Lesson Two: The Pantry of DEATH

You have GOT to be kidding me.

The second lesson with the lovely and talented Carla Hall at Top Chef University is all about organizing your pantry. As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I am certainly not the most organized person in the world. However, when it comes to the pantry in my house, my mother is MUCH worse than I am in that department.

You see, my husband, twins and I live with my mom. We sold our little townhouse once the twins were born and moved in with mom in a MUCH bigger home and larger piece of property. I helped all parties involved, and we honestly live in the best neighborhood in Brookhaven. I grew up here, and I couldn't imagine raising our kids anywhere else. Eventually, we are going to build onto the house and take advantage of the property that we own. I love this house.

I hate our kitchen.

We have VERY little counter space. The pantry was built by a man who had no clue about building a pantry-- my former step-father (may he rest in peace). He just built a closet with shelves, without any consideration of the sizes of bottles, boxes, jars and so forth. Mind you, this was back in 1988 or so. Mom never fixed it, and never had the tolerance to organize it, because it would inevitably end up looking like this:

The Pantry of DEATH

Now, I love my mother. I do. I've got an abnormally fantastic relationship with my mom. However, she has a couple of issues that my sister and I have tried to address over the years, but to no avail. One of the big issues my mom has is with expiration dates. You see, she COMPLETELY ignores them. She takes expiration dates as a suggestion rather than, well, the date of expiration. 

She's going to kill someone with expired food.

I'm not kidding.

When I was a senior in high school-- must have been March of 1994-- my friend came over for dinner. Mom, James (my friend), Julie (my sister) and I were gathered around the dinner table, eating. Mom had served salad, but there was no salad dressing on the table. I walked over to the Pantry of DEATH and rummaged around until I found a bottle of salad dressing. I was happy, because it was Spring Garden, which I thought had been discontinued a while ago. I shook it up and poured it on my salad. It had a greenish tinge, which I didn't remember, but it was a brand new bottle and I didn't think anything of it.

So, I took a bite and it tasted funny. Nay, it tasted tangy. I must have made a funny face, because my sister asked me what was wrong. I told her that the salad tasted funny, and my mom told me to knock it off and just eat it. So, I took another bite-- Still tasted funny. My sister picked up the bottle and started reading. All of a sudden, her eyes got really wide and she yelled, "SPIT IT OUT!! SPIT IT OUT!!!!"  So, I spit what was in my mouth onto my table as fast as I could.  My mother asked what was the matter and Julie said, "Ma, this expired in 1991!"

Thus the reputation of my mother and the expiration dates was born.

I knew that I was going to be confronted with expired items in the pantry, but I didn't think that I was going to be confronted with so many:

At least $200 of expired food

It just wouldn't stop coming out of the pantry. I cleaned and organized and did everything Carla told me to do. Thank goodness my sister is in Chicago, because she would have had a heart attack with all of the items I was pulling out. DIS-GUS-TING. There was some stuff that was just mind boggling. Take a look:

Hickory Farms Cheddar Cheese Spread

I don't even know when this was placed in the Pantry of DEATH. It's Hickory Farms Cheddar Cheese Spread. I mean, do they even make this any more? I dared my mom to open it. She wouldn't. I offered her $100 to open it, and she still wouldn't. Ughhhhh.

WTF is this??

Your guess is as good as mine. I wouldn't open the bag because I was afraid of something being alive inside and/or what it would smell like. Seriously... WTF is that?? 

But, I really need to share my favorite found item with you, my dear reader:

Yes, it really is Holy Water.

Two words for you, folks: HOLY WATER. Yes, you read that correctly. There was a bottle of Holy Water in our pantry. Apparently my mother was keeping it in case we had to conduct an exorcism or something. 

So, I did EVERYTHING I could with the pantry. I honestly thought it would take me an hour, tops. It took me SIX HOURS, and I still need to do the very top shelf that has all of the lightbulbs and stuff that my husband squirrels away up there. Take a look at what I accomplished, though:

'Tis the Pantry of DEATH no more!

