When you need to cook dinner on a shoestring budget, look no further than your pantry. It can be a treasure trove of fast, budget-friendly options if you stock it with the essentials, and even when there’s nothing in the fridge, I just know I can count on what’s there to pull dinner together in a snap — and for a penny.
Pantry dishes are easy to make because they rely on everyday ingredients as a starting point. Inexpensive building blocks such as flour, rice, beans, and even canned tuna become your kitchen superheroes: Just when you find yourself scratching your head wondering what to make for dinner, they swoop in at the nick of time to help you get food on the table no matter what you have in the fridge.
There are other ways the pantry can save you money, too. When my kids bring friends over after school, the first thing they do is open the cupboards and scrounge around for snacks. Nine times out of ten I’ll hear their friends complain “there’s nothing to eat in here!” because I don’t keep chips, candy, and other “snack” foods in the house. Besides being unhealthy, these foods are extremely expensive. Fortunately, my kids love to prove their friends wrong by showing them there are all kinds of things to eat—they just have to add heat.
