laundry room cupboards, pot stickers, shredded chicken

I forgot to tell you one thing from Monday that I was absolutely thrilled about!  Several of the ladies who come for knitting also read the blog.  Two of the ladies were so inspired by the things on my kitchen table that are being purged, that they did some of their own purging!!  I am always excited when I can inspire someone in that way J. 

I had a LOVELY visit from Nancy H on Tuesday morning (2/4).  When she left around NOON, my honey made us a grilled ham & cheese sandwich (which we split) then I took off for errands.  The thermometer said it was 41 degrees…but it truly felt like 24 degrees…there was a light rain falling and it just went through you and chilled you to the bone.  I hit WALMART for a few items from the sewing department and then some groceries.  I also had to stop at Harris Teeter on the way home ($1.99 chicken breasts for my chicken enchiladas on Thursday).  Here I must digress and tell you a story.  There are 2 cupboards in our laundry room which are full of dog treats/chamois/food/M’s lunch bag and just a bunch of other pantry type stuff.  Every time there is a cleared space on one of the shelves (for example when I use up all of the chicken stock and am waiting for it to go on sale before I buy more) Michael fills it up.  This happens EVERY time.  Even when I go out to the kitchen and clear a space on the counter and wipe it down because I am going to cook or bake something…I turn my back for ONE SECOND and he has come into the kitchen and put something down in that cleared space…. SHEESH!!  So…needless to say I brought home chicken stock and there was no place to put it away.  Maybe a week ago I had talked to Michael about designating one cupboard for him and one for me and he thought that might work.  So when I got home we started…of course I didn’t think to take ‘before’ pics until we were 1/2 way through….you’ll just have to trust me that they were a mess.  It only took about 45 minutes with both of us working together to go from this: 

Michael's cupboard 1/2 way through unloading everything

my cupboard, I had already unloaded and was putting back in

washer & dryer full of stuff to still go back in cupboards

 

to this (and yes, there's more stuff on the kitchen table to be given away): 

Michael's cupboard

my cupboard....notice empty space on bottom left....heaven
to know it will still be there a week from now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am totally excited about the fact that my ‘empty spaces’ will still be there even if it takes weeks to replenish (doesn’t take much to get me going…right?) Then, in keeping with the purging theme (this time, continuing to clean out the freezer), I had pot stickers I made awhile ago that I was flash freezing, and never got them into a bag so that’s what we had for dinner: 

frozen/raw going into pan

yumm - O!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

along with orange/ginger sauce I made to go with them.  I wanted a light dinner because I knew we were going to watch a movie in the evening (FARGO – a totally bloody, great movie) and would have popcorn.  And while we were watching, I got my ’15 minutes from raw to dishes all washed 3 pounds of perfectly shredded chicken’ done:

place 3 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
in 4 qt crockpot.  cook on low for 6 hours (that took 30 seconds)

6 hours later...perfectly cooked chicken and about 1-2 cups
of nice stock too!

use fork to break each breast into 2 pieces as you load into
kitchen aid mixer.  do 3 breasts at a time along with
1/2 cup of the chicken broth

perfectly shredded, bagged up and frozen in 3 bags and all dishes
washed in about 14 minutes (yes....I set the timer to be sure :-)