Cooking Out of the Pantry Part I

So, y’all know that my husband is back from his Arizona experiment, right? And he’s back to work in the car business and things are going well,  but we’re a little bit behind the eight ball and in an effort to save some money, I’ve decided to make as many meals out of our pantry for as long as I can, only purchasing fresh vegetables, proteins and absolute necessities.  I use our local supermarket’s weekly flier and stock up on things when they’re on sale, so there’s a lot of stuff in my over sized pantry.  I thought it might be fun to document it and see how creative I can get.  Want to play along?

Clearly I’ve been trying to do this for a while as two months ago this pantry was packed! Also, don’t judge me by how ugly it is, this is a rental and I’m not redecorating a pantry that I probably won’t be seeing for more than another year or so.

So.  What do we have?  Pasta, couscous, oats, cooking spray, tuna, pineapple, A1 sauce (lots of it, I’m addicted to it and I buy some every time it’s BOGO), chick peas, black beans, all kinds of canned tomatoes, spices, vitamins that I should be taking, but don’t, sun dried tomatoes, chipotle in adobo, green chiles, vinegars, oils, pop corn, ramen (that’s my son’s particular addiction, not mine…  hot dog buns.  Hmm.

I know I bought hot dogs because Hebrew Nationals were BOGO this week, I have baked beans, the hot dog rolls up there and a head of cabbage in the fridge.  Easy.  Dinner tonight is slaw dogs and baked beans.  1 meal down, 3 items gone from the pantry. And we used up some mayo, all the splenda, some red wine vinegar (I love slaw, have I mentioned that?)

While I was doing this I realized I hadn’t eaten yet, so I made a big thing of tuna salad (4 cans, mayo, celery seed, white vinegar, relish, salt and pepper), and had some on a bed of sliced cucumbers.  Even more out of the pantry.  Yay me! And we have lunch for tomorrow done already!

What would you make looking at this ingredient palette? I’ll keep posting and see if we can get this thing emptied!Similar Posts:

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