The Cluttered Pantry

The pantry has been pretty cluttered lately. Real life and work took over and has had us thinking of meals as a thing to grab between work and time with the girls. I miss cooking, and I miss family meals and honestly I miss being able to find something in my pantry without [...]

The winter and spring rushed by us this year, other than managing to over-seed the herb garden with basil (the girls helped me place the seeds-but we got busy and started traveling again and I missed the stage where you are supposed to thin out the tiny plants-anybody want some homemade pesto?) we haven’t done [...]

March?!  How could my last post have been in March?  It’s June, 3 months have flown by and I haven’t had a moment to spare since March…  yoikes.   So, here we are, the first week of June – Mark is leaving for shoots in Dublin and Madrid for the first half of the month, [...]

Earlier this evening, after the girls were asleep, I went back downstairs to finish a painting project (yes, I underestimated the number of coats of paint it would take to make our dining room walls red.)
I’m not certain how long she was calling out for me, but I didn’t hear Elena until after she [...]

After a long day of the Wee Kahunas letting me know, in not so subtle little kid manner, that they don’t approve of this whole Daddy going away for 14 days thing. (By testing every limit and rule – including laws of nature like -gravity.) I gratefully climbed into bed early to try and catch [...]

We returned from our last trip to Siberia in late 2008. Making 2009 our first full year as a family at home with the Wee Kahunas. I haven’t really felt compelled to mark our court date  (the date we legally became the girls parents) nor the day in October that we flew home with the girls, [...]

Hey Chicago! Haven’t purchased your tickets for the Share Our Strength’s – A Tasteful Pursuit Dinner Yet?! What are you waiting for? A discount? Oh ok, here you go!
Use the discount code “kendallffr” to get a reduced price of $95 (regular ticket price is $150). Enter it in the Discount Code Box when you  Click [...]

I’m still getting my feet wet with promoting The Cluttered Pantry using Twitter, Face Book, participating in the FoodBuzz community, and sending out emails and notes to everyone I can think of who might be interested in the content of our site.
It’s going well, we continue to have nice growth in our regular reading audience, and I’m [...]

You may have thought that Cluttered Pantry is just a name we came up with for a blog full of lots of different topics. In fact my actual pantry is far more a part of my world than it should be. I explain this a bit better in theIntroductory Post for the site, but suffice [...]

Somewhere in the back of my mind I have been mulling over the idea that any habits I want to have for the rest of my life I ought to have set in by the time I turn 40.
You know, things like flossing every day, getting at least regular exercise, reading a book – a [...]

The Cluttered Pantry
I’ll divulge a little too much about myself and tell you that when the world around me starts to press in, starts to feel uncontrollable (I am a self described control freak) I tend to organize my pantry. I’m not speaking in some metaphorical code here, I mean I actually go through [...]

It’s been 5 months since we brought home our two new, adorable, tiny daughters from eastern Siberia. We’re so unbelievably happy to have them in our lives, and we’re even more happy that these two sisters get to stay together. That day in October, when we finally began our 18 hours of air [...]

Ok, I’ll admit it. The routine being routine is starting to get to me.
The girls are still recovering from ear infections and the weather here in Chicago has been blustery (go figure!) so we have been mostly trapped indoors. And I’m running out of things for us to do.
Don’t get me wrong, shredding up the [...]

To be certain it has been a blur. If that amazingly kind judge in Chita hadn’t waived the ten day wait we would have only been home for a couple of days.
The routine is, well, routine. Bed time, wake time, snack time, lunch time, nap time, bath time, diner time…. All relatively predictable.
What is [...]