Always in my house, I have almonds, hummus, Triscuits, and cheddar cheese. It takes me back to childhood. My go-to meal would probably be pasta.
The hardest part of cooking is shopping, and if you organize yourself and shop once a week, you're halfway there.
Honestly, there always has to be a jar of Marmite in the cupboard. And a bag of Fruit Gums. That's living with a British man for me.
If kids can learn how to make a simple Bolognese sauce, they will never go hungry. It's pretty easy to cook pasta, but a good sauce is way more useful.
I always have parmigiano-reggiano, olive oil and pasta at home. When people get sick, they want chicken soup; I want spaghetti with parmesan cheese, olive oil and a bit of lemon zest. It makes me feel better every time.
If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless.
If you looked in my fridge, you'd see maybe 12 different mustards.
I'm Mr. Grits. One of the non-perishables.
When I get home after being away for work, my wife always stuffs the fridge with loads of what she calls 'nibbles' - all the great things you can eat straight from the fridge, like chunks of cheese, slices of ham, bowls of hummus.
Everybody can cook. You don't have to do anything fancy. You can do a nice antipasto spread with sardines, anchovies, some meats, marinated vegetables, fruits, cheese, nuts, and crackers.
When I'm desperate for spring produce but nothing has hit the farmstand yet, frozen green peas are a godsend.
I like to keep almonds in my pantry. I also like to keep fruit on hand, just different types depending on the season. And string cheese - that's a really good one.
We didn't have nine brands of cereal at home. We'd line up to fill our bowls from a giant vat of oatmeal.
My curiosity and love for food started at an early age. My mother was a working mom, so I learned to whip up sweet and savory food using everyday pantry and grocery store ingredients that required little supervision.
Make dinner with the goal of stretching it out for lunch in the back of your mind. Making more of one thing is cheaper than buying more varied ingredients for each meal.
Canned chickpeas have terrific range, which is why I make sure I always have at least a can or two lying around at home. They puree easily into a smooth and creamy hummus or crisp into crunchy little nuggets as a component of a sheet tray dinner.
A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.
If I really don't feel like cooking, I have a bowl of lentil pasta with Rao's jarred sauce.
Canned chickpeas are my tried-and-true pantry fallback for those days where I get home late with no game plan and no energy to cook. More than just about any other canned bean, they retain their shape and texture really well.
I think that a lot of us at home are iron chefs in their own right in that we have to come up with meals real quickly.
Everyone's been on a ramen noodle diet once or twice.
Shop often, shop hard, and spend for the best stuff available - logic dictates that you can make delicious food only with delicious ingredients.
There's nothing wrong with using frozen and canned food. There's nothing in this series I'm ashamed of. It's the way I cook.
My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty, with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store, because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.
I don't have anything to eat in my house but chips and Gatorade.
