flatly of soup, corn muffin, and flowers

Need quick and fast pantry recipes that you can make from the multitude of stockpiled food in your pantry, fridge, and freezer? I’m rounding up some of my favorite meals and recipes that don’t actually feel like a meal you’d eat when you don’t know when the next time you’ll be able to leave your house. Some are my own recipes and some are linked from other sites. Have any ideas? Send them my way! I will keep adding to this list based on what I’m cooking right now.

Beans

Chickpeas with Arugula and Bacon is a super quick and easy side dish that feels filling and sustaining but is only three ingredients. Don’t have chickpeas? Sub cannellini beans. No arugula? Try spinach, or whatever greens you have wilting in your fridge. No bacon? Leave it out and add a little extra olive oil.

chickpeas

Soups/Stews

I make a LOT of bean soups. The following are two soups I often make with fresh or frozen black eyed peas. I have a ton of dried black eyed peas in my pantry right now, so I’d just soak them overnight and add to the soup in the beginning (they take about an hour to soften). The ham is also optional– use what you have!

Black Eyed Pea Soup with Ham and Collard Greens

bowl of soup with flowers in the background

Black Eyed Pea Soup with Kale

Lucky Soup for New Year

Chili

My chili is a staple here in my household, and for good reason. It’s won two chili cookoffs and is just, in general, all around awesome. Meat is scarce, so if you feel so inclined, sub chopped mushrooms, zucchini, and yellow squash for the sausage and ground beef. It’s just as good and filling.

Blue Ribbon Chili

First Place Chili

Rice

I recently made a rice dish out of Dixie Lily’s jambalaya mix, which I have a ton of in my pantry. Rice mixes are quick and easy to dress up. I just added a package of browned smoked sausage. You can add any leftover cooked vegetables you have in your fridge, as well. It was delicious!

Dixie Lily Jambalaya

Noodles

Ramen

I recently discovered I could dress up packaged ramen noodles, and I haven’t looked back. I shaved some carrot in the pot with a vegetable peeler, tossed in some shredded cabbage and fresh spinach, and boiled a duck egg. Here’s a terrible shot of my own lunch and a link to a tutorial for you to do this on your own.

Pasta

Carbonara

This pasta is on deck for tonight. Carbonara is a super easy and delicious meal that will make you forget (momentarily) all about quarantine. Got eggs, spaghetti, parm, and bacon? Make carbonara.

Spaghetti with Tuna

Bon Appetit magazine calls this the “Cheapest, Quickest, Most Comforting Weeknight Dinner Ever.” Give this tuna spaghetti a try.

Need a cocktail? Check out my Quarantini.

quarantine

Lastly, I will leave you with my Quarantini.

No measurements because we are living in a dumpster fire and don’t nobody got time for that.

Ingredients:
•Half a grapefruit from your friend’s tree (a bag of which you picked up from her front lawn at a safe 6-ft distance)
•gin because what else?
•some obscure liqueur you were saving for a special occasion 
•bitters because we bitter

Method:
Shake with ice for ten seconds while singing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” or “The Roof is on Fire” or some equivalent firetastic song. Strain into your most comforting glass (props to ELM Design for this gilded baby).

Drink. Wash your hands. And repeat. 
Cheers, lovelies.