Inventory

Last night, for a lack of better things to do, I inventoried my kitchen pantry to identify things that have been sitting around, unused, for a long, long time. Here's what I've got, along with a few ideas of what to do with these ingredients, though in a number of cases I don't have an exact recipe lined up:

-sesame seeds (a cup; honey-sesame crisps of some sort?)
-wild rice (anybody have a recommended vegetarian wild rice soup recipe?)
-split mung beans (black; also known as urad dal, I believe)
-white beans
-channa daal (these are split chickpeas, used in Indian dishes or possibly Ethiopian)
-teff flour (I just need to get my act together to make some injera with it!)
-a ginormous bag of Spanish peanuts (need to roast more spicy Spanish peanuts - anybody want some?)
-white chocolate (needs to be melted into something)
-some gross chocolate bricks for making hot chocolate (can these last two items be hidden in the same baked good?)
-potato flour
-potato starch

I've also been chipping away at a bag of corn flour (mixing it in cornbread, for instance) and a bag of gram flour (chickpea flour - good for chickpea crepes). I'm really hoping that, at some point soon, I'll have a manageable, simplified pantry. If I want to take on a roommate, there has to be cupboard space to share, after all.

So...any other ideas??

Things, things, and more things

While I work away at clearing out the kitchen cupboards, I'm also preoccupied by a bunch of other miscellaneous things, such as:

Books. I still don't have bookshelves together, so there are piles of books in the living room and a pile of academic books at the foot of my bed. I need to measure the wine bottle dimensions so I can order/get the appropriate size of Forstner bits and turnbuckles to turn door boards into bookshelves.

Beds. This has been a long time coming, but it's getting to be time to upgrade to a larger bed. I'm thinking a full-sized bed, but that would mean figuring out where to buy one, and new bedding as well.

Small Furniture. All of my stationery supplies are still sitting in a cardboard box. The door-desk was a good start, but it lacks storage space. Eventually, I'd like to actually get a coffee table.

Gardening. The Farm Patch has nice, big, terra-cotta flowerpots for sale for a good price right now. I'm tempted to buy lavender and parsley plants, but I don't have anywhere to put them. I also want to grow some flowers, dammit. I've got a nice pile of compost waiting for me in the driveway, but nowhere to put it. The compost should also get some attention sometime soon.

Thing is, it's cold and rainy out. My cat is being exceptionally clingy again because the indoor temperature has dropped below 68 degrees (her current "It's cold!" threshold). That's making it hard to stay motivated to work away at these projects.