The Perfect Pantry®

Dry bread crumbs (Recipe: egg noodle, cheese and cauliflower gratin)

There's a big piece of land for sale up the road from my house.

Costco, are you listening???

I'm an hour away from the nearest location of my favorite warehouse-type store and, while I don't go often, and I don't stockpile huge quantities of things in The Perfect (but kind of small) Pantry, I'd love to have a Costco closer to home.

I love their sides of salmon for $3.99 per pound. I love the soft, puffy bagels (heresy, from a native New Yorker....). I love the oatmeal-raisin cookies, the giant boxes of grape tomatoes, the bags of Empire kosher chicken breasts, the portobello caps and haricot vert at prices I can afford.

Most of all, though, I love the cookbooks.

Incredible bargains, eclectic selection, best sellers, no-sellers — I can't walk past the book aisle without browsing, and there is always something I don't have and, suddenly, cannot live without.

Last week, the brand new Fine Cooking Annual landed in my shopping cart — available at Costco before it's even in the bookstores! Good thing, too, because I was looking for new recipes that call for the dry bread crumbs I found on my pantry shelf.

Horseradish sauce (Recipe: horseradish dip)

Every item in my pantry falls into one of two categories: innie, or outie.

Innies — ingredients that don't stand alone, and are fundamental to the creation of a dish — include herbs and spices, grains and legumes, and dry pasta.

Outies can be innies, but they also can stand alone. Often used as garnish, or to enhance the flavor of a finished dish, my standby outies include things like yogurt, ketchup, cheeses, soy sauce, and my brand-new favorite: horseradish sauce.

Chickpeas (Recipe: lemon onion hummus)

Updated February 2012.

Which came first, the famous Roman orator Cicero, or chickpeas?

According to some sources, chickpeas (Latin name cicer arietum) were named after a rather unattractive wart on Cicero's nose. Other sources say that Cicero, born with a less-than-perfect nose, was named after the oddly curled-up legume. Chickpeas are an ancient food, discovered in mesolithic layers in southern France and carbon-dated to approximately 6790 BC. Cicero's time was around 100 BC. Which came first?

Lemons (Recipe: lemon curd)

Oh, I love-love-love the Internet.

As I started thinking about lemons, I got a bit sidetracked (which happens more and more often these days).

Why, I wondered, are irredeemably bad cars called lemons?

Click, click, click. Wikipedia offered not one answer, but four, ranging from plausible to truly ridiculous.

I wanted to know more.

Click, click, click.

Eureka! That's the variety of most of the lemons we see in the markets in the US (except those who live in California, where wonderful Meyer lemons also are available). Lemon trees grow to 20 feet tall; a mature tree can yield up to 2,000 fruits per year.