The Pantry Minimalist

Most cooking advice tells you what to buy. I write about what you already have. Leftovers. The half-bag of rice. The bunch of cilantro that is one day from going. The three eggs and two pieces of chicken at the bottom of the meat drawer. The half jar of olives nobody finished. That is the real pantry. That is what I cook from.

The Pantry Minimalist is a working name. The work is the same: turn what you have into what you eat tonight. Use-it-up recipes, batch-cook plans for the week ahead, the freezer plan for the project cuts you bought on sale. The point is not to be cheap, although it ends up that way. The point is to stop throwing away food.

I take the lead on the Thanksgiving leftover content because Thanksgiving leftovers are the apex of this beat. You spent the whole day cooking. You have a refrigerator full of turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and three different vegetable sides. You have four days off and three meals to cook. The plan is the dish. We have the plan.

I write the use-it-up content the rest of the year. The Sunday Supper leftover playbook for Wednesday tacos. The roast chicken bones that become Thursday's stock. The half-loaf of bread that becomes Friday's strata. The herbs that become a week of pesto. The forgotten can of beans that becomes Saturday's lunch.

If something on this site tells you to throw out a perfectly good leftover, flag it. The whole brand bends in the wrong direction if we ever do that.