The Perfect Pantry®

Lemons (Recipe: shrimp, lemon, herb and feta macaroni and cheese)

 

I will never be tall.

I always wanted to be tall, Brooke Shields tall, so I could be in the back row of group photos, and hang on to the strap on the New York subway without standing on tiptoe, and not care if tall people sit in front of me in theaters, which they always seem to do.

I will never be fluent in French or Chinese.

I will never be a trapeze artist, a cartoonist, an electrician, a pig farmer or a dentist.

And I will never be a locavore.

To be a locavore in New England -- a person who eats only what is produced within one hundred miles of home -- I'd have to give up coffee, shrimp and lemons.

I will never.

Garlic (Recipe: Tunisian fish ball tagine)

Nine things I know about garlic (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Ginger root (Recipe: steamed fish in packets)

One horribly hot and humid day last summer, I visited my friend Julia's tiny urban garden.

I didn't go for the copious quantities of iced coffee that we both love, nor for her especially good egg salad, nor even for the effortless conversation we always enjoy.

No, what I really wanted was to dig ginger.

Julia, a chef and restaurant consultant, stores her ginger in the garden during the summer months. She digs it up when she needs a bit for cooking, breaks off a piece, then plants it back in the garden, where it continues to grow.

In the photo above, that's Julia's hand holding a "hand" of ginger, which has sent out new roots. In the front are three "fingers" of new ginger growth, brighter white than the old part, and with new green shoots coming out the top.

The not-yet-perfect pantry: What's missing? (Recipe: white bean garlic dip)

My friend Bob sent me an email last week:

So...... what's going to be the 250th ingredient in your pantry?

I know what you're thinking.