to preface: i cannot make food to save my life (i need to learn, i know). i have no idea if anything edible can be made from the provided ingredients.

this partly exists as a reminder to everyone complaining under FauxPseudo's last challenge post that you, too, can make posts here; it is not meant to be a slight against FauxPseudo, who's just trying to provide fun content for the community.

you are on the set of The Great British Bake Off, and have access to every appliance and utensil there. you're here to cook.

the time limit is 4 hours. after that, you must present what you have made to judges Paul Hollywood and Nigella Lawson, who will make fun of you if it's bad. (not actually. but pretend you had 4 hours to prepare this meal, and that i could afford the judges.)

your ingredients are:

• a dozen bagels
• 10 bars of dark chocolate
• 17 chilli peppers
• 15 mini babybel cheese snacks
• 8 egg yolks
• 3 boxes of pancake mix
• a bag of tuna floss
• a jug of milk
• a bottle of rapeseed oil
• a large block of pink salt
• one strawberry.

all listed ingredients must be used to some degree, and you can't add any more. you're allowed to have leftovers as long as everything's used once.

i haven't provided exact measurements (partly because i'm writing this to procrastinate university work and don't have time for that) so please assume reasonable quantities for each.

what would you make?

What do you always have on hand? Why?

I'd count refrigerated items as pantry staples if they keep for longer than a couple weeks.

One recent addition to my pantry has been dried chillies - great base for red chile sauce for enchiladas. Those plus maseca and some beans (also both staples) and I have a base for amazing enchiladas or tacos or whatever.

You have roasted barley, an orange bell pepper and a well-stocked pantry. What are you making?

This is a hard mode challenge.

Shiitake, green beans, broccoli, onion, carrot and pad noodles. A very light lo mein sauce of hoisin, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, sugar and red pepper flakes. Some avocado to top it.

I may have put in too many veg. Didn't even have room for any cabbage.

Cost per person $2.10

As I said last post I’m looking into puréed veggies. Peas this time with lemon and olive oil. I should have learned cooking sooner this is much funnier than my day job.

I accidentally had my scale set to the wrong increment when I measured my flour for the pizza crust. So I had to add more water until I got something usable.

I used it as an excuse to make a bonus pizza with smoked mozzarella, a tiny chunk of pepper jack and a jalapeno.

Base cost of pizza is $2.77 each. Toppings are practically free. Except that bell pepper. I bought it at 68¢ and have used it in three different meals. But today I saw that if I replaced it it was going to cost me $1.27. The price has doubled in two weeks.

Meanwhile red, yellow and orange bell peppers are "just" $1.54. and the three pack of those colors was just $2.40. A rare and infuriating case where green bell peppers are more expensive than the more time intensive riper versions.

The picture is your starter. Assume a basic pantry for your other ingredients. What are you cooking?

These two ingredients were less than $4 total when I bought them.

For me, an obvious choice here is quesadillas. A little bit of salt, baking powder, oil and water and you have tortillas. You could add a little sour cream or hot sauce or peppers and onions or any number of other things to make this into a meal.

What are you going to make? How much is it going to cost per a person? Bonus points if you know how long it's going to take? You kind of have to rest tortilla dough for 30 minutes. So for two people this meal is going to take me about an hour.

--

Not included in the price is the cutting board. I made it years ago as an experiment to see if I could frame an edge face cutting board without it cracking breaking itself apart. It's made of poplar and it refuses to die. Materials caused on it was probably about $10. Labor time was probably about 2 hours.

Poplar makes a horrible cutting board. It's too soft even though it's a hardwood. However, for end grain butcher blocks it's a champion. I usually only use this for cutting and serving pizza because every knife mark shows on it.

I had a craving for Fritos but no money. But I have cornmeal.

I kept finding the same recipe over and over again, but after following it I could definitely tell that there were errors in it.

So I did a second batch with minor variations. The second batch is better. But not perfect. More testing is needed.

Cost per batch: 20¢

This food is one of my faves. The lemon makes it even more.
Apart from the ingredients listed above, it has also onion and olive oil.

