I may be alone here, but anytime my husband is left to try and put together a meal for the family (which isn’t often -usually only when I’m gone or sick) all I end up hearing is how empty the pantry is.  But when I go look I declare it a mystery because unless we’re overdo for a shopping trip, I can see all my usual staples in there.

Granted, cooking for our family of 8 is a little more of an undertaking than many families have to deal with, and hubby will usually beeline for the nearest pizza or hamburger place LOL.  What I consider a staple for our pantry is confusing to him and I totally understand that.  It isn’t filled with the convenience foods that most people are used to seeing.  No blue macaroni and cheese boxes, no boxes that claim to help you make a meal quickly, not even the roni foods that I love.

To make mac and cheese around here, you have to cook up a bag of noodles in one pan and make a cheese sauce in the other.  Surprisingly though, once you know what ingredients go into it, making it this way takes less time than when making it from a box.  During the school year, you aren’t likely to find a box of cereal around here, you’ll need to dig around for the gallon size zippered bag filled with homemade granola…that took the same amount of time to make as oatmeal which is the other staple breakfast food here.

You should probably know right now that the only reason that boxed foods aren’t in our house is because they are typically more expensive than making it from scratch.  Yes, I should probably be stating that they are not as healthy, etc, but the real reason is expense.

So what I consider staples may not be the norm and I might need to make a list of what to do with the mysterious cans and packages that do live on our shelves so that next time hubby has to make a meal, the pantry doesn’t look as empty to him.

I can whip up a crazy good dinner with a few simple ingredients.  One of my timeless favorites has no name, but uses a number of what I consider staples…I’ll put the recipe at the bottom of this post for you.  In the meantime I thought I’d make a list of just a few of my pantry staples.

• Cream of Mushroom Soup
• Boxed Onion soup (this actually makes things shockingly quick to make – especially roast, stroganoff and meatloaf if you buy the beefy Onion soup it’s even better)
• Dry ranch mix packages – these are great for flavoring meals, especially chicken
• Dry noodles – pick your favorites, organic and whole grain are best, but not everyone carries them – I keep primarily egg noodles and either macaroni or another bigger noodle on hand.
• Dry Italian Dressing mix – another simple way to flavor a meal
• Potatoes

Ok, so this is obviously not everything I keep in my pantry, but these items are so very versatile that if they were the only things I had on hand I could still whip up a great meal!

Here’s the recipe for the dinner I made last night…we’ll call it Mushroomy Ranch Chicken and Italian Potato Wedges

For the Chicken

4-6 Chicken breasts (depending on the size of your family – use what you will eat)
1 Package Ranch Dressing Mix
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 Cup Milk

For the Potatoes

10 (or so) Red Potatoes (around here they’re fairly small)
Garlic Salt
Italian Seasoning

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees (F).  Place Chicken in cooking dish.  In a separate bowl mix together Ranch Mix, Soup and Milk.  When blended, pour over chicken.  Cube Red potatoes (about 1 inch or so) and place in a separate small dish that has been greased.  Sprinkle garlic salt and italian seasoning over the top.  Place both dishes into the oven and cook for one hour.

It is so simple but so good!  Enjoy!

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This entry was written by Shera on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Mealtime, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.