Pancake and other dry mixes are a feature of Cooking Light’s The Good Pantry.
I don’t know about you but my pantry is out of control.
There are pestos, frozen kaffir leaves, and stocks bulging out of freezer drawers. Little jars of unfinished sauces linger in the fridge. Costco bags of nuts, frozen berries, and fish snooze in the chest freezer downstairs.
And don’t even ask how many kinds of oils and vinegars I keep in the cupboard in a Lazy Susan, along with soy sauces and other bottled goods. A second cupboard harbors cans of fish, boxes of cous cous and dried beans and mushrooms. Not to mention all my teas, spices, and dried fruit that fill a third. That’s six pantries in all. You might be guilty of the same excesses.
That’s why it it was fun for a pantry freak like me to work on The Good Pantry: Homemade Foods & Mixes Lower in Sugar, Salt & Fat. I wrote the front matter, headnotes and tip boxes for Cooking Light. They were in charge of the recipes.
Let me tell you why you might enjoy a free copy:
- The recipes (cereals, baking mixes, make-ahead doughs, cheeses, jams, condiments, snacks, stocks and sauces) are created and tested by professionals in Cooking Light’s test kitchen, so you know they work.
- Editors judged the dishes based on taste, while developers created dishes lower in saturated fat, salt and sugar. They’ve done all the work on your behalf to make healthier recipes, almost entirely without artificial ingredients.
- Make things you might normally purchase, without all the unpronounceable chemicals. Like Cheese Nips. A crunchy salt fix in a box, right? There’s recipe for them in this book, with pronounceable ingredients. Not to mention recipes for lemon curd, mayonnaise, tartar sauce and pesto with reduced sodium and without all the thickeners and cheap fillers.
The cookbook comes out May 5, 2014. Get a copy now by leaving a comment below.
My favorite part of writing this book was researching how to stock a pantry. Did you know that your fridge has different temperatures? It’s coldest on the bottom and warmest on the door. Or that the longer you keep kale, the more bitter it gets? Or that peanut oil lasts three years but sesame oil lasts one?
The winner, chosen at random, is Noreen Gilletz at No. 75. Comments are closed.
I would describe my pantry as chaotic at best. I really need this cookbook!
It started out well…some shelves devoted to dishes and the others, home to lined up clear containers, labeled a la Martha Stewart, containing grains, rice and the like. Now it looks like an Oklahoma tornado blew through, leaving piles in it’s wake. No order… Send the Red Cross of pantries, please!! 🙂
If the spices were alphabetized, life would be perfect.
My pantry is pretty organized – but all that will change after a big shop tomorrow at Costco. The freezing will be bulging and I will be tossing the frost-burned food at the bottom of each drawer.
The spice cabinet looks OK, but the shelf with vinegars, booze and other bottles sauces is a mess…
“Cooking Light” has been my favorite food magazine for ages, so I’d love a copy of this!
pretty jumbled…
Being a single person my pantry is in dire need of help!
I will admit I have food in my pantry that moved with us to our current house almost two years ago. And not just canned goods… I think there’s an open bag of pretzels somewhere in there.
you don’t even want to know.
This would be really cool.
My pantry is pretty organized, considering we just went grocery shopping: flour, sugar, and the tea that’s too strongly flavored to live in the tea cupboard are on the counter, baking supplies and spices in one cupboard, dry goods and inexplicably huge quantities of nori in the cupboard with the Lazy Susan, snack foods in the island.
Also: the tea cupboard. Which is a cupboard plus a fair amount of space on the counter. It’s fine. We don’t have a problem, we just have a couple dozen kinds of looseleaf.
Pretty under control. I have mostly open shelving under the theory if you can see it, you’ll use. The theory mostly works 🙂
I move from boat to shore to boat etc. every 6 months and clean out the pantries, fridge and freezers every time. I’d love to find a practical system for stocking & usage that didn’t end up with so many odd bits to toss out. Suggestions?
My “pantry” is a couple of paltry shelves in a cabinet, and it’s really hard to reach things in the back. I think I have five or six almost-gone bags of almond flour. This sounds like a great book!
Oh gosh, it is out of control! I can’t fathom how it is overflowing knowing that the pantry only feeds two people (and a dog)! Gah!
My pantry is totally in need of The Good Pantry!
My pantry needs an upgrade. Right now it’s full of cookware and not much to put inside that cookware.
Pantry is panting; like its person, needs sorting-out and slimming-down!
