The Cluttered Pantry

March?!  How could my last post have been in March?  It’s June, 3 months have flown by and I haven’t had a moment to spare since March…  yoikes.   So, here we are, the first week of June – Mark is leaving for shoots in Dublin and Madrid for the first half of the month, [...]

Main Ingredients:
2lbs cut up chicken
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 green chilies , roasted and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 large avocado, thinly sliced

Main Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
4 or 5 stalks chopped celery
2 or 3 chopped carrots
5 cloves garlic, roasted
1 cups heavy cream
4 potatoes, chopped into chunks

It’s sure is winter all of the sudden!  I’m not complaining…I actually prefer the cold.  Even though our house was built in 1893, it’s actually way better built than any home I’ve lived in before.  Multiple courses of brick and limestone protect us from the elements, fabulous cherub and decorative scroll work radiators chug away [...]

We returned from our last trip to Siberia in late 2008. Making 2009 our first full year as a family at home with the Wee Kahunas. I haven’t really felt compelled to mark our court date  (the date we legally became the girls parents) nor the day in October that we flew home with the girls, [...]

Main Ingredients
Sourdough Starter
Sponge
12 cups bread flour
7g of rapid rise dried yeast
1 cup warm water
3 tablespoons caraway seeds

Main Ingredients:
3 Zuchinni (cut in 3rds)
2 potatoes (peeled and halved)
2 onions (cut in half)
2 yellow squash (cut in 3rds)
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin powder

Main Ingredients:
2 zuchinni
2 carrots
2 potatoes (peeled)
1 onion
3 eggs
1 tablespoon fresh parsley (chopped)
1 teaspoon fresh basil (chopped)

I’m not sure if it’s the cold weather, the fast approaching holiday seasons or just the fact that we’ve been eating waayyyyy to many carbs this past few weeks, but I found myself walking through the produce shop and filling my cart to the top with such an assortment of vegetables that the check out [...]

Main Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 cup diced crystallized ginger
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon peel
12 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cups heavy cream

The very soul of this blog is shaped by my pantry and it’s contents, some great, some funny and some borderline OCD. When you add in that my pantry stocking, for this past year, has been so heavily  focused on feeding/growing the Wee Kahunas, who started out so small and off the growth charts that we [...]

Making fresh pasta is one of those simple life things that, for me, gets lost in the pace of actual life. It doesn’t really take much effort to make, but since you have to plan ahead , the last minute grabbing of a bag of dried pasta out of the pantry is so much [...]

Hey Chicago! Haven’t purchased your tickets for the Share Our Strength’s – A Tasteful Pursuit Dinner Yet?! What are you waiting for? A discount? Oh ok, here you go!
Use the discount code “kendallffr” to get a reduced price of $95 (regular ticket price is $150). Enter it in the Discount Code Box when you  Click [...]

This not having a summer thing, then jumping straight into depths of cold and misty air as a pretend fall before the real Chicago winter hits is bumming me out.  I actually like cold weather more than hot, but this is just…well, it’s just craptastic.  My only weapon against the doldrums that this kind of [...]