Your store cupboard

There's a phrase I keep using in order to get out of adding items to the financial verdict.  It is "pennies - from store."

Every home cook needs a store cupboard with some vital ingredients in it.  They don't cost much and you'll just keep calling on them as they pop up in every recipe that you find online and in every recipe book that you buy.  If you're starting from nothing there'll be a couple of weeks of expenditure as you find that one recipe calls for soy sauce, the next calls for fish sauce, and the next half-dozen all call for herbs and spices that you don't have yet.  It's worth persevering though, because it becomes a little easier at every recipe (because you already have a couple of ingredients from the previous one in your store cupboard) and once you have a healthy store cupboard it becomes much easier to maintain.

It's a great buffer to have as well - if you find yourself in a bit of a financial pickle at the end of the month you'll always be able to scrape a couple of meals together from the cupboard.

Here's mine.  It contains pasta, basmati rice, brown rice, paella rice, dried ready-to-make risotto, assorted dried beans, pearl barley, chick peas, couscous, suet, tinned tomatoes, a couple of relishes and chutneys, salt, pepper, herbs, spices, tinned tuna, anchovies, mackerel and sardines, tinned soup, stock cubes, and some other flavourings including chilli sauce, worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

Out of shot, there's always cheap veg oil for frying and decent olive oil for flavour, butter and jars of mustard, ginger paste and mayonnaise in the fridge, the end of a loaf of sliced bread in the freezer and probably some cheese.  Fresh garlic, too - it lasts ages so no point in buying it preserved.  Just keep it out on the work surface - if you put it in the fridge or a cupboard it will sprout!

If you went to the supermarket with all this on the shopping list it would cost a fair bit, but the point here is that it all lasts forever and it doesn't all run out at the same time.  Once it's all up to speed, you might run out of one or two things per month - so maybe you need to spend £3 per month to keep it all brimmed and ready to go.  Just remember to circulate, putting new items at the back of the cupboard, so that you don't end up finding something at the back of the cupboard that's been there since you moved in.  This doesn't happen to me because I move house about once a year.

You'll notice that I'm not loyal to a particular brand or supermarket.  Again partly because I move house a lot, but also because I simply don't like to give all my money to one particular organisation.  Some shops are better at certain things than others.

Looking at this picture and thinking of items that either live in the fridge or freezer or can be found very cheaply, I reckon there's a couple of weeks worth of meals here.  Cheese on toast, sardines on toast or houmous and pitta for lunch, or soup if you can find a few pennies to buy veg (leek and potato maybe?).  Lasagne if you can stretch to a bit of mince (or some mushrooms and a bell pepper if you can't).  Tuna pasta bake. I think there might be a tin of sweetcorn hiding at the back - cold pasta, tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise with some herbs - lovely.

For dinner, you could knock up a warming bean chilli with rice, or a pearl barley and bean stew with herbs if you wanted more British flavours.  There's suet, so you can make dumplings to put in the stew.  Those relishes will help all round with big flavours.

There's loads of pasta, so potential for any variety of pasta and tomato sauce - spicy, basilly, oniony or whatever you fancy.

Here's to the store cupboard!