Portrait by Erin Alderson As Sacramentans, we are all intimately familiar with the concept of farm-to-fork, but according to Erin Alderson, we should be eating farm-to-cupboard-to-fork too. In her recently released vegetarian cookbook, The Yearlong Pantry, the Fair Oaks-based food blogger and author makes the case for thinking seasonally, not just when it comes to fruits and vegetables, but also for shelf-stable staples like rice, beans and almonds. Here, she talks to us about how best to start stocking your kitchen, the perfect sweater-weather meals, and the inspiration behind writing a book featuring everything from barley soup to nuts. To start, can you tell us a little about The Yearlong Pantry? It focuses on how to use grains, legumes, nuts and seeds as a foundational way to cook. I’m a vegetarian and I use these ingredients for pretty much every meal. I found that most vegetarian cookbooks were focused on produce, but there wasn’t a ton of information on how to make meals varied with that produce. These ingredients are the key to that. This book is more than just recipes. It is teaching people how to pick out these ingredients, how to store them, and how to cook them in many different ways, so you don’t feel bored with just having something one way every day. Living in America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, Sacramentans are attuned to the idea of eating local and seasonal. How does a cookbook spotlighting pantry staples fit with that ethos?  Really, this all started in 2019 when I was with the California Walnut Board and [participated] in a walnut harvest out by Winters. Someone asked the farmer, “What is something that you wish consumers would know about walnuts?” And he responded by saying he wished that people would look at walnuts as they do fresh produce because they are seasonal ingredients as well. By that point in time, I probably had a rough outline of the cookbook and had been thinking about how I use these ingredients, but honestly, it was hearing how the farmers looked at these ingredients as being seasonal produce that really altered my thinking about them. All of the ingredients I highlight in the book are fresh, seasonal ingredients, but we often don’t think about them that way. I wanted to write something that supported this other side of cooking: the grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Another big inspiration for this book was seeing how seasonal these ingredients are, which I feel like I was only able to really do by living in Sacramento. You drive out in any direction and you end up in the fields of something: pistachios, walnuts, almonds. Or rice—we have a huge grain economy here. You drive to Davis and get to see the rice paddies where it’s water as far as the eye can see, and then in the fall, the bigger plants above the water and the harvest. It’s fun to see the whole life cycle of rice just off the freeway. As people who live in the valley, we get the sense that these ingredients are seasonal. But I feel like for a lot of people who don’t live here, these ingredients are just ones that can easily get shoved in the pantry and forgotten about for five years. [At the same time], living in Sacramento, we focus on this idea of farm-to-fork, but a lot of the focus is on restaurant  farm-to-fork—how are the chefs doing stuff? I feel like there’s so much space to be talking about farm-to-fork in our own kitchens—how we can support local farmers through our everyday meals—and giving people the knowledge to do that more effectively, which was also a big part of why I wrote this book. The black bean smash burger with Thousand Island dressing is Alderson’s homage to an In-N-Out cheeseburger. (Photo by Erin Scott, courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing) The book includes 89 recipes. Are there any that you’d recommend for our region’s early-year produce? I really love the charred carrots with dill almond oil. In February, that’s about when we’re starting to get ready for the almond bloom. Plus, carrots—especially in the early spring—are really nice here. I love Patrick’s Berry Farm and Garden. The farm is up past Placerville, but they are at the Sunday farmers’ market [under the W-X freeway in Sacramento] and their produce is always phenomenal. And Riverdog Farm in Guinda, which is also at that farmers’ market. They’re usually my first stop. Surprisingly, carrots come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. Both farms have fun, different types of carrots. What are some of your go-to places in the Sacramento area when you’re stocking your pantry? The first stop is definitely the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. They have such a great bulk bin section that carries, I would say, 90% of the ingredients I highlight in the book. There are [go-to] farms in the area like Full Belly Farms in Guinda. I love everything that Full Belly does. I think that theirs is such a great model for a holistic approach to farming. My child’s class did a two-night field trip there and we stayed for two nights and helped at the farm, so I got to see the whole operation. You can tell how much they really care for the land and what they’re growing, and it shows in their products, and particularly the wheat. They have a durum wheat, which is typically used for making pasta, that I think is phenomenal. It’s one of the heritage varieties and just has a nice, earthy wheat flavor that works really well for pasta. We also have two flour mills who provide some excellent wheat flours: Capay Mills, obviously in Capay Valley, and Early Bird Farm & Mill out past Jackson. Both you can buy at the Co-op. Capay Mills usually has a Sonora wheat, which is a lighter wheat that I love using as an all-purpose flour. From Early Bird, I really like their hard wheat because it has a lot of flavor. Courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing When filling a pantry, are there any mistakes that people should avoid?  