Every pantry is a small museum of decisions made in another season. The jars at the back were filled with more optimism than the jars at the front, and the labels have begun to blur where the steam got to them.
We spent an afternoon cataloguing a single shelf: quince paste from 2023, dilly beans, a jam whose fruit no one can agree on. The shelf kept time better than any calendar.
This piece first ran in our autumn issue, and we return to it here because the pantry never finishes its work. It simply waits for the next season to arrive and prove it right.