I mean the one you do when you want something easy to do, but not when you’re tired at the point you microwave a frozen-meal, or just cut down a piece of cheese and put it in a bread
Pretty much all of them. I’ve made it a project to feed myself with just nonperishables given like 30 minutes of cooking a night, and I’m about 75% of the way there, I’d say. Salad greens and eggs seem to be impossible to replace, but I can realistically have my own chicken coop and a little growing area indoors. Canadian food prices and qualities are fucked, yo, especially away from big centers.
Last night, I had stierum with a simple salad. It’s a bit like a single, big savoury pancake, and you eat it cut into cubes. The dressing is cream (the one rule-breaking element, for now), a dash of vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. I like to let it soak into the bread a bit
On nights I really DGAF, my go-tos are pasta with jarred sauce, or shakshuka. You can get shakshuka sauce in a jar now, so you just empty it into a frying pan, crack four eggs in, and cover until they’re cooked. Serve with toast, which you can butter with vegetable oil or ghee.
You can make a vegetarian pulled pork with canned green jackfruit, an onion, bottled barbecue sauce, buns and jarred red cabbage and apple in place of the coleslaw. You pretty much pull apart the jackfruit, and add it with the sauce to sauteed onions. It’s delicious, all three components are slightly sweet and they go together well.
I’ll stop there, unless somebody is actually interested, but I’ve got a few more.
Sometimes I bulk out my shakshuka with another great pantry staple - lentils. And a little more involved for this thread but mujadara is another great dish that’s primarily pantry ingredients plus onions. But I almost always have onions on hand and they keep so I give them a pass
Onions could also be pressure canned, if the world is ending. They keep well enough they’re not usually an issue for me, though, unlike literally all other produce except common tubers and maybe cabbages.
Lentils in shakshuka is a neat idea! I’ll have to try that if I ever have to feed more than two with it. Do you use canned or dried? Funny enough, I have tried to make mujadara, although I don’t think I “nailed it”, and found it kind of bland. Any tips on seasoning?