What do you always have in the kitchen? I don't think my kitchen is well stocked... and I end up making poor choices... 'cause I just don't have the right things on hand...
So... I'd love to hear what others ALWAYS have in their kitchen...
Check out this from the EatingWell site. www.eatingwell.com/eat_drink/kitchen_tips/stocked_pantry.html Make a list and head to the store and start in the produce dept. and place a rainbow of color in your cart. Then go to low fat dairy, lean protein and down the aisle for pantry items only. Make your snacks fruit/ vegetables esp. with the summer bounty. Make small changes like reading labels before putting it in the cart and clean out the pantry and bring home the good stuff.
I think if you have good basics you can put something on the table every night. A few pantry staples I could not do without would be whole grain pasta (check out Barilla's new high protein pasta in the yellow box), canned tomatoes and beans, good olive oil, good vinegar, fresh garlic and onions, lemons and whatever dried herbs and spices you really enjoy. At the bare minimum, you can create a quick and delicious pasta with garlicky bean and tomato sauce. The previous poster put a link to a great Eating Well article. Good luck!
olive oil!!! garlic pasta cumin hot sauce dried basil whole canned tomatoes red pepper flakes nutmeg: I seem to be using it in every thing lately, which is kind of new for me
xoxo jessica
Posts: 2 | Location: chapel hill | Registered: October 04, 2006
I guess, according to this article, I have a well-stocked pantry. Wow. Here I thought I wasn't doing well. I recently bought some bale-top, airtight containers and filled them with brown rice, whole wheat couscous, and barley (one per jar, obviously). I plan on getting some dried beans to put in the 4 mason jars I just bought for them--I'll probably get black beans, navy beans, garbanzo beans, and some split peas. One day I'll add lentils to that list, but right now I have about 4 1 lb. bags in my pantry from various shopping excursions where I forgot that I already had them on hand. No use buying bulk until I finish the bagged stuff.
I also like to always have my freezer stocked with homemade broth. Right now, I have chicken, vegetable, and mushroom. I freeze the chicken in containers big enough for my fiance and I to have a meal out of it (with either noodles or matzoh balls), plus some 1-cup containers. For the veggie and the mushroom broth, I have them all frozen in 1-cup or 1/2-cup containers so that I can easily defrost them for cooking. If you think making homemade broth isn't worth the effort, read the ingredients on the canned stuff. Ugh. I make my veggie and mushroom broths in my crockpot so that it's not much active time spent. (My chicken broth is my masterpiece, so I spend the full 3 hours on that one). It's worth it to me not to have all those weird additives and preservatives in my broth.
