The Perfect Pantry

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

 

“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 winter holidays so special and memorable.” Crossroads Rhode Island family emergency shelter, Providence

If you've been reading The Perfect Pantry for a while, you might remember the story about Drop In & Decorate. Way back in 2002, my friend Candy and I read an article, or maybe saw a television show, about Martha Stewart's beautiful flooded-icing cookies. Like Martha herself, the cookies looked elegant. Composed. Perfect.

Candy, an artist, baker, and ever the optimist, said, "We can do that."

Ever the bake-o-phobe, I replied with absolute certainty, "No, we can't."

How we moved from no to yes, from our first attempts at decorating a few batches of cookies in my kitchen to a nonprofit organization about to zoom past the 10,000 cookies donated mark, is a great story, one I've already shared with you.

The idea behind Drop In & Decorate is simple: bake some cookies; gather a group of family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, your worship group or book group to decorate the cookies together; donate the cookies to a nonprofit agency serving basic human needs in your own community.

It’s a simple idea in a complicated world, something anyone can do.

Something you can do.

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

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 in a cast iron griddle on a fogão a lenha, the freestanding wood stove that is the heart and soul of every kitchen in Minas Gerais.

For me, owner of a six-burner Viking, this simple stove was love at first sight.

Housekeeping: BlogHer Food, pantries, email updates, new voices

BlogHer Food conference

Remember the television show Cheers, about a Boston bar where everybody knows your name?

At a BlogHer conference, everybody knows your blog name.

Brazil food: Copacabana farmers' market (Recipe: jilo and onions)

The first in an occasional series of posts over the next few weeks about Brazilian food and ingredients we discovered during our visit.

On Thursday mornings in Rio de Janeiro, everyone goes to Copacabana.

Not to the beach, but to the weekly farmers' market that stretches along two blocks of Rua Ronald de Carvalho.

Recipes for a food-filled holiday weekend

Cousin Ben celebrates his birthday this weekend -- and Brazil celebrates its own independence-from-Portugal day on September 7 -- so we're planning a festive birthday dinner for Ben and for Brazil at the Pousada do Capão.

If we were at home in Rhode Island this weekend, we'd be cooking up a festive meal, too. Unofficially, Labor Day weekend marks the end of "the season", and it's an all-out, traditional American feast.

Out come the Barbecue Bibles, the smokers, the chimney lighters. Hundreds of thousands of hamburgers sizzle on grills everywhere. Chickens cook under bricks, alongside hot dogs and brats, ears of corn and onion rings, and racks of ribs basted with sweet, smoky sauce.

Cole slaw and potato salad, macaroni and pasta salad, are de rigeur, and in New England, there are beans. Always beans.

If you're still working on your holiday menu, try some of these favorite recipes from The Perfect Pantry, each updated with a one-page, printer-friendly version.

How to stock your new apartment's pantry, and a bit of housekeeping in The Perfect Pantry

In Boston, everyone moves on September 1.

With the streets littered with orange U-Haul vans and trucks in all sizes, parked willy-nilly to the curb, maneuvering around town requires the skill of an obstacle course test driver.

Miraculously, by the end of the day, or by the end of the day before or after September 1, everyone has settled where they are supposed to be. And then every new apartment dweller heads for the nearest supermarket, to stock up.

If your cupboards are bare -- whether your pantry is a closet, a shelf, or a tiny space on the counter -- and your budget is limited, where do you start?

Sugar, cookies (Recipe: the world's best sugar cookie)

We interrupt our regular programming to celebrate Mothers' Day, which in my kitchen is synonymous with sugar cookies. Three hundred and fifty sugar cookies, decorated by friends in my kitchen, and donated here in Rhode Island to a shelter for homeless women, a residential program for pregnant and postpartum women with addiction issues, and six emergency shelters for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse.

Please share these cookies with someone you love, courtesy of Drop In & Decorate™ and The Perfect Pantry.

Aphrodisiacs in the Pantry (Recipe: beef stew)

Two years ago, in February, I discovered bookworms in my pantry.

This year, the pantry is filled with aphrodisiac foods.

What's a girl to do when she finds foods of love hiding on her spice rack, in the cupboards, even in the fridge and freezer? 

Pantry dreams, 2009 (Recipe: ending childhood hunger)

Two years ago today, I published this post. I hadn't plan to run it again, but when I sat down to write a New Year's message about ending childhood hunger, I realized that this post says it all. Slightly updated, here is my wish for the new year in these hopeful times -- with thanks to all of you for bringing your enthusiasm, wisdom, comments, kindness, and sense of humor to The Perfect Pantry in 2008.

Do you see an empty pantry jar?

I don't.

Holiday greetings

Happy holidays, from our pantry to yours.