Buying so much variety. I often advise people to start small, so pick five different things that you want to try and branch out from there. It can be really easy to get overwhelmed, where you have 20 different ingredients that you’re trying to figure out how to use, and then all of a sudden, things get shoved to the back of your pantry, lost for years on end. Especially if you’re newer to cooking this way, pick out a couple of ingredients and try to keep it simple and fun. Let’s back up to your personal food journey. You write in the book that you grew up in Illinois eating a lot of fast food. When did your relationship to food change? When I was in college, my dad had a heart attack and ended up having a quadruple bypass. Watching him go through that, and being there with him altered my thinking about health. I started to examine the things I was eating, which led me to want to learn how to cook. As I started to learn, I was like, “Oh, I think I actually really like this.” And the great thing about cooking is you get a chance to do it every day, so you get to learn a lot if you choose to. Then I started learning more about produce. I joined a CSA in Illinois. In Community Supported Agriculture, you essentially buy shares of a farm’s harvest, and every week or every two weeks, you typically get a box of produce from the farm. Mine was a U-Pick CSA, so every week, I would go out to the farm, and with the help of the farmer, I would get to pick the produce I was eating. And then specifically with [the pantry ingredients] in the book, my grandmother had a rye bread recipe that she really liked, and the flour she would use was discontinued. We tried different flours, and—this was in 2010, back before social media as we know it today—I had posted on my blog about it. Someone from a flour mill company reached out and was like, “Hey, maybe you should try milling your own flour.” And they sent me a mill, which was one of the most pivotal moments in terms of where I am now. It was a game changer—realizing that these ingredients could be used in so many different ways and that it can be really fun to do. How did your love of cooking evolve into writing about it? I went to school for music, and ended up getting my master’s in music education. I think the educational component is key, because I found that while I like music, it’s not my passion. I was able to take the educational side of things and apply it to something that I do really love, which is food. I started my food blog Naturally Ella  in 2007, and that was back in the time of the internet where people were just blogging to have fun. There wasn’t advertising or anything like that. It was just a hobby. But the more I shared, the more I realized I liked sharing. And then I moved to California in 2013. My husband is a software engineer, and he took a job here. Landing in Sacramento is honestly one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. I remember walking into the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op for the first time and seeing the produce section. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, because we just didn’t have the access to fresh produce in central Illinois like we do here. At this point, I had already been running my website and doing recipe development for publications, but I was still teaching and applying to doctoral schools in music. I realized in that moment that I didn’t want to continue to teach music and that I could focus on the recipe development full time instead—that this is what I wanted to do. You mention in The Yearlong Pantry that your family isn’t vegetarian. With that in mind, how do you cook at home? What are examples of dishes in the book that are carnivore-friendly? I’ve been vegetarian off and on since my dad’s heart attack, and then probably for the past eight years straight. I don’t have a problem with people eating meat—it’s not like our house is a meat-free household—I just don’t like cooking it. Occasionally, I do for my [non-vegetarian] husband, but my child is fully vegetarian at this point as well. Cooking is a very sense-heavy endeavor, and I don’t like the smell and the tactile experience of cooking meat. I found that the better I became at cooking, the more I could fill in the gaps of things that I might have missed like a good cheeseburger. I have a recipe in the book for a black bean smash burger that is effectively [intended] to mimic In-N-Out. My cooking style is such that I want people to eat the food that I’m cooking and think, “Wow, that tastes really great. Oh, and it happens to be vegetarian.” An example in the book is the roasted red pepper risotto. It is rich because it has a cream cheese that makes the dish overall creamy. And then I top it with extra olive oil. I do feel like that’s another advantage to living in the Sacramento Valley, having such great access to so much good olive oil. Séka Hills is my primary go-to. What are some of your other favorite recipes in the book? I love pizza, so both of the pizza recipes: the asparagus with charred scallion sauce, which is in the Grains section, and the potato and chile crisp pizza recipe, which is in the Nuts and Seeds section and features an almond ricotta. Pizza is such a comfort food and a great way to explore more vegetarian cooking. Asparagus and charred scallion pizza ((Photo by Erin Scott, courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing) Two recipes in the book are inspired by local restaurants, which I think is super important too. There’s this awesome symbiosis between home cooks and restaurant chefs, where you go to a restaurant and especially if you’re someone who likes to cook—you can