it’s been a really interesting and rewarding four years and particularly the last year has been a banner year for this site and I want to sincerely thank everyone who reads, comments, and/or shares posts! You all make my day, every time. Thanks so much!

–Emily

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Bacon Week 2014 Round Up

Mary Gezo — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:00:48 +0000

I know, I know: it’s a little lame for my last “recipe day” of Bacon Week to be full of recipes that aren’t mine, but hey – if you knew the physical (though delicious) toll a week of non-stop bacon-eating takes on a human body you might understand. Besides, some of my friends have made some great recipes this year, and it would be a shame if I didn’t feature them and their lovely pictures before the week ends.

Thanks to these ladies for participating and prolonging the Bacon Week tradition! Make sure you check out their posts – they’re pretty fun.

Spatialdrift: Beer-Candied Bacon

Spatialdrift: Bacon Chickpea Soup

Spatialdrift: Bacon Apple Pie (Take 2)

Spatialdrift: Bacon Apple Pie

Spatialdrift: Beer-Candied Bacon Fudge

Of Agates & Madeleines: Bacon Cinnamon Roll Cookies

Bacon Week will end with my final post tomorrow, all about BaconFest! It’ll be raining, so here’s to hoping I can get in a few great pictures!

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Bacon Week 2014: It’s almost here!

Mary Gezo — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 17:45:45 +0000

BACON FOR PRESIDENT by Dave Pryor

Hello hello!

Bacon Week, it comes every year and it’s here again! Starting next Monday, n00bcakes begins its 4th annual week of bacon recipes. Will you be joining us?

First of all, if you don’t know about Bacon Week, I highly suggest you read my basic summary here. It’ll tell you what in the world is going on.

I don’t have a badge for 2014 yet, but I should have one by the time Bacon Week kicks off. If you’d like to participate this year, don’t forget to post the badge, and then make a post below to let me know you’ve made a bacon post of your own! I’m always happy to indoctrinate people into this fun tradition.

See y’all next week…BRING ON THE BACON!

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Say Hello To Wayne!

Emily — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 18:30:15 +0000

This is a backdated introduction to Wayne, who first began writing for spatialdrift late in 2013.

Meet Wayne Pelletier! He’s been my super-awesome Creative Director at Response Mine since early 2011. Starting late 2013, this beer connoisseur has been sharing his expert reviews of local brews on spatialdrift.

In addition to being a Creative Director, designer, and a drummer in one, two, three local bands, Wayne is:

An avid beer fan – see Untappd
Home brewer – see Brew Toad
Grower of his own hops – see photo to the right

As you can see, Wayne is extremely qualified to write about brews. On spatialdrift, he introduces readers to some the metro Atlanta’s many fine breweries and their offerings. He has a lot of expertise to offer and I am so pleased to have him contributing to the site. Thanks, Wayne!

Check out Wayne’s most popular posts:

Wild Heaven Invocation, December 16, 2013
Three Taverns Brewery Single Intent, December 9, 2013
Sweetwater Festive Ale, December 3, 2013

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Halloween Dessert Recipe Round-Up

Mary Gezo — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:00:16 +0000

Typically I find round-up posts silly (and maybe even a bit self-serving), but now that I actually have enough recipes to have one of my own, BRING ON THE DESSERTS!

Chocolate Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Fancy some cookies? Try out these chocolate sugar cookies with royal icing! They’re a total pain, but with a little patience they’re lovely and I guarantee all the compliments in the world.

Nom!

Frosted Baked Pumpkin Doughnuts

Have you still not bought a doughnut pan yet? Ugh, you are such a slacker.

I know I’ve mentioned more than once my loathing of single-purpose cooking items, but my doughnut pan is one of my indulgences. People rarely bring doughnuts to get-togethers, so they’re a great way to distinguish your dessert prowess for all to see. These are mostly made Halloween-y via sprinkles, but hey, it’s the pumpkin time of year, so these tie in perfectly for any autumnal party you may be attending.

KILLIN IT.

Stabbity Brownie Cupcakes

Sometimes you find a decoration before you even know how you’re going to use it. In this case I found some awesome sugar-knives and decided to make some brownie cupcakes with a little splash of blood on them. Not the best picture, but they were appropriately stabbity.

Cupcake Plate

Tombstone Cupcakes

While this was one of my very early-baking recipes, it still remains one of my very favorites. Every year I swear I’m going to make them again, but I end up trying something new instead. My day will come!

These are simple and adorable. Pick our your favorite cake and frosting recipes and have at it!

Tombstoooooones!

I hope some of these fun recipes have piqued your interest! I’m looking forward to seeing what other great Halloween desserts pop up on the blogs this year.