I chose to buy a house based on the pantry design and then of course the kitchen! The pantry has six very well stocked shelves and pull out drawers and the doors have built-in, wonderfully handcrafted little shelves for spice containers. I delight in taking trips to many markets in search for the most fragrant spices. The top shelf has organized, labeled containers of dry spices from all over the world. The containers have tight lids so that the potent perfume of the spices has no chance of escaping except to go on a dish and work it’s magic. The second shelf has a collection of dry herbs, chiles, garlic, and adobos. Some of the herbs are collected from my garden and the others are especially sent from Mexico handpicked by my grandmother’s own hands. The third shelf is well stocked of infused oils, cooking oils, pressed oils, vinegars, and the very famous fish oil that has a very potent and peculiar smell, but with just a few drops in an asian dish, it takes the dish to a spectacular level. The balsamic vinegar is my favorite and that is the one that I put in the front like the first violin in an orchestra. The fourth shelf has lots of packages of a variety of flours, wheat, polenta, corn flour for tortillas, the fancy powdery soft flower for cakes, indian “atta” flour especially good for naan and chapatis, etc. The fifth shelf holds more dried chiles and dried flowers for cooking. The sixth shelf, which is a large drawer holds a good amount of onions and potatoes. In another large drawer, are all the dry legumes, beans, different rices, and in an elegant corner is the king of all the rices, the basmati. There is one other drawer full of a variety of herbs and teas for those afternoons after a fantastic cooking session. The Good Pantry would be a terrific addition to my collection of cookbooks that sit on a shelf right next to the pantry. I can’t wait to read it!
my pantry could definitely use an upgrade… this book sounds great!
The state of my pantry is that it’s not big enough to hold everything!
Ah, yes, the pantry. I had thought a bottom freezer to be better than a top freezer. It is, most of the time. But all those small bags of nuts and seeds and breadcrumbs, etc. get lost among the newer, bigger bags of frozen things.
And then there are the way high up top cupboard shelves.
Thanks for this post, Diane, it’s a great reminder to do a spring pantry cleaning.
My pantries (I have one in Rome and one in Umbria) are totally out of control. Between going to food fairs, getting samples and just buying anything and everything that I think I may never see again means my pantry will always be overflowing. (even though I’m in Italy I have a mailing address in the States, so hope I win!)
The pantry is a constant work in progress, I’m forever organizing the contents. It doesn’t help to have a husband who, every time he goes shopping, buys more cereal and pickles but that’s another story. The good news for me, I am keeping the large freezer under control! When we bought half a side of beef and a lamb from a local organic farm last year I vowed to keep track of the contents. My husband and I have a shared calendar which includes a “to do list” section. One of those lists is titled Freezer Contents, I listed what is in the freezer and included the dates. Now I can scroll through and delete the items I’m using as well as add things and, drumroll please, my husband does it as well. My friends think I’m a nerd but I’m very proud of myself. Now to work on the cereal explosion….
Mine is (are) filled to the brim! Every once in a while I’ll go down with a clipboard, or magnetic board, or tape and sharpie, and methodically list the contents of the two floor-to-ceiling cabinets, two fridges, and one full-size freezer… and then I forget all about it. Purges work to make it clearer, but they come with a lot of guilt. It’s an endless battle! (like the dust bunnies under the beds). Great book, Dianne!
My pantry – disorganized to any other person but myself. I know exactly where everything is even though it looks like a tornado blew through.
A well-stocked pantry gives me a sense of security. I can, I ferment, I have a huge assortment of various gluten-free flours. What I don’t have is enough room for everything, so I’ve got canned goods stashed all over the place. I’ve got pickled beets on the bookshelf, spiced peaches hidden in baskets underneath my dining room cabinet, and so on. I love to read about other people’s pantrys and drool over photos of the well-stocked and well-organized pantry space. Food porn!
The state of my pantry mirrors yours exactly. In a word, ugghhh!
My pantry is the “Black Hole!” Help!
I’d love a copy of The Good Pantry. Thanks for doing this.
I had to comment! Just this morning my husband was unpacking some groceries after I returned home from a shopping trip. “I’m confused,” he said.”Does this organic date sugar go next to the Thai coconut palm sugar or on the shelf with the turbinado-muscovado-maple sugars?”
We moved into this condo a year ago this week….My pantry was in somewhat of an order after opening the pantry moving boxes….however it lasted only a couple of month…when I discovered that many of my spices, oils and other very important items I had discarded as I packed up my pantry in the old house.. replacing everything that I threw away…had made my pantry at this time a jungle and I have learned to re-arrange my shelves every time I need to find a spot for the items I bring home from the grocery….like rice or jam, or spices etc, etc…I feel I am in the “moving shock” and cannot find what I need at any particular moment….
