The Perfect Pantry

Powdered buttermilk (Recipe: pear spice cupcakes)

When you drive toward my town from pretty much anywhere, you pass a mall or two.

Big box stores, little box stores, grocery stores and discount stores. Drive-through doughnuts, drive-up banking. Hardware, software, sportswear.

It's hard to believe that, a century ago, apple orchards and dairy farms, punctuated by occasional clusters of tiny wood-shingled houses along the road, were all you'd find around here. Today, what remains is the name -- Apple Valley -- and just a handful of orchards.

Our house is on the outskirts of Apple Valley, five or ten miles from here to one of those grocery stores, not far to drive in good weather but not fun in the winter. So, at this time of year, I always keep shelf-stable milk and powdered buttermilk in my pantry.

Eggs (Recipe: Italian style omelet appetizer)

Brown eggs are local eggs,
and local eggs are fresh.

If you're not singing along, you're not from here.

Here is New England, where our Rhode Island Red hens lay brown eggs, and where we've heard that jingle on radio and television ads for almost forty years. There's no difference in nutrition value, or in taste, between white eggs and brown; they just come from different breeds of chicken. Hens with reddish-brown feathers and earlobes (yes, chickens have ears!) lay brown eggs.

If brown eggs aren't your local eggs, you might pay more for them, because chickens that lay brown eggs tend to eat more than chickens that lay white eggs.

Who knew?

Granulated sugar (Recipe: strawberry rhubarb jam)

On a shelf in my kitchen, fourteen glass storage jars, all the same size and shape, hold things we use every day.

Special-K, oat bran flakes and granola.

Dried beans in shades of red and white and pink and pied, all mixed together.

Leftover dried pasta in a variety of shapes, all mixed together. (I toss a handful here and there into soup.)

Five pounds of all-purpose flour, five pounds of whole wheat flour, five pounds of kosher salt, five pounds of long-grain rice.

And five pounds of granulated sugar.

Yogurt (Recipe: lemon waffles)

Every story about the origin of yogurt involves a nomad and a camel.

Was it Mongol villagers, trying to poison Genghis Khan, who first left milk to sour inside a drinking gourd?

Or was it a Turkish traveler carrying milk inside a goatskin pouch on camel-back in the desert, where the heat and agitation caused the milk to thicken?

We may never know the truth, but we know a lot about yogurt.

Matzoh (Recipe: my dad's famous matzoh brei)

An updated post from the archives, with new photos.

My father, like all dads of the 1950s, mastered a couple of pieces of cooking equipment and had his special dishes that he produced on holidays, and on demand.

With the aid of a charcoal kettle grill in the back yard, he made the world's best lamb chops. In the electric frying pan, on Sunday mornings, he would make Spit in the Ocean, or another weird concoction that involved slices of bologna or salami floating in a sea of scrambled eggs. If that dish had a name, I've repressed it.

Every year in the Spring, my father did his best work, with a straight-sided covered sauté pan, a large melamine mixing bowl ... and his hands. Spring meant Passover, which meant matzoh, which meant matzoh brei. We ate this only once a year. And my dad was the matzoh brei king.

Eggs (Recipe: asparagus frittata)

For much of the year, within a mile or two in any direction from my house, you'll find a farm selling fresh eggs.

Last summer Ted stopped at a farm up the road from us, to photograph this sign that surely gave passers-by something to think about. Five flavors of eggs? Intriguing! But no, it was the goat cheese that came in five flavors. And no, the eggs weren't in that cooler; they were in the house, properly stored in the refrigerator.

Every culture that has chickens eats eggs, and thanks to Christopher Columbus, who brought some hens with him on his second voyage in 1493, that includes those of us in the United States.

Limes (Recipe: lime curd)

Persian limes (also known as Tahiti limes) come from Mexico.

And Argentina.

And India and Brazil and Spain and Turkey and Chile and, yes, from Iran (also known as Persia).

Talk about an identity crisis.

Eggs (Recipe: albornia de chayote)

The last of three posts for my friend Peter, an American chef who's running a beautiful inn and restaurant in the mountains of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. I'm revisiting some favorite posts this week on The Perfect Pantry, featuring recipes that he might adapt to local ingredients.

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.

Tarragon (Recipe: cheesy omeletta)

Ted's aunt Trixie, who lived to be just a few months shy of 100, had in her garden a plant that everyone called "The Old Man."

I assumed it had something to do with its age -- not as old as Trixie, but it had been there for at least 25 years. Turns out that "Old Man" is one of the common nicknames for Southernwood, which is a variety of artemisia. Wormwood, dubbed "Old Woman", is another.

Tarragon is an artemisia, too. Native to Siberia and Western Asia, tarragon was brought to Europe by the Arabs who conquered parts of Spain in the 8th Century AD.

Red, white and blue cheese (Recipe: blue cheese souffle)

Stand in front of a mirror, and say cheese.

Are you smiling? No?

Now say cheeeeeeeze.

Are you smiling? Not yet?

Try again. Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze.

By now you're probably giggling.

For me, just the thought of cheese -- soft and gooey, spread on a slice of crusty bread or a crisp cracker -- brings a smile to my face.