Hey, everybirdy. I want to share with you all the recipes that I love. I really want to express the fact that I would not be able to make some of these recipes without the help of all of the food pantries in my community.

In this series, I am going to post what I get from the food banks and I will share recipes using these ingredients.

A little bit about me: I grew up on SNAP, and had it when I was in college. My parents taught me how to budget and not go over. I have them to thank for giving me such an interesting and unique relationship with food.

I have always been fascinated with food. Even when I was younger I would be comforted by the sight of those peanut butter reindeer cookies. And that was not the only time I would be comforted by food.

One of the more routine dinners we would have consisted of Mom and Pop buying five things: Italian sausages, hot dog buns, spaghetti, mozzarella cheese, and pasta sauce. We would have 3 meals in a row.

1. Italian Sausage
2. Spaghetti
3. Baked Spaghetti

For some reason, knowing that order was comforting to me.

That is the goal of this series. I want people to find that food can be comforting, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Some ways that I save money, besides going to the mobile food drive and food banks when we need to, are buying the bigger bags of pantry staples. I do that because it helps that we are only buying flour and sugar about once or twice a month.

In my pantry, I have a big storage container for 10 lbs of flour. For our 10 lbs of sugar, we use a recycled pretzel container. For some reason that plastic is indestructible meaning it has fallen down the stairs without breaking.

Always buy spices when you need them. If you are like me and always have an abundance of supplies in your pantry. You’re gonna want to make sure you have cinnamon and cloves. And don’t look at the per-unit price for spices. Because nutmeg is like $25. But for each recipe, you are going to maybe use a teaspoon. Making the price less than a penny.

Vanilla is controversial for some bakers who will only buy the expensive stuff. The stuff that comes from the beans but here I am going to the Mexican isle at my local Walmart and buying my Molina Vanilla. Not just because it’s the cheapest at $1.82, but because I really like the flavor.

This series will be both cooking and baking sometimes there might be more of one over the other and the reason will be simple. I either got a bunch of sweet or savory items.

In exchange for shortening, I am using either margarine or butter because the price is getting so expensive. And you might see me use butter and margarine interchangeably. That is because I use them both but for the majority speaking I use margarine.

This last food bank trip we were given:

1. More apples
2. Canned Pears
3. Tomatoes
4. Nut pod creamer
5. Garbanzo beans (dried)

Now my goal is to use these ingredients before they go bad so we don’t have much more food waste.

Feel free to send me recipes here or on my Instagram. I will be sure to look at them and I might share these recipes