mise en place

Welcome to The Cardboard Kitchen! It’s a busy place, so I keep it organized. There are utensils, pantry items sorted by color and use, and the necessary odd bits to keep in order. Although not visible here, I use post- it’s as recipe cards. This helps me to keep track of each ingredient in each piece. If I use the wrong ingredient in a particular piece, it tastes terrible!

So how do I organize all this cardboard: enter the pantry.

When a box arrives in The Cardboard Kitchen, I notate in pencil the origin of the box and it’s original function. It then gets sorted into the pantry. Although every piece gets sized down,  and no matter the size large or small, it retains it’s name and origin. That’s why when you receive your delicious no-cal food in the mail and read the ingredients list, you know just what it’s made of.

It’s amazing that eventually I begin to recognize the crumbs floating around: the ones stuck to my clothes or glued in my hair. It’s the same phenomenon as the “other” kitchen: you say to yourself  “I’ve got  that cookie dough in my eyebrow”. I say to myself  “this clump glued on my shirt is from that UPS box I was cooking with”!