In my opinion, being able to cook out of the pantry is an important skill, and one that I think is a tell-tale mark of a good home cook-- one must first know what to stock a pantry with, then, have the dedication to maintain it and the ingrained knowledge of flavors to use it successfully. To be absolutely clear, up there where I say "good," I do not mean adequate. I mean good in the thick sense, like the curves of a beanpot coddling a ham hock and cannellinis, or mothers' hips shaping out a skirt. Solid. Reliable. And good. This post was supposed to be about wine. In fact, I have told at least three different people that my next post would be about three specific wines. I even dug the empty wine bottles out of the recycling and took pictures of them. Indstead, I'm going to make a liar out of myself and tell you about the unexpected pantry pasta I made last night, entirely out of on-hand sort of things. Read more.

PHOTO: Late evening lake in New Hampshire. Taken By Allison Bondie

Allison Bondie is a regular contributor to annarbor.com and usually blogs about food at Food Snob on a Tuesday Night.

She can be reached at allison.bondieATgmail.com