The Apartment Living Challenge

All of you who are waiting for the results of the Tour de Gelato are just going to have to wait a wee little bit longer. I promised them to Albany Jane by Wednesday morning, and dammit, I’m going to have all those scoresheets wrangled by then.

The tour was a ton of fun. Although I learned a valuable lesson for the future. If possible, frontload the eating and backload the driving. Maybe I’ll remember that for the next go-around.

There was even some talk about continuing the quarterly Albany tours in my absence. Whether or not I’ll be making any tours in New Jersey is also an open question.

Speaking of New Jersey, this move is getting very real. We have rented out our home and will have vacated the premises by August 1. With only two months to go, we’re in packing mode. I’ve already donated the third of my wardrobe that I never wore. The car is filled with boxes of books we never read. And the kitchen? Well that’s another story.

I’ve been working on eating through all of the precious oils and vinegars in addition to the odds and ends of condiments. There are more than you could possibly imagine. But today’s post isn’t about that.

It’s about the stuff.

There’s no way I’m moving the KitchenAid. The sister’s bread machine that came into my possession when she went to Argentina has been sitting in my garage for years. Thankfully, the wine rack is mostly empty, but we’re not going to be laying down any wines during our ten-month stay.

I’m actually half tempted to store it all and bring nothing with me. Partially for the challenge of it all. You see, we’re moving into a furnished apartment and it comes with the following list of kitchen goods:

Dinner plates, butter plates, soup bowls, cups and saucers, silverware, knives, water and juice glasses, a toaster, casserole dish, vegetable dish, coffee pot, tea kettle, creamer, sugar bowl, glass pitcher, 3 cooking pots, 1 frying pan, 2 mixing bowls, cutting board, meat fork, serving spoon, large fork, large spoon, 2 kitchen knives, spatula, potato peeler, can/bottle opener and corkscrew.

Could I do it? Could I live like this? And what else might I need to supplement it?

It’s an appealing notion, but I don’t think I would have the resolve to last very long. Still, it will be fun to see how long I could make it.

My cast iron skillets are making the move with us. I can’t leave them in storage, they’ll be lonely. And if they rusted, I would never forgive myself. I also rely more heavily on my Cuisinart than one might imagine, so that will get packed.

But what about my beloved 9×9 Pyrex dish? There’s nothing special about it. It’s just a workhorse in my kitchen. I use it for the oven baked brown rice, it’s the perfect size for savory bread pudding, and it’s great for a batch of baked beets. I guess I still don’t have a good sense about the economics of the move. Storing things costs money. Moving things costs money. And the thing isn’t all that expensive in the first place.

It’s possible that for the cost of schlepping it down to Jersey and back I could have just bought a new one in Princeton and donate it to Goodwill at the end of the sabbatical.

I can’t imagine bringing any of our wine glasses and crystal for the year. Nor can I imagine sending down my battery of coffee brewing supplies. Maybe because it’s small I take the Cuban coffee maker (aka the Bialetti stovetop espresso pot that has been practically abandoned in the pantry).

In theory one would think that I would take our knives. But our cutlery is so embarrassingly dull, that we’re probably just as well off with whatever generic stamped excuse for knives that come with the apartment. But maybe I should bring the knives just so I can have a knife sharpening project while I’m down there.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get a whetstone and just spend the whole sabbatical sharpening my knives. In some ways that might be very therapeutic. If maybe a little creepy.

This might also be a good occasion to finally rid myself of a bunch of hard anodized Calphalon that I just never use anymore. The last time it served any function was as a percussion set for the kits to bang on with wooden spoons.

Maybe they can find a good home.

But these are just a few of the myriad decisions that await over the next several weeks as we’re in the thick of our move out. It’s a good thing one of the projects is drinking our way through the bar and the wine cabinet. Otherwise the stress might be overwhelming.