It was easy to identify the most annoying thing in the kitchen. There was a perfect spot in the cabinet above the stove for the flour, but no room anywhere for the sugar. Every time I needed even a teaspoon of sugar, I had to go to the Ivar shelving unit in the dining room and grab it. Of course, I could have used a sugar bowl, but I didn’t know where to store that, either, and wouldn’t have been able to decide on the threshold past which I’d have to reach for the large container. (Could I measure 1/2 cup out of the bowl? Would that be wrong?)
Enter Modular Mates.
Modular Mates are a long-running Tupperware item. They’re long, rounded-rectangular containers with tight-fitting lids, available in about a dozen sizes. I measured my cupboard and ordered two of the largest, which would barely fit. One holds five pounds of flour, the other around 7½ pounds of sugar.
They’re not a perfect solution: it’s a little harder to scoop the ingredients out because the container opening is narrower, and the sugar is pretty heavy. Probably I should have bought a shorter container for the sugar. And they weren’t cheap–the two pieces cost me about $30 on eBay and would have been more like $40 from tupperware.com.
But it’s all worth it to have sugar in the kitchen.
The real problem is that now some other issue is going to bubble to the top and become my number one kitchen annoyance. It might be the fact that all the spices (other than pepper) are also on the Ivar. Has anyone tried one of those horizontal magnetic spice racks? I saw them at Bed Bath and Beyond and am wondering whether I should put cumin on the side of the fridge, or whether it would end up spilled on a daily basis.
Actually, my number one kitchen annoyance right this second is that the power is out, presumably due to last night’s windstorm. So Iris and I will be having a raw-food breakfast. By which I mean Life cereal.
Gabe at Culinary Communion uses the magnetic spice racks. He has them installed under a kitchen cabinet, so the jars all hang upside down. This seems like a recipe for disaster, especially in a communal kitchen like his, but I’ve never seen spillage.
I have one of the magnetic racks on my one free kitchen wall. Occasionally I slip up and don’t rotate the pouring holes in the lid closed, which can produce unwanted spillage. But they don’t go flying and spill of their own volition…
a) i enjoy calling it “bloodbath & beyond.”
b) ivar is a street about ten blocks west of my house. which is a funny place to go for spices.
I don’t sell Tupperware any more, but I do know that they sometimes sell narrow scoops that work nicely with the narrow containers (I assume you’re talking about the ones that are like 3 inches wide?). I have a set of 6 narrow scoops myself, I think.
Yes, those are the ones I mean, Kathleen. Unfortunately, the only scoop I could find on the website was an ice cream scoop.
Laurie made some cranberry cookies last night. I should ask her how the scooping went.
I copied Gabe’s upside-down-under-cabinet-magnetic-spice-rack thing. The only thing I’ve spilled was a can of spanish paprika. One downside is that if you’re taller than me it’s kind of hard to look at the spices without hitting your head on the mortar and pestle or something.
How did you post if the power is out?
I saved the post on my laptop and then posted it from Online Coffee.