"PantryEssentials" news and stories

Scanned from Time to Entertain by Charlotte Turgeon (1954)

Fifty-four years after this printing, I'm hard-pressed to argue with Ms Turgeon on the import of having a few staple schmancy things tucked around the house, should mid-week meal boredom encroach or a party break out. Can't say I'm especially aligned with her specifics, but that could easily be a function of the 5+ decade divide.

I pride myself on being able to entertain at a moment's notice, due to the presence of these just-slightly-left of my central (olive oil, stock, Parmesan, fish sauce, double-black soy, tomato paste, rice/red wine/balsamic vinegars, fresh herbs) everyday ingredients.

Here's an improbably mental puzzle for you. If you were stranded on a desert island (with stove, oven and good bug screens), what items in your pantry would you really want to bring along? It's a question that Lynda has asked and answered on The Perfect Pantry. She lists 23 items she'd like to have and her top five are: two types of salt (kosher and sea), black peppercorns, soy sauce and honey.

I think that my top five would be kosher salt, black peppercorns, olive oil, garlic powder (the California style kind, with the parsley flakes) and a hardy rosemary plant that was impossible to kill (I have yet to find one of these in real life).

Lynda is having a whole week of Things We Can't Live Without over on The Perfect Pantry, so you'll also find a list of 13 invaluable baking ingredients as well as her readers' top choices for the things that must be in their pantries at all times.

What's in your essential pantry?

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