The Bare Necessities

I'm going to take a break from recipes this week and focus your attention on your pantry!

If you're anything like me, my pantry always has the following items:

1. Ramen Noodles- a college kid's must have.

2. Canned Soup- another fast and easy meal.

3. Peanut butter- I can slather a heaping spoon full of this stuff onto almost anything to make it taste better!

Now that we have determined what our pantry looks like, we are now going to re-evlauate and try to add some other ingredients that are in most basic recipes or that can spice up the recipes you already have!

The good thing about the next few items I'm going to talk about is that they are relatively cheap, and you will definately use them!

But now it's time for story time! Get excited people! Last summer my friend Travis and I were making Snickerdoodle Cookies. I looked up a recipe online since I didn't already have one.  The recipe called for Cream of Tartar. So I bought some at the store, used maybe 2 teaspoons of it to make the cookies, and it has been sitting in my pantry ever since. Those are the types of ingredients that I dispise.

Now back to you're regularly scheduled blog.

Our first trusty ingredient is...

Grill seasoning!

I learned this trick from my good friend, Rachael Ray. She's a genius. What's great about grill seasoning is that it is a mixture of a TON of great, flavorful spices that can add some much needed flavor to endless numbers of meals! Each grill seasoning is different and will have different amounts of each spice, but the typical flavors in a grill seasoning are salt, pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, red pepper, and various other spices. The back label will have the ingredients listed in order of greatest amount to least amount, so when you're at the store just take a gander at the back to get a better idea of what's in it! Depending on what brand you get, grill seasoning will set you back about $2.

The next item on our shopping list is flour. Flour is a great item to keep on hand for emergencies, like forgetting that you have a friend's birthday party to go to in two hours and have no idea what present to get them. Bake some cookies! Or maybe you're at home one night and you hear your stomach do the hungry grumble noise... pancakes! Your roommates will love you. But, be warned! There are different kinds of flour that are used for different things! Cake flour (a super-sifted, super-expensive flour) is, obviously, used in certain cake recipes. Bread flour, also another obvious one, has higher amounts of gluten, which is better for making yummy breads.  What you need to get is just regular, all-purpose flour.  Any brand will do, but for you Okies, Shawnee Mills is a Made in Oklahoma brand, and I've found that sometimes the MIO brands are cheaper than the "Great Value" brands since they don't have to ship them across the country. Again, the flour will break your piggy bank at around $3.

This next one is more of a money-saving tip rather than an ingredient.  When buying meats, always look at the price per pound.  Even though one package may be more expensive, you will be getting more bang for your buck with a lower price per pound.  What I like to do, especially with chicken breast, is buy in bulk, which for me is a package of about 10 large chicken breasts.  The package usually ranges from $10-12.  When I get home, I take out individual ziplock baggies and place 1-2 pieces of chicken into each bag, making sure to get out as much air as possible. Freeze the chicken until you're ready to use it! Thawing is fairly simple; if you know you're going to use the chicken that night for dinner, set the frozen chicken out in a bowl filled with cold water on the counter that afternoon to start thawing.  By the time you're ready to cook, it should be ready to use! If it is still a little frozen in the center, just use the defrost setting on the microwave for a few minutes. 

On my next post, I will be using some chicken that I bought in bulk in a delicious and super simple recipe!

Oh, and remember this from last time? It is actually cake batter than had run over the side of a pan and fallen to the bottom of Sarah's oven where it had become a blackened and charred pile of molten grossness.

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned something new! As always, I'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions!

-Elise