Great list, and great timing on this article. I just posted yesterday about two great kitchen gift ideas to ask for during the holidays that could save money for years by encouraging and helping people cook at home.

And like you, cooking is my second job it seems. I absolutely love to cook, I’m addicted to the food network. Nothing beats some good home cookin’!

I like the article. This makes me wish I knew how to cook. Those ingredients look very good. Maybe you could post some day on some easy ways to learn how to cook without blowing up your kitchen. Since blowing up your kitchen would be a very costly disaster to fix, you can sneak it by under a finance blog :-)

-William
A Financial Revolution

Ginger! You forgot ginger… I like it fresh, but powder will do in a pinch. It’s good for soy-ginger saucy stuff for Asian food and for making gingersnaps around the holidays.

Your list also forgets regular flour.

I also keep around buillion cubes and grits and cheese. Shredded cheese freezes well so I usually keep a bag in the freezer when they go on sale.

oh… I took a look at the link you posted. For me, the bare-bones pantry also includes tinned tomatoes, crushed or diced. They’re easy to dump into a crockpot.

Dried lentils or beans. Same. Goes great in a crockpot, but do not mix with tomatoes. The acids in the tomatoes make the legumes a funny texture. (Funny weird, not funny ha-ha.)

I’m trying to think what I have because I am bare-bones at the moment. I would probably include canned corn and spaghetti/ramen noodles too.

I second what mapgirl says: flour(s), tinned items (in my kitchen: tomatoes, tomato sauce, pasta sauce, tuna) and other long-lasting goods like rice and pasta. And my baking box always holds raisins and nuts, although those sometimes end up directly in my mouth.

I notice that the more I cook, the more I want to cook. A nice ‘vicious circle” to find myself in. :-)

My regular items include soy sauce, sesame oil (for flavoring), oyster sauce or teriyaki sauce and ramen noodles or rice noodles. Then I can toss together a quick stir fry. Much tastier and healthier than take-out Chinese. Not to mention cheaper.

tarragon is not a spice, it’s an herb.

Yeah, where are the flours, pastas, rices, grains – you know, the actual staple foods?

I like your list! i usually keep molasses on hand, insead of brown sugar, though, for anyone who is super frugal, and hates to try softening hard brown sugar. When it’s time to make something with brown sugar, I just mix a bit of molasses (to taste) into the sugar. If you need a cup of brown sugar, a cup of whate, and a a teaspoon of molasses should be alright. I use more, because I like the taste, and like the idea of adding more iron to my diet.

Great post, but for those of us who still hate to cook, there’s supercook.com. You type in all the ingredients you have in your kitchen-fridge/freezer/cupboards/etc, and it’ll give you all the recipes you can make with those items. And most of the recipes are pretty simple.

I also suggest: flour and red pepper flakes