Introduction

The kitchen in Sandy Rosenberg’s New York City apartment is nothing if not bountiful. The refrigerator is perpetually overstocked, the cabinets are so full that dishes sometimes spill out, and five shelves groan under the weight of cookbooks ranging from The Art of Jewish Cooking to In the Kitchen With Miss Piggy. So it was no surprise that Rosenberg’s pantry, in an adjacent dining nook, was filled to the rafters. “I’m like a bonsai,” says the 50-year-old singer and actress. “I grow to the size of my space.”

You could even say stockpiling is in her genes. “My grandmother would hoard sugar,” she says. “Years after she passed away, my family and I were still using her supply.” An avid cook, Rosenberg continues the pack-rat tradition by shopping in bulk at Costco. With her pantry, she had the best of intentions, installing wire shelving and a door organizer. But soon her “If it fits there, it goes there” philosophy resulted in a floor-to-ceiling jigsaw puzzle. Staples like flour and sugar were buried behind a mixing bowl full of old silverware and a basket of cake-decorating supplies.

Rosenberg cooks almost daily, making dinner for her husband before she heads off to work in the cast of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!, so a lot of time was wasted searching for ingredients. “Diced tomatoes seemed to elude me,” she says. “I’d buy them for a recipe and never be able to find them when I got around to making it.” To put an end to Rosenberg’s pantry treasure hunts, Real Simple came up with a system and a few tools to help her make her baked ziti — and curtain calls — with time to spare.