The Perfect Pantry®

Vegetable shortening (Recipe: granola cookies)

First published in July 2006, this updated pantry ingredient post features new photos, links, and tweaks to the recipe. Please enjoy these granola cookies, which I've been making since my college days way back when, and which would be so perfect for a July 4th picnic or barbecue.

I'm a Motown, pre-1975 rock 'n roll, granola kind of girl. I don't bake much -- I've already owned up to keeping store-bought pie crust in my refrigerator -- but oooooh, baby, I love love love granola cookies, and that's why vegetable shortening resides in The Perfect Pantry.

Allspice (Recipe: rhubarb apricot chutney)

First published in May 2008, this updated pantry ingredient post features new photos, links, and a few tweaks to the recipe. If you missed it the first time around, please enjoy this seasonal rhubarb recipe and some fun facts about allspice.

Next time I reorganize my spice rack, I'm abandoning my usual system.

Next time, I will not group the little jars into peppers, salts, baking spices, warm spices and leafy green herbs.

Next time, I'll sort my dried herbs and spices this way:

1. aphrodisiacs
2. miracle cures
3. brings prosperity and good fortune
4. used for embalming pharoahs in ancient Egypt

That covers just about everything on my spice rack, including allspice (a triple whammy: numbers 2, 3 and 4).

New from the archives: three fresh posts (Recipes: slow cooked beef and green chile stew, basic chocolate chip cookies, asparagus frittata for two)

In the first two years of The Perfect Pantry, I posted more than 200 recipes about the ingredients we all keep on hand, and how to use them. I didn't photograph the food I cooked, so each month, I root around in the archives, and update a few of those old posts with new photos and links.

New from the archives: three fresh posts (raisin-banana scones, lemon onion hummus, fregula sarda with leeks and sausage)

The more I wander back in the archives of this blog, the more I find recipes I never photographed or haven't cooked for far too long. Sometimes I start to make one of these dishes, and I realize I can improve on the original recipe. Other times, things seem just perfect the way they are.

One thing today's freshened-up posts have in common: great use of pantry ingredients.