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WeddSplosion II: Joe & Stevie Get Married

Mary Gezo — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 18:14:21 +0000

The kids at the reception crafted Stevie and Joe a special message.

It’s all over: my brother and his girlfriend of 12 years are now married. Huzzah!

I’ll begin by giving you the sequence of events over the last week for the cake to arrive at its final destination and finally be consumed by the guests:

Sunday: Bake and crumb coat all 3 cake tiers
Monday: Pass boxed cake layers to parents
Tuesday: Parents transport cake & decorations to Virginia via car
Wednesday: I fly to Virginia with final decorations & nut-free wedding cupcakes (for allergies)
Thursday: The cake layers sit in their boxes, waiting
Friday: I do the final cake frosting and preparations/decisions for decoration
Saturday: Cake layers are transported to the reception area, and are layered together and decorated. A wedding is had.
???
PROFIT!

Suffice it to say, it was a pretty crazy week.

Before I continue though, I want to say I owe a HUGE thanks to our friends (also fellow bridesmaid an best man) Ashley and James for their help, ingenuity, patience, and professional Kitchenaid mixer. The cake spent most of its time in their refrigerator, and they spent a lot of time toting it and me around, as well as lending me their various kitchen appliances and utensils to do the final frosting. James even jerry-rigged the cooler-box my father made for the transport of the individual layers to accommodate the completed cake so it could stay cool between when I finished decorating it and when it was time for its presentation.

Really, the cake was a team effort between a lot of people (also thanks to Liz and Roger for storing the bottom layer and to my parents, of course, for carting the whole thing across 4 states) and I want to thank everybody so much for their help. GO TEAM!

Now with all the thanking done, here’s a small photo-journal of the week. Regretfully these pictures were all taken with my phone (it’s tough juggling baked goods and a big camera, so I worked with what I had), but they’ll get the idea across.

Sunday

One of the 10″ and 14″ layers, cooling on the rack.

The 10″ tier baked and crumb-coated with un-tinted peppermint SMB

Friday

The 14″ tier fully frosted with green-tinted cinnamon SMB

Saturday

I started by stacking the cakes, putting their best-sides forward, then sealed each layer with green-tinted, vanilla SMB.

I gently “puttied” together any cracks or blemishes with last touches of frosting, then arranged the palm trees.

I gently slid the decorated cake into the cooling box James created and added a few freezer packs to keep the frosting cool for the hours between the decoration and the cutting.

The Final Unveiling!

When it came time to unveil the cake I slid it out of the cooling box and added my home-made toppers: bride and groom t-rexes.

A closer pic of the wedding cake toppers

Lessons Learned & Future Goals

I had a lot of fun with this wedding cake and because Joe and Stevie were happy to have me re-use the fabulous chocolate cake recipe from Adam and Emily’s wedding, it was significantly less stressful than the last time and I was able to focus a little more on the decorations. My initial vision for this cake was to make it an actual functioning volcano, but over time and due to limitations had to be pared down to simple dinosaurs on a mountain (hence the green frosting tinting and palm trees). Even so, I feel like the decorations fit the bride and groom well, and they were very happy with the outcome.

Besides being more involved with the decorations this time around, I also opted for 2 different frosting flavors instead of the one I’d done previously. This cake had a tier frosted with cinnamon and a tier frosted with peppermint (the top layer saved for the bride and groom was also cinnamon, per their request). We did this so that anyone who didn’t like cinnamon would have another flavor option to choose from, but in the future I think a single flavor is the best way to go for a wedding cake. It allows for easier frosting of the cake which allows more focus to be put on presentation, which would have been nice.

Until I get the opportunity to make another cake of this size, I’m going to start re-tooling my chocolate cake recipe. After baking the layers again it’s clear to me that some of the layers are taller than others, so I should test out some different ratios to attempt to get them all the right size.

When it comes to decoration I definitely learned how beneficial it is to keep your cake layers properly crumb-coated and chilled. From now on I will always chill my cake layers between baking and crumb-coating, and between crumb-coating and final frosting. Does it take longer? Absolutely. Is it worth the extra time? No question, hands down, yes. I didn’t get any crumbs floating around in my final frosting, and it really made the decoration much easier. I still have a lot of practice ahead of me in terms of getting smooth, even frosting around the outside, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

Courtesy of Ricardio the Heart Guy

ANYWAY

There will eventually be more photos available and some nicer shots of the cake, but for now I just wanted to share the success of WeddSplosion, Part 2!

