Confessions of a Spontaneous Cook

My kitchen cupboards are pretty disorganised. I do try to keep some kind of system going, such as having a shelf for the herbs and spices, a shelf for baking ingredients, etc,etc, but by nature I'm very messy and when it comes to cooking I can be quite impulsive. I love trying out new recipes and as a result of an untidy cupboard and lack of proper planning I often just buy all the ingredients I need without really knowing if I already have them. As a result I end up with a cupboard full of multiple herbs/spices. 

Since having my third child, moving to a bigger and more expensive house and no longer working full time, I need to get this kind of thing under control. I am trying to be more frugal this year; smarter with my meals and meal preparations.... I am already struggling a bit with this because when I see something I want to cook, I want to cook it right away, even if there is stuff in the fridge that needs using up first. I'm sure there's a balance to be struck! I have already been quite good at trying to keep my fridge under control and we have at least one or two strange meals a week where I come up with something just to ensure nothing goes off and gets thrown out. Nobody's complained so far, so I'll continue with that.

So today I tackled my spice shelf. As you can see, I have quite a selection. For some reason I have six jars of cumin....ground and seeds. Multiple jars of Chinese 5 spice, mustard seeds and chilli powder. Saffron that went out if date in 2006 (yes, it's shocking not to use up saffron when it's so damn expensive) and various other minor store cupboard offences. I threw out everything that was really out of date but kept some that had only recently gone out of date. I don't think it will make anybody ill, more likely that the herb/spice will be less flavoursome and potent. 

I'm going to keep a few, clean, empty jars so that I can buy and decant the herbs/spices in the small cardboard boxes when I need to restock because these are considerably cheaper.

I had a quick look and a Google search reveals that there are many, many lovely print your own spice labels out there.

One of my favourites is the one below from Vectoria Designs

One day I might be organised enough to have all my herbs and spices in the same jars, beautifully labelled up. In the mean time they will stay put in the jaded tupperware tray where they currently reside.