“Snack-sized personal essays about spices, food, recipes, menus & human emotion.”

Tiny little micro essays, as small as a flake of salt, pepper this collection like seasoning. Why is vanilla, plain? How are teenagers like eggshells? Why avoid garlic when it defends against vampires? When is a recipe the cure for anger (hint: stew), How writers ring in the new year? How to manage of grief through Halloween candy? Pantry will take you to the store, the kitchen, the garden, picking up the kids and back home again. In these fraught times, Block’s personal essays probe family, love, anxiety, and relief through the metaphors of recipes, spices, ingredients and holiday meals. Pantry says it all, with a wink, a tear and a hug.

Pantry is a 70-page, A5-sized book and perfect for inclusion in gift boxes.
Pantry is separated into 5 sections, of 10 essays each:
Spice, Cold Storage, Dry Goods, Recipes and Menus
 
Approximately 70 pages
Perfectbound paperback
ISBN: 979-8-90214-218-8
To be published: November 17 , 2026
 
About Author Hildie S. Block
 
Hildie S. Block is a writer living in Arlington Virginia with her husband, two kids, a white dog, a black cat and a pink Axolotl named Xipe! Her day doesn’t start until after coffee and a dash of NPR. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a proud member of Gen X and obsessed with the weather. As a teacher, she’s spent the last 30 years nurturing writers in the Washington DC metro area through college courses, workshops, and online interactive learning. She edited the anthology NOT WHAT I EXPECTED: The road from womanhood to motherhood, and has published in the Washington Post, Salon, Gargoyle and many other anthologies and literary magazines where her work has won contests and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 4 times.
 
Table of Contents
 
SPICE
Salt (What is love?)
Pepper (Not knowing)
Parsley (Queen of Cups)
Sage (Advice)
Rosemary
Thyme
Cinnamon
Spicy
Mint
Vanilla
 
COLD STORAGE
Egg/shells
Blackberries
Sex, Death and Fish in the bathtub
Farmer’s Market
Bill the Butcher
Garlic
Ice Cream
Fish Heads
Look Closer
Sweet and Sour
 
DRY GOODS
Sugar/high
Coffee
Holden Caulfield’s Chocolate Dichotomy
Popcorn Diplomacy
Things not to do in Gibraltar (M&Ms)
Hanging the Ghost (Halloween Candy Stash)
Diet Coke with Lime
Pop the Cork
Myth of the Neglected Kitchen Grater
The Yellow Pot
 
RECIPES
Stewing
Stirring the Pot
Holiday “Rain” Casserole
Making Dinner
Oma’s Plum Cake
Recipe for a New Year’s Eve Cocktail
Olio (You Dip Your Bread in It)
Smell the Soup
How Long to Bake?
Recipe for a Holiday Meal
 
MENUS
Eating While Broke, a math lesson
Picnic, Roosevelt Island
Snow Day Menu
Getting Stuffed
Sitting Shiva
December, While Jewish
Drained
Good Luck
Holiday Postmortem
What Do I Want For My Birthday?
 
Excerpts from PANTRY 

Vanilla

My dad made me read a story: a guy who studies with a teacher, who makes him look at a dead fish.  All the man saw sees is a dead fish — the teacher keeps making him stare at it day after day until he:
SEES.

You say “that’s so vanilla” —
You mean boring, basic, unworthy —
Can you stare at vanilla?  Only grown in Mexico, Tahiti, Madagascar?  The stamens of orchids, so fragile they must be harvested by a death-defying human hand that has climbed 25 feet into the air to fetch that precious bean for 
You to declare it “plain”?


Egg/shells

Check the eggs before you buy them, make sure none are cracked.

You carry this whole carton gently home to nourish your household.

Use the shells in the garden later; the calcium keeps blossom-end-rot from your tomatoes.

In turn, those tomatoes will build their bones strong.

In turn, those strong bones will stomp and slam.  At every perceived slight: You chew too loud.  You moved my things.  You complained about my tone, but what about yours?

In turn, the stomping and slamming will shake the eggs in their carton.  But they will not break as you continue to tiptoe around them.


How Long to Bake?

Is the wrong question.

How long does it take to find the recipe, craft the shopping list, travel to the store.

How long does it take to wander the aisles, picking up the things you don’t need, getting in the long line and realizing you forgot the thing you did need?

How long to chat with the friend you haven’t seen?  The mother of your kid’s friend, who you liked, but now can’t remember their name?

How long to right the bag you put in the car that emptied it contents onto the floor.

How long do you drive on empty, before pulling into the filling station.  

How long to carry in the groceries, realize you left a bag in the car — at least you hope that’s where it is.

And then preheat the oven.
 
PRAISE FOR PANTRY
 
"As someone who has spent more than 50 years behind the line and at the ovens, I know exactly how much labor, love, and history go into creating something truly nourishing. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Hildie S. Block as a regular customer at my farmer’s market bakery business, and reading Pantry feels exactly like chatting with her across the pastry counter. 

Divided into beautifully curated, food-centric sections like "Spice," "Cold Storage," and "Dry Goods", this collection of micro-essays captures the messy, vibrant, and bittersweet reality of life. Hildie connects the culinary to the deeply personal with exquisite precision—whether she is writing about the ancient magic of sage, the memory-evoking power of thyme, or the comforting predictability of an old family recipe. Her writing is sharp, witty, and deeply evocative. For anyone who understands that food is never just food—that it is a vessel for memory, grief, and love—this book is an absolute feast. 
For over five decades, I have used flavor to tell stories, but Hildie S. Block does it with words.
 
Pantry is a gorgeous, bite-sized celebration of life's ingredients—the sweet, the sour, and everything in between. A masterclass in culinary nostalgia that will leave you hungry for more."
— Chef Patrice Olivon & Farmer's Market Baker 
 
“Pantry is a delicious journey that tempts our taste buds...a feast for the senses!”
— Courtney LeBlanc, author of Her Dark Everything