A peek into our (freezer)Pantry II...

12 new recipes this week... our favorites had be the Kissed Molletes, Onion and Fontina Beer Batter Bread and Falafel Pitas with Goat Cheese Sauce.

We had quite a busy day today and I'm pretty tired, but I did manage to bake something today at Jeff's request. He mentioned that it had been awile since I have made an apple pie and he was correct! I prepared the crust early this morning before we left to do errands and after we arrived back home and started getting the rest of the ingredients together, I noticed I forgot to pick up more apples at the market! I did have a few, but not quite as many as I would have liked so the pie is lacking in the height department!

I never really measure my ingredients here, but it is much like any basic apple pie recipe - the only thing I do different is use arrowroot powder as a thickener and add a couple dashes of ginger to the filling. I also like to sprinkle the top with turbinado sugar for a sweet crunch. The crust recipe I use is one from King Arthur - using mostly butter for flavor, but I do like to swap out a few tablespoons to use some spectrum organic shortening as to not loose out on the flakiness.

I posted a peek into our pantry a few weeks ago... I'm coming back with Part II - The deep freeze!

I've always got a couple bags of King Arthur Flour now in the freezer - Whole Wheat, White Whole Wheat and All Purpose. I keep around 4-6 cups worth in some containers upstairs for easy access - I just find it stays fresher this way. I like to keep a small tupperware dish of instant yeast in the refrigerator, but you will usually find a vacuum sealed package in the freezer too.

Since we've been playing more with whole grains lately, I also keep Whole Cornmeal, Rye flour, Spelt flour and Barley flour in ziploc bags in the chest freezer in the garage.

I love to have options... I'll use that as my excuse on why we have so many different kinds of nuts and seeds in the freezer.

Walnuts, Pecans, Almonds, Hazelnuts and Peanuts (I make our own fresh nut butters often)

Sunflower Seeds, Pepitas and Pine Nuts

Pistachios, Cashews and Soy Nuts

I'm also crazy about blueberries - I have at least a cup a day mixed with some yogurt or in a smoothie. I've got quite a few pounds of these tiny wild blueberries stocked to get me well through the winter season!

How can we forget about butter? Since we started buying the big packs at Costco, I've started storing most of it in the freezer.

I'm scared to find out how much we will use this baking season... remember how much we used last year? *heartattack...*