What You Can Cook from the Shopping List or Pantry: Permutations

As an experienced cook, I marvel at what you can make from a limited number of pantry ingredients. Inexperienced cooks (or people who hate cooking like my mother) tend to keep their cupboards bare and so have to shop afresh for every meal. This is time-consuming and expensive.

From the Publix sale list posted last time, you can see a plethora of possibilities. And permutations within the permutations.

Pasta with tomato sauce.
--Add cheese
--Add sausage

Rice with Eastsmart* veggies
--Add cheese
--Add sausage
--Add egg if you have one
--Add soy sauce instead of the cheese for some Asian flair

--Broth plus veggies
--Canned tomatoes
--Cheese
--Add rice
--Add pasta
--Sausage
--Soy sauce

*Those Eatsmart vegetables are great, especially when on sale for $1. We went to Publix in Alabama for research (not really; we went to visit Miss Em). The packages included: broccoli, broc and cauliflower, broc and cauliflower and carrots, Asian mix (my fave); broccoli slaw (runner up). If I were you, dear College Cooks and Fellow Travelers, I would buy as many as I could use up to the expiration date (or even a bit past).

Any other ideas?