The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying And Start Making (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
I enjoyed this library book so much I bought it. She is practical in her recipes and makes 'normal' things I would like to make too. So far I have only made one recipe - hamburger buns - from the book but I intend to make many more. The recipe was clearly written and the final product turned out great. With almost every recipe she shares family stories and the book has nice pictures so I know what I will be aiming to produce. More than one person suggested this book to me, and I was curious but uncertain. The idea of homemade Oreos or Twinkies or Poptarts didn't really appeal to me; that's not why I cook/bake. There are recipes for all these things , but making favorite super processed food isn't really the focus. In fact, once I read the toaster pastries recipe, I didn't think Poptart, I thought of using up that extra raspberry jam I made and of making turnovers when I don't have puff pastry on hand. Alana Chernila begins by inviting you into her kitchen at dinner time. She's making lasagna—and making each ingredient that goes into it: pasta, mozzarella, ricotta, sauce—while her husband devours homemade granola and kids do cartwheels in the tight space. I almost closed the book at the introduction, because it felt like pressure. I make lasagna, but I used packaged noodles and ricotta and mozzarella and sauce from the freezer. Even making it that way, sometimes it's tough to get it all together and cooked in time. Since I've had kids, I've frequently threatened to stock the freezer with frozen pizza. I don't, because I agree with Chernila on a lot of the reasons she has for making foods.Chernilla says both that they don't cook this way every night and indicates where you can use a home made or store bought ingredient (buttermilk or vanilla extract or mayonnaise for example) to make something else. I was still feeling a little defensive, but decided to read on.Chernilla leads with dairy which is the most daunting to me, perhaps because I haven't done it yet, which isn't to say I don't want to. I've been meaning to try cheese for a while now, ever since that Winter Fare when I went to a workshop on cheesemaking. Yogurt too (doesn't help that I really like Side Hill Farm's yogurt). As I read through the book, I realized there are a lot of things I make already. I am a person who makes soup and bread and cans applesauce, jam, pickles, and salsa. I am a person who roasts tomatoes for the freezer and makes pancakes and waffles and cornbread from scratch. I am a person who has made jerky and granola and buttered popcorn (my kids are reading some right now). I have made nutbutter and my own spice mix. The friends who suggested this book to me were right. It's right up my alley. It's just a matter of deciding which things are worth the extra time and effort and where I want to stretch myself next. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, so my rating is based solely on reading the stories that go with the foods and my interest in the recipes included. The recipes themselves appear easy to read, but I never can tell until I'm standing in the kitchen mixing something up.
What do You think about The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying And Start Making (2012)?
This book struck me as a colorful book of blogposts and the recipes to go with each post.
—gabby
It's so good I want to buy a copy of my own!
—monikaprochowska
