Up Your Grilled Cheese Game!

We had a near disaster the other day. We have a tall pantry cabinet in our kitchen with fairly deep pull-out shelves. With my hand on one of the shelves, pushing it back in, I heard a crack, and as the plastic bracket holding the side rail broke, I managed to prevent the shelf from crashing to the floor, along with all of its content.

Thankfully I averted what would have been a mess of broken bottles of oil and vinegar, jars of mustards and jams, and various containers of breadcrumbs all over the floor.

Also thankfully Hank is who he is, and does things the way he does. Within five minutes, he had pulled out the binder from when we renovated the kitchen 13 years ago, found the receipt for all the kitchen cabinets, and got on the phone with the manufacturer. Even more amazing is that with my name and the name of the store where we purchased them, about five minutes later the customer service representative had already put in an order for a set of replacement brackets, at no charge, because there is a limited lifetime warranty.

You must now be wondering, though, what blog post could come out of this? As I unloaded the shelf of its contents, I found all sorts of things I didn’t even remember I had! Among other things, I found special olive oil we’ve now decided we have to use in salad dressings, some Gorgonzola crackers Rachel had bought for us, and a jar of quince jam.

Last night, I picked up one of the seven books that I have from the library – at this point our library system has pushed the due date for all of them back to July 1 – and just happened to open it to a page with a sandwich of pork loin, cheese, and membrillo, a quince paste. No pork loin here, but we have some deli ham, plus some deli cheese, the quince jam, and homemade rosemary sourdough bread, which made for a great grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

I’ve been seeing lots of posts from people who are finding all sorts of forgotten treasures in their freezers or cabinets along with a desire to use them, both to be economical and to reduce trips to stores, both for ourselves and to keep the occupancy down in stores so everyone can get what they need.

So take a look into the back corners of your cabinets! You never know – that forgotten relish or jam or mustard may be just the thing to perk up a grilled cheese sandwich or to spice up your dinner tonight!