I have let this house go way too long. Of course, in my defense, I was a little busy taking care of my mom while she was sick and now trying to get all of her things gone through (now that she has passed) and going through my stuff that was boxed up to store while mom had the room. Honestly, I am not the best at house keeping to begin with, always a bit cluttered, but I am working on it.
First of all, after weeks of researching and reading reviews, this is what I have settled on. The Vivante Pasta Extruder. I first saw it at William Sonoma. They had just gotten in the machines and they were running $349.00 plus tax. Now the one they have is an updated model I guess because it is a little bit different, the extruder part is located more to the side instead of the middle and it has 14 dies. I decided to see if there was some reputable place on the internet that might be a bit cheaper, wanted to check out the reviews as well. OH MY GOSH. I found it this model on sale at Chefs Catalog for $119 with free shipping and no sales tax. What a savings. The only difference I can find is that the extruder part in located in the center and this comes with 10 dies. After Googling the different shapes, the only one that I think I would miss is the one for a shell shaped macaroni. For $220.00 savings I can buy a lot of shells, which we don't really use much of. I can't wait for it to arrive. I have been wanting one for some time, the reviews for this machine were much better than for the KitchenAid attachment and the sale price is much cheaper than the KitchenAid attachment.
Now, on to my cleaning saga.
Now my freezer is all defrosted, sanitized and organized. I found that I had more in there than I had thought. Like 10 packages of bacon, 10 packages of ground beef, 4 packages of broccoli, well you get the idea.
The top shelf is all beef. Well, the ground beef is actually in the door. However, I do have a roast, cubed steaks, sirloin steaks, a few other steaks, some round steak for making jerky.
The second shelf is all chicken. Several packages of boneless skinless chicken breast, legs and thighs packages, some wings, a whole chicken, and some seasoned split breast. Also, some hearts and gizzards, ground turkey and a turkey leg.
The third shelf is pork. I found all those packages of bacon, a pork roast, a ham shank, a package of cooked ham pieces, a ham bone with quite a bit of meat still on it, even a ham steak.
The fourth shelf, which proudly you notice is half empty, is for ready made junk. Taquitos, mini corn dogs, and such.
The bottom basket is all vegetables. I found three packages of mini corn on the cobs. There are also some packages of seafood items in there.
At any rate, I am glad that job is done. So then, on I moved to the pantry chaos.
This thing was stuffed to the gills. I had no idea what I had or didn't have. Soup was in three different places, nothing was in any type of order any more. I had decided that I would not buy any more groceries until I had cleaned out the pantry. Oh and what a job that turned out to be. I had a lot of things that had really expired, found a jar of pimentos that had popped the seal and molded up and several items that the moths had gotten to. Not as much as I had anticipated, so happy about that because I get so mad at myself when I throw away good food because I waited too long to use it.
Now that is much better. Like products are together with oldest at the front to be used first.
I found out I wouldn't have little man today so I moved on to the terrible spice cabinet and the mess in the storage cabinet that holds my baking sheets and then the foil, wax paper, plastic bags and such. I will have photos of that to add later. Now that I am in an organizing mood, need to keep it going. I was just taking a break while I ordered my pasta maker. At least now that I have organized the freezer, pantry and such, it will be much easier to make menu plans based on what I already have on hand, then I will be able to save some of the September budget to stock up on sales.
Thanks for stopping and by and come back soon to see how I am doing at staying on track.
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