The Perfect Pantry®

What I've learned in five years of food blogging (Five? Yes!)

Five years ago today, I posted my very first words as a food blogger here on The Perfect Pantry.

After 15 years of food writing in newspapers and magazines, I was ready to blog. I had a name, I had a concept, and I had a couple of slick spreadsheets to keep me organized.

The plan? Blog for one year, four or five posts every week, everything you'd ever want to know about each of the (then) 220 basic ingredients in my fridge, freezer, spice rack and cupboards, always with recipes. Oh, and photos of each ingredient that you could take to the market and match to something on the shelf.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

How to make your pantry a green(er) pantry

One year ago, I posted this piece in honor of the 40th Annual Earth Day. Now Earth Day has become Earth Month, so it's the perfect time to revisit and update some ideas to make your pantry a green(er) pantry.

How green is your pantry?

Not Benjamin-Moore-paint-chip-green.

Good-to-the-Earth green.

I'd call my pantry greenish. Not perfect, but more environmentally aware than it used to be, and getting greener every year.

In celebration of the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, which has now grown into Earth Month, here are ten ideas to make your pantry more environment-friendly:

A wish for the new year: No Kid Hungry

At the start of each new year, I reflect on many things, including how fortunate we (and our family and friends) are to have a safe and warm place to live and nutritious food on the table.

The Perfect Pantry always holds enough food to feed our family for a few weeks, though toward the end, those meals might get a bit weird. And while the occasional "I'm hungry" can be heard, especially in the hour before dinner, the truth is that we are not at risk of hunger. We are only at risk of crankiness.

For more than 17 million children in America, the risk of hunger is real, and the physical and psychological effects can last a lifetime.

Here's how you can help end childhood hunger by 2015:

Go to Share Our Strength to learn more about childhood hunger in America.

Then, please go to No Kid Hungry and join Jeff Bridges, the Voltaggio brothers and me in taking the pledge.

And if you want to do more, share this post and others like it on Facebook and Twitter, and email to your friends.

Thank you so much. We can end childhood hunger in America. We can do it, together.

Happy new year to all.

The Perfect Pantry's Top 10 recipes of 2010

Every December I meander through The Perfect Pantry's archives to select my favorite recipes of the year. Some years I struggle to find ten recipes worthy of a "best of" list, but this year, I had to whittle down from two dozen recipes I really love to just ten. All but one of the recipes are my original creations or adaptations, and the cookies (not my own recipe) are so good that they had to be included.

Here are my top ten absolutely favorite, I-promise-you'll-love-them recipes of 2010, in no particular order.