When it comes to my kitchen I am pretty disorganised, even more so since having Izzy over a year ago. I blame not having enough cupboard space to be properly organised but really I’m just not very good at it. This week my forgetfulness and general disorder of my cupboards has caused me to not be able to cook three meals/recipes that I wanted to but twice it meant I had to come up with something else to make and resulted in two very lovely dishes. So there is one benefit of being disorganised.

On Tuesday I had a craving for jam tarts..not to eat them but I craved making them. Sound weird to you? I lovingly made my shortcrust pastry from scratch ( it will shock you but this was my first time making it since I was young I normally cheat and buy ready made) and even rolled it and cut into discs (very ragged discs since I don’t seem to have a round pastry cutter) before reaching into the depths of a crowded cupboard to pull out my jam which was in fact a jar of plum sauce.. Frustrating and by this point I really wanted a jam tart. Since it was getting late neither of us fancied a trip to the shops so a quick scan of what ingredients I had resulted in me making custard tarts. They were really tasty and I’d never made them before so it was fun.

This morning I started to put ingredients together to make a slow cooked beef stew, again I was missing a crucial ingredient (chopped tomatoes) I always always have a zillion tins of this in my cupboard but it seems they finally ran dry. Around the same time my OH fancied waffles .. I also thought hmmm that would be nice and pulled out my eggs and milk before realising I’d run out of flour. Disappointed and we had to make do with egg on toast.. Not quite the same.

So anyway we get to this evening and as I don’t have my beef stew I decided to try out an idea I saw on Pinterest some time ago for chicken, cheese and pineapple quesadillas.

Wow they were so good. I didn’t have a recipe to go by so I just went with what I had and it turned out beautifully.

So I guess there are some benefits to being a little ditsy with the shopping lists and having cluttered cupboards as we had two new dishes to try which were both luckily very good!
This can’t quite make up for the disappointment I felt when getting ready tonight to prep my pork shoulder for pulled pork tomorrow and realising I’d forgotten not one or two but 3 ingredients. It’s been one of those weeks.

December sees a brand new me, well in my kitchen at least. My lovely man is working on a pantry for me and then I will have no excuse. Clutter no more. Any helpful tips for kitchen organisation will be gratefully accepted.

My “pantry” as it looks right now .. I will report back x