I am to the point where my pantry is FULL! But I never feel like we have food on hand! So therefore my new project is to create meals around stuff I have in the pantry! Mostly it’s a lot of canned vegetables, tomato sauce, pasta, soups, some spaghetti sauce and lots of baking stuff!
The pictures I took below are from before cooking this afternoon. I made a double batch of chili (which was super easy, because I cut the onions and peppers up and froze them last week while we were recovering from our bug, so that they wouldn’t go bad) . I also made a batch of Quick N Easy casserole and froze it in 2 smaller pans for later. So my pantry has 5 less cans in it than it did this morning! It’s a start!
If you have suggestions or recipes that will help, I’m open for ideas!
Blog, Jane! Blog! 
Tips (which you may/may not already use):
Chicken broth leftovers are frozen in an ice-cube tray: can be used to sautee veggies, as stir-fry base (substitute a cube or two instead of using oils in the wok), cooling down soup for kids (which is nice as it won’t dilute the soup’s flavor), or asian firepot (think of it as fondue, but instead of a pot of cheese and wine, or hot oil, or even plain wine, hot pot begins w/ hot broth whereby folks can dip meats/veggies/seafood in the hot pot and then into sauces — there seems to be different sauces/jams in the pantry… at the end of the dinner, take the broth and add pre-cooked noodles from pantry for soup….)
jams/jellys, make great glazes for all types of meats and/or seafoods. a fave and easy glaze (which is GREAT on top of brie – warmed in an oven w/ puff pastry over it) is raspberry (strawberry/red/drk berry) black pepper freshly ground and freshly ground (or dried) rosemary. Sounds funky, but it’s really good. Great on pork tenderloin!
Fried onions – ground these puppies up, mix ’em in the dried breadcrumbs for extra seasoning. Meatballs, soup thickeners, chicken cordon bleu coating, or on top of casseroles mmmm.
Microwave popcorn – a dry rub that I used on pork tenderloin but found just as good on popcorn (stay w/ me on this one): ground cumin, black pepper, chili powder, cinnamon, and coriander – equal parts, except for blk pepper (1/2).
Apple sauce – makes for great smoothie thickeners or even frozen pops for the little one in the summer.
linko (Karin’s friend from DC)