bokeh decided to learn to make pie-crust from scratch. Then she made Faith's Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie. Gorgeous.

Rah, rah, rah! Week Seven is almost done, in fact, the whole sha-bang is almost over. Cure-takers are powering ahead and fulfilling this week's assignment to learn a new skill and dip into wine.

How is the wine shopping and drinking going? STLcolleen says "I absolutely agree with the recommendation of going to a local wine shop to get advice and taste many new things. There is a level of service you will get there that will blow away the (perceived) convenience or thrift from buying at a grocery store..." Just about every town in the country has a decent wine shop, and if you live in a large city like New York, you probably see one every few blocks. Here is our list of recommended wine shops. Where is your favorite place to buy wine? More

For the sauce-hungry crowd, here is a basic tomato sauce, with some lemony and spicy elements for adding an optional zing. It's easy, quick, and isn't a boring old sauce. Basic sauces were one of the requested items from Cure-takers. This week's assignment was to add a new skill to your cooking arsenal. So if you're looking for a new sauce and don't want to fuss with any complicated, slow-cooked recipes, here is a great way to have tomato sauce on your pasta in less than 30 minutes. More

RebeccaCT says "For my "menu" meal, I made a frittata with mixed greens (turnip, radish, and mustard), bread, and roasted radishes. We had it with a CT farm wine made from pears--a dry white wine. Lots of local ingredients, it tasted great!" Check out her Flickr set for more shots of her cooking, including those roasted radishes.

It's Week Seven of the 8 Step Spring Kitchen Cure, and we're getting close to the end. This last week you stocked your pantry and planned a whole meal. Were our lists for savory pantry and sweet pantry items helpful?

The idea is to make sure you're prepared to cook by inspiration, and not to always rely on cookbooks and recipes websites. But, even if you do lean on recipes for your cooking, having a well-stocked pantry will be immensely helpful. Like any craftsperson, you need the right supplies to craft something magnificent.

As we head in for a landing, let's take a moment and check in.

Ether Maiden is foraging for her own mushrooms (these babies are called Dryad's Saddle Mushrooms), and cooking them up. Check out her other photos here and more tales of mushroom hunting, here.

Week Six is almost done. Two weeks to go! This week's assignment was to stock the pantry and plan a whole meal.

To help you with the pantry part, we published two lists of suggested pantry items. The idea here was to help you on your way to cooking without recipes. This is generally easier in the savory department.

With desserts, since so many involve baking, a little more science and a little less experimentation is required, but nonetheless, our lists, we hope, will get your cupboards prepared to support spur-of-the-moment cooking. Here are the two pantry guides:

• What Every Pantry Needs: Savory
• What Every Pantry Needs: Sweet More

Cooking without recipes was one of the biggest and loudest things we heard in your Cure requests. We've been talking about stocking your pantry well, which is the first step in cooking without your nose in a book. Improvisation and new creations with familiar elements can only happen when your pantry is well-stocked. Look soon for quick master recipes that can be tweaked and recreated with basic pantry items both savory and sweet.

So, as we move forward with planning a meal and all this pantry work, the idea of cooking freely without having to depend too much on recipes is always in the back of our minds. Here, specifically, are the ways that some of you phrased your requests: More

With a well-stocked pantry, you'll not only be prepared to cook a wide range of dishes, you'll save time and money in the long run, because by getting accustomed to your personal set of supplies, you'll develop your own style, and you will not have to go out to the store and buy every single ingredient in a dish when it's time for dinner.

In the Kitchn Cure, I'm starting to try to impart some techniques for cooking more by instinct than by recipe. This is a great time of year to try this style of free-hand cooking because the availability of inspiring ingredients, produce in particular, starts to be more bountiful. And, ironically, the best place to start is not at the farmers' market, but at the grocery store. Sure, those fiddlehead ferns you see at your friendly farmer's stand are sure pretty, but what are you going to do with them?

You need to stock your pantry. More

We're feeling listy today. As a supporting document to this week's Kitchn Cure assignment I just posted a huge list of suggested items for stocking your pantry, geared toward savory cooking.

For the sweet side of cooking, there is another list. It's harder to push you to make desserts without recipes, since, in the case of baking, you can't really off-road it. So this list applies to making desserts both with, and without recipes. More

We're excited about this week's Cure assignment - finishing stocking up the pantry and plan a menu with all those delicious vegetables quietly showing up in the markets! So many of these vegetables need little more than a quick stir-fry; snow peas, asparagus, tender greens - just sauté, season, and serve. Delicious!

We're tempted to go vegetarian this time of year and through the summer, but the craving for meat still hits, and we're wondering if it's warm enough yet to pull out the grill. What do you think? More

d1g1t1ze made a beautiful dessert out of berries from Dekalb Farmers' Market in Atlanta. Check out her Flickr set dedicated to the Cure for more great photos of food, including the finished Farmers' Market Berry Cups, and newly organized cupboards!

It's Week Six of the 8 Step Spring Kitchen Cure, and we're rolling ahead. Last week you caught yourselves up and some made bread for extra credit. The results were beautiful! (See our Week 5.5 check-in post for a nice shot of stlcolleen's loaf of No-Knead Bread). There were still people roasting chickens and veggies and making stock and soup. Others, like digitize (whose beautiful berries are above) boldly charged ahead and starting cooking free-style.

In the initial Cure sign-up form, you asked for everything from knife skills to coordinating a whole meal in an hour, to tips for cooking meat, to other requests for ideas and skills in cooking. We gave you some knife skills this week: How To Dice And Onion: The Video. Hopefully, learning quick little tricks like this will help you feel more and more comfortable in the kitchen. While we can't do a post on every request, we do encourage you to use the site to answer your questions. In the two and a half years that we have been publishing The Kitchn, we have covered many of these issues.

This week we're going to stock the pantry and plan a whole meal. More

STLcolleen, who not only roasted her first chicken, but also made bread, says "I asked for the knife skills tips and I'd still be happy to see you guys cover that!"

Oh, and we will. Today we're posting a video showing you one of the most basic, sought-after skills: How To Dice An Onion.

But let's check in first. It's Week Five and this week, in addition to our main assignment to take stock and report back, Faith slipped in an extra assignment for the enthusiasts on Friday: To Bake Bread (or Matzah). And it seems many of you did it. Huzzah!

Some Cure-takers used the time to catch up, others jumped ahead. And some, like cleverpseudonym, did both. She is on a roll: a roasted chicken using almost all local ingredients, a Bananas Foster made with leftover bananas and rum from a weekend BBQ (and considering making Bananas Foster Bread with those leftovers!), plus she picked up some under-cabinet lights from Ikea and plans to install them this weekend. She's wondering if anyone has ideas for extra cooked farro... (write back to her in the comments section of the Week Five assignment. More