After procrastinating about it for a good six months, I finally took everything out of my pantry and spice cupboard and tossed and reorganized and got reacquainted. I’ve maintained my reorganization for three weeks. A record.
Gosh, even the tidbits of information you’ve given are a little eye opener. I’ve never been too sure about kale, thought it was my imagination! Sounds like a book worth adding to my collection.
I painted the inside of my pantry a sky blue, not just to make it pretty. It forced me to empty it completely. The collection of vinegars. The experimental gluten free flours and pastas. Samples and odd spice packets. Ethnic ingredients for specific recipes. Costco overflow. It’s blue now and still pretty packed to the gills. This book sounds like a solution to stacks of packages– I’d prefer homemade mixes that are tasty and healthy instead!
A mess! No longer organized and labelled neatly. With three kids who are learning to cook, everything is no longer neat and tidy. (Or at least I’d like to blame therm…) 🙂
Diane, if you helped write this book, it must be good. Bring it on.
My pantry is packed with every spice imaginable, and I have a hard time finding what I need when I need it.
My pantries sound very much as you describe. Recently I’ve needed to reorganize and replace to cook for the special needs of my wife. Low Fat and low sugar while not new to me is moving to the must rather than designating days for vegan and vegetarian days. This book would be a welcome catalyst for the new normal.
Like everyone else, I’m constantly rearranging my pantry to find what I need. We all need help and this book sounds like it will exactly do that. Thank you!
My pantry needs a makeover before it takes over! Help!!
I love that you put all of this information in a book that will undoubtedly be a great resource to so many. I heard so often from friends how difficult they found it to cook on a regular basis because of lack of organization in the kitchen that I started a business, The Whole Pantry, that offers that service. Looking forward to seeing your recipes.
You make such a good point about the excess and I’m guilty of the same…is there anymore umph left in my spices I wonder? Some practical tips would be welcome! Congratulations on the book!
Carol
I have a very old, very small, San Francisco, studio apartment pantry~a narrow floor to ceiling trio of cupboards that was once an icebox.
My pantry is undergoing a transition. We are trying to eliminate white sugar and high fructose corn syrup and wheat. The time is now and a tool like this cookbook would be a great help.
my pantry is definitely in need of some cleaning out.
Hello Dianne,
Although am usually an organized person, the way my kitchen is laid out, my pantry is pretty much in every cupboard. Yup. Definitely room for improvement!!
ps love your book – Will Write for Food!!
Six pantries! I don’t know if you’re blessed or cursed. Ha ha. I’d love a copy and congrats on another book for you.
I have two pantries, one large and one small and both are stuffed with things that I thought necessary at the time of purchase.
I just posted several photos of my pantries on my Facebook page – having already posted about this cookbook and how useful I believe it will be to folks like me that may “collect” some ingredients and then forget to use them until they are way beyond their useful life.
I depend greatly on industrial shelving and commercial Cambro containers for keeping foods fresh – I rarely keep any foods in the original packages alone – I have some very large Cambro containers in which I store bags of pasta, and other dry items while grains and many types of flour are stored in the freezer, also in these containers.
I’m 76, grew up on a farm and much of my cooking and especially my baking is “from scratch” because for me it is easy. In fact, the URL I listed above is for my treatise on southern cornbread and it is really “from scratch” as I also ground the white dent corn for the meal.
I know that book’s a winner, Dianne. I recently began working on my pantry by organizing my spices. I threw away all of the out-of-dates and duplicates and arranged the rest in alphabetical order. Major step forward. Nothing more aggravating than trying to find a certain bottle of seasoning. Now on to the rest of the shelves. Baby steps will get the job done.
My pantry contains goodies from all over the place… the trick is remembering that they are there and knowing where you put them! How clever to create a book that helps you do this! Thanks Diane!
Well, your pantry sounds similar to mine! First: 2 huge shelves filled with boxes of pasta, dried Asian noodles and cous cous, as well as stacks & bags of high quality chocolate (for baking!) and several tins of almond meal and other alternative flours. at least 2 full 1-lb. bags of whole nuts (cashews and hazelnuts definitely, maybe others?) and jars of tapenade plus way too many cans of difference beans and coconut milk/cream.