easily find something to feel inspired about, whether it’s a technique or a flavor combination. It’s a great way to see how chefs are using these different items that we also use at home. The salsa in the tostadas with salsa negra [recipe] is inspired by Nixtaco in Roseville. I love their vegetarian tacos. Every time I go, I get two of their cauliflower tacos and their queso fundido with the poblano rajas. And then the hummus bowl with buttered turnips is inspired by Magpie cafe in midtown Sacramento. They seasonally rotate their menu items, but the hummus bowl was one I used to get. They’re a restaurant that highlights local produce really well. For someone just beginning their pantry-cooking journey, what would be a good recipe to start with? I always tell people to start with soup. It can be a great way to explore flavors, textures and produce. There’s a carrot soup with chile-fried spelt in the Grains section that I really love. It’s a classic cream-based soup, using the flavor of the carrots to stand out. The soup itself is a little earthy or a little sweet depending on the variety you use. Then the fried spelt adds a bit of crunch, and the ground chile powder a little bit of a kick. There’s also the barley navy bean soup, my riff on chicken noodle soup, because barley is one of the more accessible and easy-to-find grains. The inspiration behind it was that I wanted something that reminded me of the chicken noodle soup of my youth. The navy beans are supposed to be like the chicken and the barley stands in for the noodles. Really, it’s just about comfort at the end of the day. Even though it’s not chicken noodle soup, it has like that same, almost nostalgic feel. Those are great suggestions, especially for the winter. Speaking of which, with many of us having indulged over the holidays and wanting perhaps to eat healthier in the new year, is there a good recipe that might help us hit the reset button? I love the tofu brown rice bowls. They have a really easy marinated tofu recipe. You have brown rice, which is kind of nutty and slightly chewy, and then you have a simple marinated tofu—it’s a salty-sweet marinade that’s primarily soy-sauce-based, but there’s just a little bit of maple syrup to help round it out—which comes together with a peanut sauce. And there’s a cabbage slaw that helps give not only a little bit of crunchy texture, but an acidic flavor that I think adds a really nice freshness that is sometimes lacking when we’re eating heavier. And for the days when anything goes, what are some examples of the more decadent dishes? Buckwheat crepes with burnt honey butter is one of those things that you can either do for breakfast or as dessert. It’s similar to a traditional crepe. Then buckwheat is a grain that has a more pronounced flavor, that’s really nutty and earthy, and it adds kind of this fun flavor to dishes. And I have a pumpkin rye bread in the book. Rye is another one of those grains that I like to use for flavor as well—it gives a little bit more of a rustic flavor. Especially with the pumpkin, it’s a really moist, dense bread. It’s effectively like a giant muffin, but in bread form. I think that it’s great as a nice coffee partner or served with a little bit of ice cream for dessert. Alderson’s hummus bowl with buttered turnips was inspired by a dish she had at Magpie cafe. (Photo by Erin Scott, courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing) In a TikTok video that you posted last summer, you said that The Yearlong Pantry, which was released in October, had been in your mind in one way or another for almost 10 years. Now that it’s out, do you have ideas brewing for future cookbooks? Every time I have an idea, I write it down, and I create an outline in my head and think about what it would look like. So they’re all kind of loose, but I do have some ideas. Like I would really love to do a camp cooking book because my family and I love camping and I find the idea of cooking outside to be really fun. Or another book idea I have is how to cook vegetables in many different ways. One of the bigger stumbling blocks people have when they’re trying to cook more vegetarian meals is that things start to feel similar. You’re always roasting vegetables. I feel like half the recipes out there are for roasted  sweet potatoes, roasted  carrots… I mean, obviously I love roasting vegetables, but I think that in order for people to feel inspired to cook these ingredients, it can be really helpful to be able to branch out and see just how many ways you can cook, say, a carrot—that you could steam it, you can grill it, you can smoke it. There are all of these different ways to alter the texture and flavor and enjoy it. In the meantime, what do you hope people will take away from reading The Yearlong Pantry? A lot of times people will see these ingredients in a recipe from whoever they follow, and all of a sudden, they’re left with a bag of, for example, millet. “Well, what do I do with this?” My entire goal is to help people feel more comfortable when they’re in their kitchens—it’s having this foundation, this understanding of the why and the how, and being able to apply that. These ingredients are foundational to my own cooking and they’re useful, especially if you’re trying to eat less meat. My hope is to have this concise guide that you can turn to [in order to] feel more confident and be like, “OK, I can do this.” Or, “I could even use a recipe that doesn’t call for millet and can use millet in it!” I think that people coming to cooking have already decided to take a step where this is something that they want to do. The ability to think, “I really want this,” and then turn around and be able to make it in your own kitchen, is huge. Being able to cook is so powerful.  This interview has been edited for length, flow and clarity.