Pantry Basics

If you have a well stocked pantry, you can usually make quite a bit without having to go to the grocery store. It takes a lot of work to get the right variety and amounts of things as base for your cooking, but well worth the investment. As you get better at thinking out two or three meals in advance, you begin to see commonalities amongst your ingredients. You've seen it with the recipes I've shared lately - by investing in making your own tomato sauce in bulk, you created enough sauce for at least a week or two that you don't need to buy!

This is also very true when it comes to baking. For the most part, if you have flour, sugar, brown sugar, salt, butter, eggs, oil and baking soda/baking powder, you can make quite a few things. I also keep vanilla and baking cocoa in stock.

Here's one simple dessert that takes most of my "stocked ingredients" and is pretty tasty too.

Brownies

Ingredients:
3/4 c. cocoa            2 c. sugar                  1/2 tsp. baking soda            2 eggs           2/3 c. oil
1 1/3 c. flour           1/2 c. boiling water     1 tsp. vanilla                        1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Mix cocoa and baking soda.
2. Blend in 1/3 c. oil.
3. Add boiling water and mix until it thickens.
4. Stir in sugar, eggs and oil.
5. Stir until smooth.
6. Add flour, vanilla and salt.
7. Pour in a 9x13 greased pan.
8. Pop in the oven for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees.

As always, have fun!