Notes From The Pantry

TL;DR: For the month of May, all profits from the Will Run For Doughnuts Baking box, with or without the book, will be donated to the National Net...

For years, I amassed a collection of cookbooks - fabulous tomes full of brilliant recipes. And yet, I rarely cooked from them. I thought my culina...

Then I read Mi Cocina...

It's beautifully organized, well-written, the flavors are fantastic, then Rick Martinez points out that reducing a cuisine to "easy" and "simple" is where "marketing and racism intersect... When you call something authentic, you're necessarily saying that everything else is not."

In Mi Cocina, Martinez highlights how Spanish colonialism has merged with indigenous foodways, where Lebanese immigrants have influenced "Tacos Arabes," and how Chinese immigrants who constructed railways layered soy sauce into the Mexican culinary lexicon. Just as Mexican food has evolved in Mexico, it has evolved in the United States, morphed by countless Mexican Americans and those who have enjoyed their cooking and meals at their tables.

Folks often ask me how I select the books and ingredients for the boxes. It's often around a style of cuisine and a more quotidien set of dishes and techniques. Honestly, this one’s personal. It’s not just about the doughnuts, or the running, or the running for doughnuts. It’s much bigger than that. For me, Montclair Bread Co is not just a bakery. It’s a community center. It's in this same community-minded approach to sustainable food economies that I selected the ingredients for this baking box.