Greeting the Season With Organized Seasonings

It won't be long now until the turkey will be nicely roasted and sitting on the platter tempting us with it's delicious aroma.  I love that smell and can hardly wait to sit down to enjoy the tastes of Thanksgiving... roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, ribbon jello, butternut squash ...  mmmmm ~ I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.  Something about only having this meal once a year makes it extra special and eagerly anticipated.

And then, of course, there are the pies.

Can't have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, can you?

Well,  I suppose if you're not a fan of it you could ;-).

Either way this is the time of year when my kitchen becomes a busy place.  Once the Thanksgiving pies are gone, it will soon be time to make the Christmas cookies and the soups to keep us warm on chilly days and the hot chocolate to enjoy while watching the holiday movies and we won't even think about the Christmas dinner just yet.

But something I have been thinking about is getting my kitchen cleaned and organized so that I will be all ready to face the season in a cheerful way.

Recently I have been going through all of my kitchen cupboards and drawers.  Let's just say some of them had gotten a bit hard to close thus making my cheerful kitchen disposition a bit hard to maintain.

One of the drawers that needed some attention was my spice drawer.  This drawer is right next to the stove which makes it very convenient to grab what I need as I'm cooking.  I try to keep it organized alphabetically so that I can find what I'm looking for easier.

I also write the name of the spice on the top of the jar so that I can see it at a glance.  This way I don't have to dig around pulling them all out to find one.  My system usually works well, but recently it had gotten  kinda messy in there and I couldn't find what I was looking for and ended up buying spices that I already had.  I do use herbs and spices on a daily basis, but some of them I can never finish before they have to be discarded so I don't want to double up on them.

Anyhow, the other day I took everything out of the drawer, washed out the drawer and re-organized it all once again and this time I went a step further ...

I made a list of everything in the drawer.

This way if I'm wondering whether I have a certain spice, I can consult the list (which is also kept in the drawer) instead of rummaging around looking for it.

And there you have it ... one of my simple ways to keep the holiday kitchen better organized.

We had our first frost last night and it's beginning to feel winterish around here.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!