For me, if I had to choose between sweet and savory, I’d always go with savory. But every pantry needs a stash of sweet stuff for baking and so forth—especially at this time of year.
- Maple Syrup: Coombs Farm—Well, French toast is a family favorite, and this syrup really tastes full of maple. It’s also yummy on plain yogurt, ice cream (it’s the essential ingredient in a maple creamie), and—let’s not forget—pancakes, which are the required sleepover morning-after breakfast.
- Chocolate Chips: Sunspire—For chocolate chip cookies, mainly. But also for emergency chocolate cravings.
- Sugars and Honey—I like Woodstock Farms sugars (regular, brown, powdered, turbinado). And honey is good for coughs, as well.
- Nuts—Nuts are good for so many things, sweet and savory. Walnuts, almonds, and pine nuts, especially. I love walnuts on my yogurt in the morning, toasted almonds on cooked veggies, and toasted pine nuts in salads. Pine nuts are essential for pesto, too. But of course, nuts are good for sweets. Pecans…yum!
- Molasses—A wholesome sweetener, organic molasses is darker and stronger than other molasses, but it’s so good in cakes and cookies, on bread, and, especially, on plain donuts.
- Flour: Rodale Institute White and Whole Wheat, or King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat—White flour is still essential for things like gravy and fried chicken and cakes. But I use whole wheat for everything else, including pancakes, cookies, and muffins.
- Ice Cream Cones: Let’s Do Organic– OK, they’re not necessary, but they are yummy, and they make a small snack of ice cream easy, without any dishes to do!
- Dried Fruits: Whether it’s raisins, cranberries, or dried pineapple (I love any dried fruit by Kopali), dried fruits are good for baking, cooking, snacking, or putting on top of cereal.
- Baking chocolate: Green and Black—For chocolate cake, of course!
- Jams and Marmalades: Cascadian Farms and Frog Hollow—Once, a very long time ago, when I was sailing on a wooden boat in the Caribbean, after a long great day in the sun, I was served “tea,” and it was good English tea with warm pancakes and jam. I will NEVER FORGET that moment and that taste. And I also will never forget tasting Frog Hollow Meyer Lemon Marmalade after visiting the San Francisco Farmers Market. Marmalade is essential for my ham glaze also, but it’s also just good on hot buttered whole wheat toast.
YUM!
Rodale’s Whole Wheat Flour is wonderful. It smells fresh and has a nice texture. It didn’t have the “earthy” bitter taste that some other ww flours do. I used it for muffins I made from the organic apples I picked at the festival. No one even mentioned that they tasted like whole wheat. I wish it came in larger than 3 lb sizes. I do a lot of baking.
Okay, now you’ve made me hungry for biscuits and jam! LOL. I’ll look into these products. I’m always trying to find way to incorporate more organic foods into my pantry.
I, too, always aim to have chocolate chips for snacking emergencies! Once when my son was home from college he used them up in, gasp, cookies. I had to confiscate the cookies…
Making Maria’s pancakes with Rodale Institute’s flour drizzled with Coombs Grade A dark maple syrup, her buttered egg recipe and of course on the side some Applegate Farm’s bacon cooked crispy but not burnt. Might crumble some of that bacon into my pancake batter… also roast some garden tomatoes that have multiplied in my garden that go so well with the eggs….Yum Yum…then out to walk it off…hope the rain stays away. I do love the hit of sweet and savory in this type of breakfast…thanks Maria for the delicious start to my day and weekend!
Got it all well not the ice cream cones. No pantry can be fully stocked without these essentials. Whenever we get the urge to bake something we always have something in the cupboard to whip up. So good to see this list available for everyone to see.