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.

Tortillas (Recipe: shrimp and avocado quesadillas)

Down the hill from the house where Ted's aunt and uncle live, in Ajijic on the shore of Lake Chapala, a small tortilleria opens in mid-morning, six days a week.

When you hear the slap-slap-slap of the masa dough between the palms of the women's hands, and when the aroma of corn toasting on the comal (griddle) works its way up the road, you know the shop has opened.

A dozen tortillas costs very little, just a dollar or two, and a meal would be unthinkable without them. Tortillas -- the round, thin, flatbread made from corn or flour -- are the sandwich bread of Mexico. They're the sandwich bread of The Perfect Pantry, too.

Dumpling wrappers (Recipe: shrimp potstickers)

Everything tastes better when it's served in a Japanese bento box. Fill each compartment with a different taste and texture, then put the lid on and pack for a picnic, indoors or outside. Welcome to Bento Week, Day One.

I have never, ever, walked out of an Asian market empty-handed.

Even when I manage to convince myself that there's no room in my pantry for more dried rice noodles or jugs of soy sauce, or even for my favorite chili paste with garlic, the cookware aisle draws me in.

And so it is that I am the proud owner of three small wooden rolling pins made specifically for rolling out dumpling wrappers.

Which, by the way, I have never, ever done.

Nutella®, a Pantry Special (recipe: banana or strawberry quesadillas)

Pantry Specials are great ingredients that find their way into my pantry from time to time, but not all the time. In this occasional series of short posts, you'll find information and recipes for foods that might not be on your local supermarket's shelves, but are available online.

When I suggested to my pastry chef friend Cindy that we make Nutella® quesadillas for dessert last week, she asked, "Italian Nutella or Canadian Nutella?" I had no idea what she meant, but a bit of research turned up the answer. Though the Ferrero corporation owns the trademark, the actual chocolate-hazelnut-skim-milk spread made in Italy since the 1940s is not the same product made in Canada and imported to America for the past twenty years. Canadian Nutella contains more chocolate and more sugar, and less hazelnut, than the Italian original. You'll find Nutella on the supermarket shelf with peanut butter, which makes sense; it tastes enough like chocolate peanut butter that I'm sure Elvis would have loved to spread it on his signature sandwich. Stored at room temperature (never in the refrigerator), Nutella keeps for months, though it seldom lasts that long in my house.

Frozen fruit (Recipe: pink yink ink drink)

A week of ingredients featured in kid-friendly recipes from the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan. Welcome to Dr. Seuss Week, Day Two.

In our neck of the woods, berry season lasts for six or eight weeks a year.

Even if you don't have your own strawberry fields or raspberry brambles, you know when it's berry time, because PYO (pick your own) or U-Pik signs appear on electrical poles all over town.

For the other forty-four weeks of the year, our best option is frozen fruit.

I'd never choose frozen fruit over in-season ripe fresh fruit, but individually quick frozen (IQF) fruits, prepared commercially or in your own kitchen, frozen at the peak of ripeness, retain almost all of their nutrient value. IQF fruit is 100% natural, with no added sugar or preservatives. It's trimmed and washed, and economical to use. Take what you need, and leave the rest in the freezer.

Sea salt (Recipe: Schlottz's knots)

A week of ingredients featured in kid-friendly recipes from the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan. Welcome to Dr. Seuss Week, Day One.

Here's the kind of question Dr. Seuss would have loved:

If the sea is blue, why is sea salt white, or grey, or pink?

Marshmallow Fluff (Recipe: Rhode Island hot chocolate, with faux fluff)

Despite having close to 250 items in The Perfect Pantry, I can think of dozens of ingredients that might be in your pantry but are not in mine.

Almond extract. Anchovies. Bacon. Wild rice. Fennel pollen. Marshmallow Fluff®.

I know... you think Fluff is not an ingredient. But here in New England, it is.

Without Fluff, there would be no Fluffernutters or Whoopie Pies, two of our regional claims to fame.