Ten Things Tuesday

We did the medicine cabinet last week – how about the pantry this week?

1. I LOVE this stuff and I try to make sure that I always have some around; at this moment, there are two jars in the Chili pantry. The jars are unopened, of course; opened jars should be stored in the fridge. Yes, it makes it more difficult to spread, but it also keeps it from going bad. I love it on pound cake, as a topping for ice cream, as a dip for fruit, and right off the spoon…

2. I keep cranberry sauce in my pantry pretty much year-round. I’m deeply, abidingly in love with what I affectionately call “chicken dinner sandwiches;” chicken (of any sort, really – even precooked frozen fingers will do), cranberry sauce and stuffing on toasted bread slathered with just a little bit of mayonnaise. YUM!

3. Pasta. At the moment, I have five different varieties of pasta in my pantry – bowties, thin spaghetti (a.k.a. angel hair), rigatoni, elbows and linguine. I don’t tend to keep ready-made sauce in the pantry, though, so more often than not, the sauce is either already in the freezer (I make a mean spaghetti sauce, and I make it in quantity) or I’ll whip up a quick cheese or lemon-butter sauce to go with whatever pasta I’m in the mood for.

4. Oils and vinegars. At this moment, I have no fewer than 11 different kinds of vinegar and five different types of oil. Oh, and I’ve got three varieties of mustard and a jar of hoisen sauce, just for good measure.

5. Jam!

I count 13 bottles; one strawberry, six different kinds of cherry, a cranberry, a brambleberry (whatever the hell THAT is), a current, a strawberry-rhubarb, and a couple of wild Maine blueberries. Anyone want a scone?

6. Crackers. I’ve got at least four varieties that I’m aware of – Wheat Thins (Beanie’s favorite), Triscuits (Punkin’ Pie’s), Ritz and Saltines. There are also honey grahams and chocolate grahams, too, but I don’t think of them when I think of ‘crackers.’

7. SOUP! Mr. Chili is, at heart, a soup-and-sandwich kind of guy. One is far more likely to curry favor with him by serving a bowl of chicken barley soup and a turkey melt than one would be with a fancy, white-tablecloth dinner. As a consequence, I’ve got quite a lot of soup in the pantry (and it’s likely to stay there for a while, too; soup eating in the Chili household is very weather-specific, and that weather is usually not found in the summer months).

8. Chips. Chips are another weather-specific food around here though, unlike the soup, we really only eat chips when it’s nice and warm outside. I’ve got Doritos and plain and sour cream and onion Lay’s. Oh, and I’ve got a couple of unopened bags of honey mustard pretzel bits, which I LOVE (which is why they’re still unopened. Once the seal is compromised, all bets are off).

9. Tea! I’ve got something like 11 varieties of tea, ranging from the workhorse Red Rose to the delicate and fussy organic green tea (which I’ve come to love iced with no sugar – just a bit of apricot nectar mixed in for sweetness. YUM!).

10. Chocolate. I mean, really – did you think there was no chocolate in Chili’s pantry? Behold; 8.10 pounds of the stuff. As I was balancing it precariously on the scale, Beanie walked by and muttered “Wow. That’s a lotta chocolate.” Yes; yes it is – a lot of chocolate ranging from plain old Baker’s to super-thin Lindt extra dark to the yummy Ritter bars O’Mama brings me back from Canada, and that’s not even including the chocolate chips or the cocoa powder. Mmmmmm!

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!