This week I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes peek at the kitchen pantry staples in my Michigan cabin. You can certainly use this as a guide like our recent refrigerator staples issue, but you’ll find that my pantry is uniquely mine. Your own basic pantry essentials will be influenced by how you cook as well as by your culture. No two pantries will look alike!

Pantry staples change over time, depending on whether you share your pantry with children, whether you have a partner, and whether you have a family member who eats gluten-free or vegan. Allow your pantry to evolve accordingly. In addition, a newer cook may have different (and likely fewer) items than someone who’s been developing a pantry over the years. Roy and I have a delightful, shared pantry, with his and hers bins for our pantry items.

PASTA

Before I met Roy, I rarely ate pasta. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but in either case, we enjoy it often now. Roy loves finding the most unusually shaped pasta, and he values an excellent quality pasta, seeking it far and wide. Recently, everyone fell in love with Fusilli Lunghi, a favorite of his. Since I’m always looking for the very best gluten-free pasta, we tend to have a lot of pasta options. We have quite an extensive pantry, and it’s a little bit like the loaves and fishes: it seems to multiply, no matter what I do.

FLOURS

As a gluten-free person, I’ve found that any ingredient that works for both of us will become a pantry staple. So we have a wide variety of flours, like Bob’s Red Mill Paleo Baking Flour, other gluten-free flours, rice flour, almond flour, cornmeal, and semolina.

RICE

I always have rice and arborio rice in my pantry, because risotto is a spectacular risotto dish I can whip together in a half hour. A well-stocked pantry enables you to have enough staples on hand to make a masterful dinner without heading to the store.

SUGARS

We have a variety of sugars, including baking sugar, brown sugar, and coconut sugar. I’m not a baker, but nevertheless, I like to have the ingredients I might need on my shelf just in case I decide to make a crumble or a couple of pancakes, or if there’s a salad dressing or a tomato in need of a little sweetening.

TOMATOES

I always have a high-quality canned tomato sauce, tomato paste, and canned tomatoes in my pantry. They’re essential for putting a simple dinner together or making my mother’s more complex meat sauce or a minestrone. I also use them in enchiladas and for the marinara sauce in my Chicken Parmesan.

NEXT LEVEL

For next-level cooking, my favorites include coconut milk, Thai Kitchen curry paste, pine nuts, a super high-quality tahini, and a tiny can of anchovies. Anchovies are amazing for Magic Elixirs and as an extra ingredient to add a bit of umami to a salad dressing.

For tahini, get the highest quality you can, ideally freshly made at a local Middle Eastern store. (And by the way, always get your canned tuna packed in olive oil, which is much more delicious than tuna packed in water.)

NO BEANS

You might be surprised to find no lentils or beans in my pantry. I realize they’re delicious, but I simply don’t digest them well. They are, however, a typical pantry staple in most kitchens. You may also be wondering where the chicken stock is. Though some consider it a pantry staple, I keep mine in the freezer in Mason jars, because there’s nothing like homemade chicken stock.

NUTS AND OATMEAL

I adore a bowl of oatmeal, but it’s also amazing for making oat flour. Just grind the oatmeal and use it as the topping in a fruit crumble. Peanut butter and almond butter are always in our shared pantry. Roy absolutely loves peanut, while I prefer almond, but both are bare-bones pantry essentials.

JUNK FOOD

I don’t stock a lot of junk food, mostly because it’s quite possible I’ll eat it. When my kids were little, I overheard one of their friends ask, “But where do you keep your pop and junk food?” My kids replied, “We don’t have any.” Remembering that moment still makes me laugh about the child’s hilarious, wide-eyed shock at what we didn’t keep in our pantry.

ROY’S SECRET PLACE

Roy has a fantastic private pantry that he’s filled with his favorite crackers, peanuts, cookies with gluten, and chips. It’s his little treasure chest, and I don’t even go near it. But I’m delighted that he has it! One thing I absolutely adore that can’t stay in my pantry is chocolate, and that is because I will eat it. Roy picks it up often. For me, one bite can lead to the rest of the bar, so I almost always ask him to hide it—but certainly not in his pantry, because that would be the first place I’d look!