The Perfect Pantry®

Recipe for slow cooker lentils with chicken sausage, spinach and feta cheese

Ah, lentils. The Achilles Heel of my inner photographer. Try as I might, I could not get this dish to look even one-tenth as good as it tastes. So I ask you to close your eyes, and imagine this: creamy lentils, chicken sausage, spinach and feta cheese, the earthy-salty-tangy flavors melting together in your mouth, a piece of crusty bread and a tangy green salad on the side, a glass of nice red wine. That's the truth of this recipe, though the photographs might not inspire. In the slow cooker, the dish simmers while we work in the garden, and it tastes great -- satisfying and restorative to tired muscles --hot or at room temperature, when the temperature outside cools off in the evening, as it can do quite suddenly in the Spring.

The Pantry Alphabet: K

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Recipe for curried chicken pasta salad with apricots and cashews

Old-fashioned curried chicken salad, the kind you find in the supermarket deli case, seldom floats my boat. Too much curry powder makes it bitter; too much celery overpowers the curry. Too much mayonnaise drowns it all. If that sounds familiar, then this curried chicken pasta salad with apricots and cashews just might restore your faith. Start with big chunks of chicken, add your favorite small pasta (I love the mini penne and mini bow ties), some crunchy Granny Smith apple, plump dried apricots, and cashews. Use mango-studded Major Grey's chutney in the dressing. Make all of the components ahead, and combine at the last minute for a very fresh, fruity, un-gloppy chicken salad.

Chocolate chunk brownies recipe

First, mow the lawn. Don't have a lawn? Walk for an hour, go to the gym, work in the garden. You need to bank a lot of worked-off calories before you bake these chocolate chunk brownies, because once they come out of the oven and cool down enough, you're going to want to taste. And once you taste, you're going to eat more than one. (I know. I ate two. I mowed a lot.) One thing you need to know: when these brownies first come out of the oven, they look soft, undercooked, and just plain unattractive. Let them cool completely, however eager you are to taste. The top will get crusty and the bottom blissfully chewy. Just be patient, and keep mowing.