The Pantry Cookbook
How to cook nutritious meals from
scratch, on a budget, when time is short.
by Michelle Clay
cover art by Martinique Fisher
This book and its cover are licensed
under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported. This
means you are free to share (copy, distribute, transmit) the book,
and you are also free to adapt the work, so long as you attribute the
work to Michelle Clay and Martinique Fisher. You may not use this
work for commercial purposes. However, you may sell copies of this
book so long as all profits go to support food banks, school or
community gardens, or similar programs that address hunger or
nutrition issues.
You can set this cookbook up as a
fundraiser for your organization! A digital file of this book is
available, for free, online. If you have a non-profit organization
that addresses hunger or nutrition issues, you may upload this book
to CreateSpace or another self-publisher, for the purpose of
publishing copies for your program's patrons, publishing copies for
fundraisers, and/or selling copies through an online source such as
Amazon for the purpose of collecting royalties for your organization.
For more information, visit http://pantrycookbook.blogspot.com.
Or contact the author at
pantrycookbook@hotmail.com.
If you decide to use this book for your organization, I would love
to hear from you!
0.00 Welcome to the Pantry Cookbook!
How to Use This Book
Welcome to the
Pantry Cookbook! In this book, you will find recipes and information
on how to cook nutritious meals from scratch, on a budget, when time
is short. While this book has been written for the complete kitchen
novice, it is also thorough enough that it can be a reference book to
experienced home-cooks as well.
If you have little or no experience
cooking from scratch, start by reading the rest of this this Welcome
section. Continue on to the Basics of Cooking (1.01),
Basic Cooking Equipment (1.02),
and Cooking Safely (1.03).
Then you may want to skip ahead to the chapter on Quick Meals
(10.00). Other good places to start are the recipes for Boiled
Grains (6.01), Boiled Beans (7.02), Sautéed Vegetables
(5.02), Baked Chicken (9.02), and Pot Roast (8.06).
If you already know how to cook and you
have the necessary equipment, then you can proceed to the recipes.
Use the table of contents to find specific recipes.
You may notice that every recipe in
this book has a number. Each section heading, such as Chicken
(9.00), has a whole number. Subsequent chicken recipes are
labeled with decimals: 9.01, 9.02, etc. Information on cooking is in
the 1.00 section, and everything else is recipes. I used this method
of numbering rather than page numbers so that the book can easily be
printed in different page formats or with additional recipes.
We Eat the Wrong Things
Here in the U.S. we eat too many of the
wrong sorts of foods. Fast food, restaurants, and pre-packaged foods
leave out nutritious, whole ingredients in favor of cheap fats and
sugars. Because these foods are so convenient, we eat too many empty
calories, and not enough of the other nutrients that we need to stay
healthy. The results are obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer,
and other serious health problems.
What Are the Wrong Things?
Sugary drinks: soda, fruit juice,
energy and sports drinks, flavored water, etc.
Fast foods: hamburgers, pizza, hot
dogs, French fries, etc.
Snacks: potato chips, corn chips,
candy, etc.
Grain-based desserts: donuts, cookies,
cake, pie, sweet rolls, etc.
Dairy desserts: ice cream, cheese cake,
etc.
Pre-packaged foods: mac-n-cheese,
canned pasta, frozen meals, etc.
Any of these foods would be okay in
moderation, but the fact is that we are not eating them in
moderation.
What is in these foods that is so
bad? Fats, sugars, and salt.
Some salt is necessary to a
healthy diet, and almost all food needs some salt in order to taste
good. However, snack foods, pre-packaged foods, and food from
restaurants, especially fast-food restaurants, tend to include far
more salt in a single meal than is good for us.
Some fat is necessary to a
healthy diet. Fats supply essential fatty acids, and help the body
to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K. In general, “solid fats” -
fats which are solid at room temperature - are less good for you than
“oils”. Food from restaurants, especially fast-food restaurants,
tend to include far more fat in a single meal than is good for us.
Some sugar is necessary to a
healthy diet. Sugar is a carbohydrate, and carbohydrates are what
fuel our bodies. However, “added” sugars, such as white sugar
and high fructose corn syrup, are not necessary at all. These added
sugars are what make soda, sweetened fruit drinks, and desserts taste
sweet. Refined carbohydrates from white flour and white rice are
also bad for us in excess. Our bodies function best on “complex”
carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains.
Why Don’t We Eat the Right Things?
People used to eat more whole grains,
until someone figured out that if the brown outer layer was processed
off of the wheat or rice, then the grains had a much longer
shelf-life. Similarly, salt, sugar, and oil were found to be
excellent preservatives of food. Almost all preserved foods last
longer at the expense of nutrition.
The ability to store food for a long
time protects populations from starvation when crop failures occur.
So over the centuries, we have likely survived by developing a taste
for foods that are preserved: overly salty, overly processed, overly
oily, and less nutritious. This is in addition to an ancient
instinct to eat high-calorie foods when we can get them.
Restaurants and food manufacturers
capitalize on our taste for fats, sugars, and salts, because it is
cheaper for them to cook from preserved ingredients than it is for
them to make food from fresh ingredients, and because the more extra
salt, sugar, and fat that they add, the more we seem willing to pay
for and eat what they cook. Additionally, most restaurants do not
consider themselves obligated to cook nutritious and low-calorie
meals. By contrast, when we cook for ourselves and our families, and
especially our children, we must strive to cook and serve nutritious
food, in order to be healthy.
What Are the Right Foods?
The most nutrient-rich, low calorie
foods we can eat are whole grains, vegetables, eggs, low-fat dairy,
lean meats, poultry, seafood, nuts, and seeds. When we cook with
these things from scratch, the results are far better for us.
Isn’t it More Difficult to Cook
from Scratch? Yes and no. Cooking from scratch can be very
difficult, but this cookbook focuses on recipes that are easy to
cook.
Isn’t it More Expensive to Cook
from Scratch? Yes and no. This cookbook focuses on ingredients
that are inexpensive and easy to find.
Doesn’t it Take Longer to Cook
from Scratch? Yes and No. This cookbook focuses on three types
of recipes: those that can be cooked in a hurry, those that can be
cooked in advance and then reheated, and those which can be cooked in
advance and then used as an ingredient in a quick recipe.
Additional resources:
Harvard's
Healthy Eating Plate: an easy-to-read resource on what constitutes a
balanced diet.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/
The
World’s Healthiest Foods: a lexicon of whole ingredients, the
nutrients they contain, and how to best cook them to preserve their
nutrients. http://www.whfoods.com
How to Cook Everything, by food writer
Mark Bittman. This inexpensive cookbook may be the only cookbook
that you ever need. http://www.howtocookeverything.com/
The US Department of Agriculture's
SNAP-Ed Connection recipe finder. This is a database of recipes for
foods made from inexpensive whole ingredients. It includes nutrition
information, cost per serving, and print options:
http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/
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