Then a whole additional shelf just for different flours (APF, whole wheat pastry, buckwheat, semolina, corn, spelt flour) and sugars (white, brown, a tin of homemade vanilla bourbon sugar). THEN, a whole shelf of way too many spices and a plethora of oils, vinegars and shelf stable sauces.
Don’t even get me started on the fridge. I live with a couple roommates so sometimes it’s hard to not encroach on their shelves, but I try not to! Honestly, about once every couple months (or whenever my pantry gets so full I can’t put anything else in it), I try to cook and bake solely out of my pantry for a whole week. I’ll maybe buy a few fresh vegetables to throw in, but I try to purge or use what I have before going about my normal business of buying all the wonderful food I want.
This cookbook sounds like exactly something I need! It’s so great that you worked on this and I know it would help me immensely in trying to get more out of my pantry — and maybe even help me better organize my pantry so that things don’t end up lost in the abyss of the back row.
I try to keep my pantry organized but since Hubby retired, I find myself going though both the closet and the freezer every six weeks or so. Why? because Hubby never, ever puts anything back in the right place and if I take something out to use it he will fill that space in seconds.
I love the premise of your book. Wishing your many sales.
Where do I start? First there is the cupboard with the flavors and extracts, thickeners and seasonings. The the spices in one drawer and now two shelves in the glassware cupboard. Of course there is a huge cupboard that holds all the flours, sugars, gluten free-products, chocolates, dry milk powders, canned goods, etc. etc. And don’t forget the “back pantry” – actually another room – where all the bulk items go, the soups, crackers, canned fruits, beans, the home canned jams and jellies, syrups, – boy do I need this book! Plus I have two refrigerators and two freezers! And yet I still go to the store to buy ingredients because I don’t have them on hand. If I sent my husband he would come back with four of whatever I want – which is one reason I am in this mess.
I have a main pantry in the kitchen and have started a “back-up” pantry on shelves in the basement. What I need to do is take some time to organize and keep track of what I have on hand.
Organizing my pantry! Just the most perfect excuse that I can come up with for avoiding going to my computer and working on a current asignment!!
On my iPad I have Grocery Shopping Checklist and Pantry Inventory Checklist, .99¢ from the Apple store/iTunes.
It has a very long list of standard items and you can add item names for the exotic or unusual.
Very easy to use, very intuitive.
My husband claims I have a spice and seasoning addiction and he could be right. But they lead to experimentation and that’s part of the joy of cooking, right? Maybe the book would inspire a little sorting…
What a great title! Everyone could use a Good Pantry cookbook. My kitchen cupboard pantry is small, I clean out fridge every week, not much in the freezer but condiments on the side shelves in the fridge tend to stay a little longer. Your book seems to have really good tips! Would love to have a copy !
Every year I resolve not to let my pantry get so overstuffed that I can’t find anything in it. And every year I fail. So, it would be fun to read about how not to do what I always end up doing.
My pantry has Chinese wine balls, glutinous rice, bottles of Thai and Chinese sauces, vinegars galore, Lyle’s Golden Syrup, packages of frik and soft white winter wheat, and dried morel and porcini mushrooms. Oh, carnarole, arborio, and vialone nano rice. Don’t you see I need help? Please pick me to receive a copy of this godsend of a book!
Sesame oil only lasts one year – who knew? Then I guess it’s time to ditch the heirloom bottle that has been lurking deep in the back of my pantry shelf for more years than I care to say.
To an outsider my pantry would look odd at best, but to me it makes complete sense and is just perfect!
My husband added a family room off of our kitchen, which includes a pantry closet – after 2 yrs, it clearly could use reorganization – one of eighty-eight things I feel guilty about – I could definitely use some guidance, and think the folks at Cooks Illustrated are just the charming experts to write a guide on this topic!! Will be thrilled if I win the book, otherwise, may need to consider acquiring it, anyway!!
The road to cabinets overflowing with herbs, spices, and various ethnic edibles (half of which I don’t even remember buying), is paved with good intentions. In short, I need help! I love the premise of your book and would love a copy.
Dianne, what a fun and useful book – from your description I can see why you’re excited about working on it.
For all of us who love to cook, to try new things, the challenge is always how to store what we have and how to use it up so we don’t have all those pesky leftovers in jars or items snoozing in a deep freeze that you mentioned. I’d love to learn more about how to properly stock a pantry and to try your healthier versions of recipes. I love the idea of making our own products – not only more nutritious, but in most cases, less expensive. Can’t wait to read your book. Thank you!
