The Perfect Pantry®

Green chiles (Recipe: turkey-green-chile chili)

The second of two posts for people who kinda, sorta want turkey — but not a turkey — for Thanksgiving.

Earlier this fall, three friends visited New Mexico.

All three, separately and without any coercion from me, came home with Hatch green chiles for my pantry. This made me happy.

One brought a can, one a jar, and the third a frozen brick. One was mild, one was hotter, and one was marked "hot" but should have come with a fire extinguisher attached, as it was truly incendiary.

Guess which was my favorite? (Can you hear me sniffling?!)

Dried fruit (Recipe: turkey meatloaf with fig gravy)

The first of two posts for people who kinda, sorta want turkey — but not a turkey — for Thanksgiving. Updated June 2011.

In the house where I grew up, prunes were the dried fruit of choice.

Nobody liked the taste, but prunes were, quite literally, the magic bullet that kept all of us, well, regular. To this day, if I close my eyes, I can picture the bag of prunes always in the cupboard, and the Sunsweet prune juice, with its yellow label, always in the refrigerator.

To be honest, if it weren't for my love of Silver Palate chicken marbella (still one of my favorite party dishes), I'd probably never have prunes in the house.

Eggs (Recipe: albornia de chayote)

Updated November 2010.

A few years ago, while working on a magazine article (never finished) about "designer eggs" (never found them), I interviewed a woman in our town who's  both a licensed veterinarian and a holistic practitioner. I needed a chicken refresher course, and she invited me to her farm for a lesson in which-came-first.

Of all the things she told me, the one I remember is this: you can tell what color an egg will be by checking the ear lobes of the chicken.

I'm not kidding.

White ear lobes, white eggs. Brown-ish ear lobes, brown eggs.

Anyone who's lived in New England knows the famous advertising jingle: "Brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!" But if, as they say, you're not from here, you might not know that brown eggs are the norm in this part of the country, thanks primarily to our very own state bird, the Rhode Island Red — a brown hen, with brown ear lobes.

Dried mushrooms (Recipe: mushroom paté)

C'mon, you know you're thinking it.

How can something so ugly taste so good?

Dried mushrooms may not win any beauty contests, but I love their shriveled caps, curly stems, gritty texture, woodsy odor, and concentrated flavor.

Even if I didn't use them in my favorite risotto, I'd keep dried mushrooms in my pantry. Stored in an airtight container, they last longer than fresh (a year or more, but read on for true confessions), and are available year-round.