prepping for a little corner of kitchen nirvana

So way back in March, I hinted that we finally found a solution for something that drove me nuts for years. It was my bustin-at-the-seams spice collection, and it only got worse after I met the Boy Scout. We ended up with a 12-jar rack, a 16-jar carousel, a shelf of miscellaneous-sized items, and a paper sack full of the remainder. Every time we'd cook or bake, it was a 10-minute treasure hunt to find what we needed, and we always ended up with at least 1 too many jars of a spice because we thought we had run out. At one point, it was cardamom. I love cardamom, but we had 3 whole jars of it. I made a lot of frosting and ice cream to burn through those suckers, let me tell you what.

I found a couple web sites touting magnetic spice racks, which were intriguing, but lacked capacity. We counted what we had, figured out what we were still missing, and came up with a list of about 55 herbs and spices. A measely 20-tin rack wasn't gonna cut it.

I finally found this site, which offered some materials for a DIY version and some good, real-world examples. We have a pantry door with 1/4" inset panels and 4 sturdy hinges, so I measured and sent off for a couple rolls of industrial-glue-backed magnetic sheets and headed to my local hardware store (more about them in future posts, I'm sure, because I spent a lot of time there and even own their t-shirt.) I had them cut down their thinnest plexiglass to 2 rectangles just a little smaller than the size of the panels -- about 19" x 25" -- and waited for the magnetic sheets to arrive. It turned out the sheets ship in a tube, so I had to flatten them under several pounds of books for a few weeks (days would've been adequate, but I got side-tracked).

I then sanded down the edges of the plexiglass, peeled the backing off the magnetic sheets, and used my heavy-duty marble rolling pin to ensure the adhesive stuck. A few bubbles, but since no one would see it after it was covered with spices, who cared? Fi (snooping in the bags in the picture) certainly didn't.

Next up...tins and spice shopping.