The Perfect Pantry®

Fresh herbs (Recipe: roasted potatoes with lemon thyme vinaigrette)

My husband Ted and I, and our friends Candy and Dave, dug the first herb plants into the ground the summer after we moved to our log house.

I'd never had much luck growing herbs on my windowsill in the city, and I was nervous. I shoved my black thumb into a gardening glove and tried to forget about all the plants I'd lost over the years.

We put in the Simon-and-Garfunkel herbs (you know, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme). We planted chives, because what's easier to grow than chives? We had no idea that the anise hyssop would outlive everything, and would spread more quickly than the mint, which also spread quickly.

The parsley never reseeded, and the basil grew so tall it fell over, but that first summer, we learned how wonderful it is to cook with fresh herbs.

Each year the garden has grown, and though we share the harvest with beetles and rabbits and deer, we're hooked on walking out the front door, clippers in hand, and snipping off a sprig of this or a few leaves of that.

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.

Cider vinegar (Recipe: dried cranberry and pear chutney)

Ten things I know about cider vinegar (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Slow-roasted tomatoes (Recipe: corn, bean, and two tomato salad)

With any luck, the next time you see these tomatoes, they'll look like this: