The Perfect Pantry

Drop In & Decorate cookies for donation: have fun, do good, make someone's holidays happy

Lydia — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:03:00 -0500

“Thank you for the extraordinarily beautiful holiday cookies that you prepared and delivered to the Crossroads Rhode Island Family Center. For the fourth year in a row, your group has brightened the holidays for homeless families who are unable to provide their children with the wonderful treats that make the...

Other People's Pantries #93

Lydia — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:04:00 -0500

From Julia (Cook.Grow.Eat.) in Cambridge, Massachusetts: This is the post that will make you really grateful for the kitchen and pantry you have! Despite my hardest efforts, I am not independently wealthy. So when I bought this house, I had to make compromises -- I opted for the driveway, garden...

Brazil food: Kitchens and cooktops (Recipe: chicken with ora pro nobis)

Lydia — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:04:00 -0500

The fourth in an occasional series of posts about Brazilian food and ingredients we discovered during our recent visit. On our first morning at the Pousada do Capão, we drank cashew juice and ate homemade granola and fresh, really fresh, mango and pineapple, and we toasted our own bread-and-cheese sandwiches...

Turmeric (Recipe: saag aloo/potatoes with spiced spinach)

Lydia — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:04:00 -0500

In days of old, when nights were cold, I used to spend a lot of time knitting. Yarn shopping replaced clothes shopping as my favorite activity. I bought yarn wherever I found something out of the ordinary -- at a stall in Covent Garden, at a craft fair in New...

Powdered buttermilk (Recipe: pear spice cupcakes)

Lydia — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:02:56 -0400

When you drive toward my town from pretty much anywhere, you pass a mall or two. Big box stores, little box stores, grocery stores and discount stores. Drive-through doughnuts, drive-up banking. Hardware, software, sportswear. It's hard to believe that, a century ago, apple orchards and dairy farms, punctuated by occasional...