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Minimalism in the Kitchen

Mary Gezo — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 10:00:53 +0000

If you didn’t know, I actually run two blogs: n00bcakes (duh) and !Blog (pronounced “not-blog”). n00bcakes will always be nothing but cooking and baking, but !Blog consists of many more of my other hobbies, mostly technology or nerd-related. In a small deviation, however, I recently started a month-long series with Emily of Spatialdrift (oft times mentioned in this blog regarding food) on minimalism. Together she and I are doing the 30 Day Minimalism Challenge from Minimalism Is Simple.

You can read about our progress on our respective blogs, so I won’t go into detail about that here. Instead I wanted to write a whole post on one of this week’s specific challenges: minimalism in the kitchen.

My kitchen is a mess. This isn’t really surprising if you’ve looked at any of my other posts on minimalism (my entire apartment is kind of a mess), but my kitchen is no different. I’ve always been distressed at my kitchens’ size in relation to the amount of cooking I do and the amount of kitchen implements I have, but instead of getting rid of things I spent a lot of time looking for extra nooks and crannies in which to shove them.

Before I get too ahead of myself, though, I want to talk about more than kitchen implements. To my eyes, there’s 2 forms of minimalism in the kitchen: in your utensils and in your actual cooking. Both of these required me to do an overhaul of my kitchen, small though it may be.

Minimizing Utensils

When I did any reading about minimalism in the kitchen, all the articles and posts talked about owning a few good-quality, multi-functional tools and nothing else, which is an idea I can absolutely get behind. Unfortunately all of the “bad” items the articles then went on to list were stand mixers, microwaves, ice cream machines, and cake tins, just to name a few. Now if you’ve read n00bcakes for any period of time, you know that I own all of these items (not to mention a crock pot, dutch oven, and multiple cake stands). It was going to be tough figuring out what to ditch and what to keep.

In the end I did the same thing I’ve started going with each minimalism challenge I’ve tackled: I took an inventory, then considered which items I felt I used the most and which I wouldn’t mind parting with.

After some consideration, I decided to ditch the microwave, an old coffee maker, and one of my cake stands. In a perfect world I’d be able to part with more of my bigger items, but as a frequent baker I probably use my mixer an average of once a week, and as a lover of easy food, my crock pot is indispensable. The dutch oven is a fabulous piece of cookware that I know I simply won’t be getting rid of, and while I don’t use the ice cream maker that often, I derive a lot of pleasure from everything I make using it. If it makes you happy, don’t jump to getting rid of it right away.

I also spent a lot of time winnowing down my stock of pots, pans, and other kitchen paraphernalia, some of which were old, dusty, and I hadn’t used in over a year. Here’s the set of pans I decided to keep in the end (plus a set of Pyrex pans, not shown). This is still probably too many, but a decent start in cutting down my kitchenware.

Pots’n’Pans

Taking inventory of your stuff is, I’ve found, essential to starting any minimization process. I didn’t realize the items I’d accumulated until I pulled open all my drawers and took a look. Here’s a look at the pile of items I have so far for donation and selling:

Pile for Selling & Donations

It’s still pretty possible (likely, even?) that I’ll get rid of more things as I start paying closer attention to what I do and don’t use frequently, but I’m happy with this initial dent I’ve made in my cookware.

Minimizing Cooking

Minimizing my cooking is going to take more work for me than the physical utensils, but I already have a good idea of how I want to go about it; namely, I want to get into the habit of keeping the basics around and using those basics in all my meals.

For years now I’ve been in the habit of keeping baking ingredients around, and recently I finally went ought and bought air-tight containers to keep them fresh and away from bugs. I slapped some labels on them this week to make them easier to read from above.

Boom

Next I considered what I eat on a regular basis. I eat a lot of chilis, stews, and things that go in tortillas (fajitas, sandwich wraps, etc); I’m big on one-pot meals and things that are easy to make and frequently yield leftovers. That being the case, I cleared room for fresh and canned goods:

I love hanging baskets for fresh vegetables

Cans & Boxes

When it comes to refrigerated items, I keep a stock of butter for baking, and then some basic vegetables: carrots, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Plus I always keep a bowl of fruit stocked for quick snacks.

My goal is to eventually weed the complexity out of my food-buying habits and be able to stick more consistently to the basics which, hypothetically, I’ll always have around. Healthier, cheaper, and easier!

And So…

What I learned from this, as I have from most all of my minimalism challenges so far, is that the best way to keep your kitchen from getting out of hand is considering your items before they make their way into your home. Know what you currently own so if you get something new either from yourself or as a gift from another, you know what it should replace or if it even has a spot in your kitchen.

Top image from iconoclassst on Tumblr

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