The Spice Cupboard
posted at 9:36 pm
on Oct. 23, 2012
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My pal Steve came to town last weekend. He’s a friend I’ve had since I was in the Boy Scouts when I was about 10, and he had been planning to anyway. I think it was a good weekend for him; getting away from daily responsibility is always nice.
We played board games on Saturday night—Order of the Stick—with some other boy scout friends of mine, which was fantastic. Board games have come a long way since that horrible “The Game of Life”—this game has a 60-page manual, a quick start guide AND a comic strip explaining the game—as well as perhaps the most variety of cards and tokens I’ve ever seen in a single game.
Steve asked if there was anything I wanted to do while he was in town, so I said, naturally, build a spice rack.
This isn’t as odd as it sounds—I have a lot of spices, and the new place has no place for them, and so I end up just using the ones in the front and never being able to find what I need when I go looking for it, like when I made lasagna recently. Well, no longer. Here’s the result:
Of course, we also played some ultimate, drank some home brew, chased cats down the street, talked about our feelings, reminisced, ignored the elephant in the room, and then climbed right on it. Steve is a great builder, and when I challenged him to build a spice rack, he was up for it. We went to Home Depot and bought boards that were almost too long for the Jetta—but luckily not quite.
I also told him I didn’t want to use nails. 😊 He rose to the challenge, and we coated the kitchen in sawdust, and then dashed off to the airport. I was really glad he’d come to town, and I enjoyed a lovely curry for dinner after he left, made from spices I’d forgotten I had.
As I sorted spices, I developed a new mantra: turn potential awesomeness into awesomeness. Delicious spices in a cupboard are just potential; they need to be made to be enjoyed, otherwise, they’re just filling space. We’ll see if I can remember that for longer than a week or two.
