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I’ve always wanted to want to garden. When I was little, one of my favorite songs was the “Garden Song.” I think I first heard it on a children’s tape, but the most popular version was recorded by John Denver. The first lines are, “Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All you need is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.” The song – considered a “folk standard” – was written by David Mallet. Apparently, it came to him one day in his 20’s as he worked in his father’s garden. He describes the tune dropping into his head with the same sort of ease that fruits and flowers spring from the ground in the lyrics. As a ten-year-old, I ranked it somewhere between “At the Ballet” from Chorus Line and “Hands” by Jewel as one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Unfortunately, it is also full of lies.

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Or: How to organize your freezer the Sprinkle Fix way

Jump to recipe for black bean and chorizo taquitos

One of quarantine’s hottest trends – along with fostering dogs, baking bread and depicting the likeness of Joe Exotic out of dried beans and macaroni – is organizing. People are using this overabundance of inside-time to optimize their entire living spaces – but of course, I’m especially interested in the kitchens. Some of my favorite food authorities have recently written about how they stock and organize their pantries and fridges. They usually say at the top that they’re doing it because they’ve gotten lots of requests from readers who want to look inside their cupboards. Which makes sense. We’re all spending more time in our kitchens and taking fewer trips to the grocery store. So, we want ideas about how to store food more efficiently. I’m not sure these pantry show-and-tell posts can help though. They are full rainbows of legumes in Weck Jars; fully alphabetized spice racks; freezers packed with Tetris-like precision. They look like all the other stuff these food celebrities post – completely beautiful, and completely unattainable for normal people.

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