I love making my own pantry basics. I’m always coming up with recipes for jams, baking mixes, granola etc. In fact, I even make my own marshmallows and Graham crackers. This book is right up my alley and would give me lots of new recipes to try.
completely disorganized, one of these days I need to get it organized for sure!
The “symptom” of an over-full pantry is pretty much universal. I have long been a member of eGullet.org, a world-wide meeting of folks who love food and cooking (also spirits and etc.), many are professionals and many are novices but all share their enthusiasms and there have been many discussions about pantries and the contents thereof.
This is a link to an extended discussion from a few years ago that includes some ideas and great recipes for using up stuff. (To carry you over until the book is published and which should encourage you to buy it because it will include even more ideas that you NEED.) http://forums.egullet.org/topic/113221-purge-the-larder/?hl=%20pantry
Many of the links in the posts are no longer active.
(I am “Andiesenji” on eG)
The worst thing about an out-of-control pantry is that it is a waste of food. If you can’t find something it will tend to sit there, unloved, until it is too old. Hmmm, am I talking about my pantry or myself?
In general, my pantry is pretty organized but there’s always room for improvement which is why I’m excited about this book!
Just a comment re the Good Pantry book – I think the pre-mixes are a great idea, I often buy these from the supermarket especially for scones, pizza and pancakes, but they do have extra chemicals in them. I like the idea of “light”, but not at the expense of taste. Looking forward to your review of the book.
I have a 6-shelf pantry in my kitchen filled with spices and condiments…the closet in my laundry room is filled with flours, sugars, cocoas, extracts, and all manner of fine baking chocolates, and what was my office just off the kitchen has eight (8) milk crates filled with grains, rice, Asian ingredients, Indian ingredients, more spices, dried mushrooms (porcini, morels, shiitake, cloud ears, dung goo), and 2 of dried fruit. I will say that I cook almost all ethnic cuisines, so I honestly do need much of what i have stored. I do use parts of my stash every day, since I cook for clients zevery day, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering if there isn’t a better way. If anyone needs your new book, I do!
With attending culinary school this year and having to purchase every ingredient under the sun, this book comes at a perfect time.
Whew! Sounds like everyone’s pantry looks like mine. I have outgrown the three cupboards in my tiny kitchen, and am about to remodel the catch-all closet into a real pantry. I NEED this book! Once again, Dianne to the rescue . . .
I just threw away half of my pantry contents because of moths. 🙁
Is 2nd prize a human being who will come to my house and organize my pantry?
A cook can never have a too big pantry..Where were the old cooks when I selected what I thought was a house with a big enough kitchen and pantry? Now only organization can save me.
Actually, I’m pretty proud of my pantry. It consists of four pull-out cabinets – i have our cabinet man to thank for the design – the bottom two about three feet tall and the top two about 4 feet tall and all are 13 inches wide divided by shelves. I organized it by ingredients: 1. spices, oils, vinegars, savory condiments; 2. baking goods – flours, sugars, baking powder, soda, flavorings, chocolates; 3. dried ingredients – nuts, dried fruits, cereal, grains, polenta; 4. canned goods – beans, condiments, jellies. It’s amazing how much fits in this compact space that looks like cabinets. Everyone who comes for cooking classes is amazed at the amount of usable space. I use alot of clear plastic containers with chalk labels – makes the pantry look really cute and it’s really efficient.
My pantry is so crowded that I don’t even know what I have in there, and it’s safe to say that there are a lot of items that are long past their “use by” date. When my son was at home he would periodically purge both the pantries and the refrigerator, but now it’s all on me. I would love this book!!!!
Hi ..I am a single mom with 3 kids …one with autism/ADHD …I also have started working more. Since I now have a car payment…I really try to cook healthy for my family and purchase organic ..my pantry is a mess …I collect things that I find at a good price then put boxes bags all over planning on organizing ..I would love this book ..I recently bought a small greenhouse to plant veggies for my family and could use some helpful hints
Love the idea of getting my pantry under control AND CONTROLLING the ingredients going into my two boys (and hubby of course!)
My pantry? A war zone. My older son prefers everything homemade and fresh. My younger son lives for things out of boxes filled with preservatives. Cheeze-Itz? Got them. But he also loves to create. I think this book might help him realize GE CAN MAKE IT HIMSELF and it will NOT contain all those nasty cancer-causing chemicals. So bring on a book to help me help my kids!
Looking forward to getting a copy!
Let’s put it this way, if there was a natural disaster and all the grocery stores were closed, my husband and I would starve to death in a day.