my pantry essentials.

Why just soup and pasta? I was sitting in at a Women’s seminar about Champagne in San Francisco, feeling both lost and inspired as I listened to lady bosses discuss why they loved wine and specialized specifically in Champagne. I’m always looking for that inspired energy to come from my job (I spend most of my life at work, you know?) … but I had this decades-too-late revelation that maybe that energy needs to come from something that I don’t get paid to do.

There are a few things that give me the inspired energy I saw in those women that night: writing, wine, cooking, and dinner dates (aka sharing a meal with others). I realized that every time I specifically cook pasta or soup it’s because I’m inspired by the constraints of my refrigerator or the challenge of creating a dish for a bottle of wine I’d like to open. The times I’ve been overdue for grocery shopping but still managed to come up with a delicious pasta dish or soup far outweighs the amount of times I’ve been created a killer steak. This post shares some pantry essentials that can help you avoid that ‘babe, we have no food. should we just get takeout?’ rut.

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The shopping list below represents what we pretty much always try to have on hand. This combination will get you pretty far in creating a lot of different things from chicken noodle soup to risotto to spinach pesto. If you prefer more varied flavor profiles, try some of the items in italics. You can use almost every part of the non-perishables: from the Parmesan rinds to the carrot greens. For convenience, we usually buy onions pre-chopped, pre-peeled garlic, and pre-roasted chicken. Time saving is important if you don’t have to sacrifice flavor. The one thing we don’t cheat on is herbs. Please use fresh herbs when they are easily accessible. It hurts my heart when I see people shaking a container of dried herbs into their food.