Where Do I Start !!!!

If you've got rice and pasta, you'll need some cook-in sauces, like Dolmio, but cheaper, supermarket own-brand ones are better value. You can make your own sauces, but a cook-in sauce still makes it good value.
If you make a nice casserole, which you could put some nice shin of beef in, with fresh vegetables like carrots, onion, celery, baked beans in, you could also put dumplings in and would need some vegetable suet to go with the flour and water. You could thicken and flavour with a packet soup (you know, the four-in-one variety, not slimmers ones, though).
And you could buy some tinned soups and have with bread for filler. The most filling soups are vegetable and scotch broth rather than purely liquid ones like tomato.

Hope this will be a start.

You should always have in your cupboard:

Dried pasta
Rice
Packet noodles
Porridge oats
Olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
Soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Tomato puree
Tinned tomatoes
Tinned sweetcorn
Wholegrain mustard
Oxo cubes
Curry powder
Chilli powder
BBQ sauce
Ketchup
Baked beans
Kidney beans
Chickpeas

and you'll be ready for anything

I started by collecting jam jars etc. and by hunting for large jars off car boot sales and from old fashioned sweet shops. Once you can see what you have in store, it is easy to replenish as they go down. Storecupboards take a while to get together ... just get one or two extra items each week otherwise it will cost a fortune. Some of the things I have in my storecupboard jars are:

Flour - wholemeal, plain, SR, bread (wholemeal and white), cornflour, carrs sauce flour.

Baking: bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, bun cases, muffin cases, essences (vanilla, lemon etc.), walnuts, ground almonds, golden syrup, treacle, ground ginger, - loads of spices e.g. ground cinamon, nutmeg etc. - honey, porridge (oats), bran,

Salt, powdered milk, (5 different seeds for breadmaking), dried yeast, UHT milk

Sugar: caster, demara, etc

Herbs - I have a shelf full ... I'd buy a new herb or spice each week depending on which recipe I want to try from old style. I now have a great collection which I dip into as needed

Coucous, pastas (several), bulgar wheat, rice (several)

Stock cubes (but I'm making more of my own stock nowadays - which is in the freezer



Tins: tomatoes, sweetcorn, tuna, mackeral, peaches, a range of beans e.g. butterbean etc.

Fridge: cheese (hard and philly type), eggs, yoghurt, butter (sort of store cupboard basics which I buy every week)

Freezer: milk (buy one lot to last the week), frozen peas, meat from farmers market (half the freezer acts as a store cupboard for basic ingredients - the rest contains my 'made from scratch' ready meals e.g. soups, pasties, shepherds pies etc.

This is all I can think of at the moment. Now that I have a good storecupboard I mainly shop for fruit, veg, meat and fish. I then create meals round these and my storecupboard items. I very rarely have to get new ingredient now adays when experimenting with OS recipes.

If you have an empty cupboard, what i would do is write a meal plan for the next week, see what ingredients you will need and then go and buy them. You will then see the type of foods you do eat, and can start building your store up around that. You can then start looking at the recipes on this site, and seeing what you would like to try, and then put on your shopping list the ingredients that you will need from those recipes. What i have in my cupboard will be different from others, and you dont want to waste money buying things you are not going to use!!!!

Hi Caravanlover

I've trawled through the OS threads the other day, my slow cooker is on the way, I've made a list of meals to cook, and now need to finish my shopping list to make sure I only buy what I need!

Have been cooking everything from scratch this week, and children are very happy - to be honest they eat anything anyway - but they've all been converted to 100% home cooked meals - ds makes such great pizza, that nobody wants shop bought ones any more! We don't eat that much "ready made" stuff anyway, due to the effect of additives on ds and dd3, but I'm feeling very inspired by the OS threads!

Ice cream maker bowl is freezing ready to make ice cream for tomorrow, usually only get it out in the summer when we go fruit picking! Children will be extra happy!

My store cupboard seems to have most of the things listed, veggie box is delivered on Fridays, and meat is ordered from the local farm. I think the key is in having a menu plan for the week - well it seems to be for me! Thanks to all on the OS threads!