From Sad Leftovers to Dream Dinners

This is Priya Krishna, your replacement captain for this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes. The Priya you see today has come a long way in the kitchen. My young, new-to-New York self had a simple but cost-effective weeknight cooking strategy: Buy the same few ingredients every week (pasta, spinach, tomatoes, feta, frozen dumplings, sausage, yogurt), throw a surprise item (sweet potatoes! cookie butter ice cream! an avocado!) into the cart, and make it all work with the rest of my pantry.

The meals were sometimes mundane, but hey, I fed myself, saved money and wasted nothing. My fridge is fuller now. But I tranquil firmly believe that working with what you’ve got and not overbuying groceries (child-free secluded alert!) are good principles for weeknight cooking. This newsletter is imparted the to ingredients I tend to have in my fridge, which I think of as ticking time bombs, mere days from becoming food demolish. These use-them-or-lose-them ingredients, more than anything, dictate what I cook.

Also Read: How to Make Indian Butter Chicken