Hunger Games

by Connie Cortright

Here's the one about our lovely pantry - which I will miss terribly after we move.

     Where does your family go when hunger strikes? We go searching for tasty treats in my favorite part of our house – our walk-in pantry. Since our home was built in 1926, this was a typical style built in that era.

     Our pantry is not like the usual cupboard style that I’ve seen in any other house I’ve lived in. It is a little room four feet by seven feet off of our kitchen. It’s lined with open shelves on the top holding all my food staples plus room for extra paper towels, appliances, etc.

     The bottom half is full of cupboards with doors on them - enough storage to hold all my Tupperware plus seldom used kettles and other sundries. The storage space doubles what most people have in their entire kitchen.

     The counter space above the lower cupboards is great for storing my cookbooks, our toaster and snack canisters. I’m sure most women would be envious of this wonderful space.

     When we saw our house for the first time, my husband declared this little room “Aunt Reddy’s pantry”. I asked my mother-in-law about  the story behind the name. She told me when he was a little boy, he went to Aunt Loretta’s house while his mother was working, thus a familiar remembrance of a pantry in an old home like ours.

     My husband says he remembers Aunt Reddy’s pantry most for the wonderful smells. I can imagine it would contain smells like cinnamon and other cooking spices, making this space so appealing to him. His mother added the extra bit of information that Aunt Reddy kept her cookie jar on the pantry shelf.

     He said that he and his brother used the space in the pantry to play fort when they were at his aunt’s house because there was a curtain that divided it off from the kitchen. It sounds like a wonderful place for children to hide or set up a play fort.

  I’m sure the two small boys had their own version of hunger games when they were playing in Aunt Reddy’s pantry with the cookie jar nearby. Yummy!

     Do you have a favorite spot in your house where a cookie jar may be lurking?