I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of myself for doing this. However, I still have those top two shelves to finish off, and I just cannot find the motivation to do so. I'm trying, but I can't-- ESPECIALLY when I know that the next lesson is about organizing the fridge and freezer!

Lesson One: Mise en Place

I love Carla Hall. She is one of my favorite Top Chef contestants. So, you can imagine my delight when Carla taught the first lesson in the first section of Top Chef University. She is the same bubbly Carla that was in Top Chef: New York, and the first video (which lasted nearly five minutes) was informative and entertaining. If all of the lessons are like this, I'll be cooking like a Top Chef in no time!

Basically the first lesson talked about the Mise en Place when you cook. The Mise en Place (pronounced MEES ahn plahss) is the area in which you work while you cook. You should have a cutting board, your equipment and all of your ingredients already measured out. This actually made a lot of sense to me. Often times, I will follow a recipe and have to keep going to my disaster area of a pantry to locate ingredients. More often than not, I don't have at least one ingredient and either make a mad dash to the grocery store or frantically call a neighbor. If you have all of your ingredients in front of you before you start cooking, then you won't run into that issue. (Hah! Who knew??)

Of course, the issue of cross-contamination was discussed. I already knew not to use the same work space if you use raw chicken and such. However, during the video, Carla took a plastic cutting board and put it on top of the wooden cutting board in order to have a separate space for her raw chicken. Genius!

I admit it: I'm not the most organized person in the world, especially when I attempt to cook. This short lesson organized me beautifully! I'm really excited to start cooking.

Student Orientation: My Back Story

Hi there!

I'm Candice. I'm 36 years old, the mother to 4 year old boy/girl twins, and the wife of a cop. I live on the south shore of Long Island in the great state of New York.

Oh, yeah. I'm not a very good cook. I try, though. My sister, Julie, makes fun of me because I have maybe seven items that I can cook REALLY well. (Hey-- That's a different meal every night!) I've got a massive shellfish allergy, which is why I'm terrified to go to any sort of cooking class or school. And considering that the twins are four, I really don't have very much time. I own a travel and event planning company, Candy Cain Travel, and I also work from home as a Marketing Executive for an International Wellness Company. I'm actually trying to get the latter business to a point where I can step back from the first, but that is another blog entirely.

My family (I'm in the green)

To the left is a picture of me and my family, taken at Disney this summer. The five people you see in that picture are the five people that will appear in this blog. If others appear, I'll make sure to put post pictures of them so that you can get a visual.

When Hurricane Sandy hit in October, we lost internet and phone for about two weeks. I got an alert from Groupon on my cellphone saying that there was a groupon for a one year membership to Top Chef University. My husband and I love Top Chef, and I REALLY wanted the Groupon, but we had no way to purchase it. I mentioned it at Thanksgiving, when we were talking about cool Groupons that we had seen. 

You can imagine my delight on Christmas morning when my husband told me to check my email for another gift as he walked out the door to go to work. About an hour later, I jumped online and checked my email. Lo and behold, there it was: The Best Christmas Gift EVER. Hubs bought me the Groupon for that one year membership to Top Chef University!!!

I am outrageously excited about this gift. I love the idea of learning to cook like a Top Chef. A good friend of mine, Danielle, is an OUTRAGEOUS cook and we keep telling her to go onto MasterChef. Well, jeez, maybe with this University I will be confident enough to audition myself, rather than for The Worst Cooks In America!

Something that I do happen to be good at, however, is writing. I have a couple of blogs that I maintain, and my best friend Mechelle suggested that I track my progress with a blog. (What she actually said was, "Can, this sounds a bit blog-worthy...") I've got a few followers on each blog and several thousand views. I'm sure that this is going to be an exercise in comedy, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I anticipate I will. 

Merry Christmas!!!