Matters of personal finance are better left personal or discussed by articulate experts like [Stacy Cowley](http://www.birdsandbills.com/), but I can’t introduce this topic without explaining that Laurie and I have developed an arcane system for taking one monthly paycheck and randomly occurring freelance writing checks and turning it into a steady income stream without running out of money at the end of the month. One clever module of this exquisitely fine-tuned system tends to make us run out of money during the third week of the month.
So we look into the pantry.
I’d define a pantry item as an ingredient that annoys you when it’s not in the house. They have varying levels of importance, of course. If I ran out of salt, that would be a bad day. There’s a wonderful blog called The Perfect Pantry that is all about pantry items. Recently it has featured unsalted butter, white whole wheat flour, and frozen chicken breasts.
Occasionally, an ingredient will step up and, through persistence, ask to be added to the pantry. Most recently, we’ve elected pickled jalapeños, cream, and Eggo waffles. Iris and I are finally getting around to planting cilantro this week. (Apparently you can’t just plant [Penzeys](http://www.penzeys.com/) coriander seeds.) I wish there were a way to keep herbs in the pantry other than growing them.
Some of our favorite pantry meals are:
* yeasted waffles
* spaghetti carbonara
* blueberry pancakes
* bacon-jalapeño pizza
* Safeway potstickers
Cowboy beans come close. They require cilantro. Cilantro, why do you have to be so tasty?
I agree. Except in my case, I barely can get the stuff to grow and then it bolts on me. Frustrating… I keep buying cilantro in multiple bunches every week at the farmer’s market. How do they do it?
Thanks for the mention of The Perfect Pantry! I have to say that I’m not a cilantro lover (though I do plant it in the garden every summer, and it bolts almost immediately), so my pantry could survive forever without it. But Eggo waffles…hmmm, I do love them….
“Most recently, we’ve elected pickled jalapeños, cream, and Eggo waffles.”
Ew, that sounds like a terrible combination.
Trader joes do some really good frozen herbs, maybe thats an option?
my default pantry meal is spaghetti with anchovies and garlic sauteed in olive oil. I would eat that almost constantly if not for that pesky ‘you should eat vegetables’ thing.
If you (or is it Iris?) keep Eggo waffles in stock, you might want to upgrade a bit. Lifestream brand frozen waffles are much better–they actually taste pretty good in a wholegrainy toaster waffle kind of way. I like FlaxPlus. They are in the freezer section of the grocery, expcept that sometimes they are in natural foods (as opposed to un-natural foods)section.
Tamara, yesterday I bought a box of 60 Eggos. But I’ll keep Lifestream in mind when we run out, in three days or so.