Receta Nine things I'd like to know about you (and The Perfect Pantry celebrates nine years)
Wow. So much has happened in the past year. The Perfect Pantry moved from country to city, from a large kitchen to a small one, and we traded our herb garden for urban farmers' markets. As we prepared to move, everything in the kitchen and pantry came under scrutiny, and downsizing became known in our house as The D Word.
However, we did it. We downsized, and now my husband Ted and I, and our two cats, have settled into our new digs in Boston's South End. The pantry itself shrunk from a basement full of shelves to just one side of one wire rack in the kitchen, plus a few bins for beans and spices. Still perfect, but lacking the depth of inventory I kept on hand in the country.
Our grandkids come to visit every other week, and I've been able to spend time in the kitchen with each of them, cooking from the pantry. They enjoy helping with food styling for the blog, too.
The Perfect Pantry's nine-year anniversary "cake" -- a real chayote squash, not a cake shaped like a squash (because I know you're going to ask) -- symbolizes all of the wonderful markets within a few blocks of our house. An Asian grocery store, a Syrian market, a cheese store, a fish market, and a large Latino/Caribbean supermarket -- an abundance of riches. New opportunity, new inspiration, new ingredients: I'm excited.
As has become our tradition over the past few years, I'm taking the occasion of the blog's birthday to learn more about you, and share a bit more about me. Please leave your choices in the comments. Here goes:
Mild or spicy
Cat or dog
Pasta or rice
Train or plane
Cauliflower or broccoli
Laptop or tablet
Soy sauce or fish sauce
Fizzy water or still water
London or Paris
Me:
Spicy (You knew that.)
Cats (We have two, Maggie and Gyllen, who show up on Facebook and Instagram from time to time.)
Rice (I love low-carb pasta, but I'm trying to add more brown rice to my diet.)
Train (Because I love to see the context of where I'm going, when I have the option.)
Broccoli (Because, well... cauliflower. I tried.)
Laptop (Eek. I have both, and use them completely differently. If I could only have one, I'd choose laptop, because I still love having a real keyboard.)
- Soy sauce (It's my ketchup; I use low-sodium soy sauce in a zillion dishes.)
- Fizzy water (Trying to break myself of my life-long Fresca addiction. Not entirely successful, yet.)
London (Tough choice, this one.)
As always, you are the most important ingredient in The Perfect Pantry. No matter how much we have to downsize (ooooh, the D Word), there will always be room for you.
Thank you for being here: for proofreading my recipes and catching my typos; for adding your own twists and taking the recipes farther than I've done; for sharing new ideas, shopping sources, and techniques; for encouraging your friends to visit the blog.
Special thanks to my husband Ted, the world's best candle lighter, taste tester, and general arbiter of blogworthiness when it comes to the recipes you find in The Perfect Pantry. He has tried them all, every experiment, even the ones that don't make the grade. That's true dedication, to the blog and to you.