Pantry!
by Fazia Rizvi
14 October 2003, 3:05 PM

I'm proud enough of how our kitchen is shaping up that I thought I'd share some pictures of the new pantry.

Since we don't have a walk-in pantry in our kitchen we had to come up with something else. Or, well, we didn't have to, but I hate using kitchen cabinets for pantry item storage. I'd much rather have a walk-in pantry that could feed me for a year before I ever had to venture out for food, leaving the kitchen cabinets for bowls, pans, pots, appliances, dishes and spices.

At first we cobbled together some old bookcases and an old particle-board cabinet of mine as a stand-in, but we really wanted something nicer. We perused through antique stores and contemplated building something. Finally we found a couple of hutches at IKEA that weren't very expensive and that fit the bill very nicely. They store a LOT - about quadruple what we were storing before - though it doesn't look like it until you start filling them up.

The great thing about these was that I could display my jams, and jellies, honey and teas. That's all honey on the top shelf there, and mostly homemade jams on the bottom shelf. The mid shelf has all my "specialty" jams, like gooseberry, lingonberry, fig, rosehips, pumpkin, etc.

Over time I've managed to get a lot of nice tightly-sealed glass jars to store various dried goods like pasta, rice, lentils, beans, nuts and fruits. We got a simple bookshelf to hold all of those because the practical storage also looks really nice and I wanted to display it rather than hide it.

World Heritage Sites
by Fazia Rizvi
14 October 2003, 1:24 PM

That one news bit from national geographic got me wondering just what are some of the world's designated "World Heritage Sites". I found a list of them on UNESCO's web site.

Now I *really* want to go travelling. I've been to most of the sites in both Finland and Pakistan, both there's so many more to see all over the world!

Media Self-Censorship
by Fazia Rizvi
14 October 2003, 1:11 PM

In the "well duh" department (for those of us who've been following foreign news sources), apparently the U.S. news media was practicing self-censorship during the Iraq war.

Amanpour: CNN practiced self-censorship
CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship." As criticism of the war and its aftermath intensifies, Amanpour joins a chorus of journalists and pundits who charge that the media largely toed the Bush administration line in covering the war and, by doing so, failed to aggressively question the motives behind the invasion.

I'm glad at least that Amanpour is among those being critical of the media, since I've rather liked her.

Cool news today...
by Fazia Rizvi
14 October 2003, 9:53 AM

Via Nat geo: U.S. Wary of World-Heritage Status, Travel Editor Says

Via WIRED: Wanted: Master Lego Model Builder

Via the BBC: Astronaut Foale heads for space