I had different ideas for dinner but when she knows what she wants I like to encourage it. So this is dinner.

Cost per person: $1.15

What are some vegetarian meals or dishes you think people should know about?

I'm pretty guilty of using meat as a crutch in most of my cooking. I'd love to hear about some good meals for inspiration. Ideally things that aren't made to imitate/replace meat but exist well on their own.

Every woman I have ever dated is a boxed mac and cheese originalist. They want it according to manufacturer's instructions, no doctoring. Eventually they would demand just once cook it the "proper" way.

Well one time I handed them their bowl and then started dusting mine with curry powder. I could instantly hear what sounded like a puppy whimpering. It was her realizing that she had made a mistake and she also wanted curry mac.

Cost per person: $1.60

I had dough I needed to do something with. Wife said "make bread and put stuff on it.". That sounded more interesting than French toast.

So here we are.
Top left going clockwise.
Butter & orange marmalade.
Bread grilled in butter topped with pak fried smoked mozzarella.
Butter & cinnamon and sugar. Butter & cheddar. Butter & peanut butter, raspberry preserves. Butter under smoked mozzarella, orange marmalade, raspberry preserves. Butter grilled bread, smoke mozzarella & smoke sardines, broiled. Bread and meltish cheddar.

Cost per person? I have no idea. Homemade bread was about $1.25, 80¢ of butter, $3 sardines, 75¢ smoked mozzarella. The rest is rounding errors.

This is basically high food but I don't get high.

Beef Bourguignon, roasted and pureed cauliflower and pickled red onions.

The beef and the pickled onions were things I’ve done already a bunch of times but the cauliflower was new on both accounts.

Not sure I’ll do the roasted version again but the puréed version was a blast. Next time I’ll try the zucchini purée.

90 calories each. Made 30 cookies.

Mix together

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar

Mix in

• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg

In a separate bowl Mix

• 1.5 cups flour
• 2 tsp corn starch
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

Mix dry and wet ingredients.

Add 1 cup chocolate chips. I used micro mini eggs to make them fun and colourful. It was 190g I think.

Mix.

Make into 1 inch balls then flatten a bit. I put them on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread apart because they expand. Bake at 350°F for 12 minutes.

Black beans, carrot, bell pepper, cheddar, sour cream. Saute or stir fry your veg filling before assembly.

Cost per person, $2.44

Howdy folks, does anyone have meal recommendations for very poor time management, or for quick meals, or just for depression days?

Is this weird or have I just never seen it before: I made some fettucini alfredo and some of the noodles are uncooked. And I don't mean I didn't boil them long enough, I mean like they never finished the noodle cooking process at the manufacturing level because a few strands of the fettucini are still straight up raw flour in the middle. 🫩

Super simple recipe:
1.5 lbs stew meat
2.5 cups beef broth
5 oz tomato paste
5 carrots, chopped
1 white onion, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
Sage to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Dash of cinnamon

Throw it all together in the instant pot and pressure cook on high for 30 minutes. Serve over rice or egg noodles with a big hunk of crusty bread.

Let's take the same strategy of small amounts of miscellaneous veg and protein I use for fried rice and make lo mein. Carrot, onion, bell pepper, cabbage, chicken thigh,

Soy sauce, roasted sesame oil, hoisin, rice vinegar, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, corn starch, garlic chives.

Cost per person $2.57

(for god's sake, do I really want to share this?)
Uuuuhhh... okay, the other night I was trying to do a quickie, half-arsed Borscht-test for the first time ever, and... it kinda kicked my arse?

Here's the goods--
Ukrainian Borscht recipe, as shared here:
https://piefed.social/post/1960602

And... instead of powdering the bay leaves, or just leaving them intact, in a major-genius move, I decided to break them up in to chunks, for the soup, to better-quickly disseminate. I kinda just do that in general, because I like fibre in my diet, if that makes sense.

Flash-forward 45min, and my half-arsed Borscht-test absolutely came out BEAUTIFULLY. Like- total beet-taste, lovely potato chunks, nice cabbage-part, excellent seasonings ("hot," as I always like it), no sugar added, and I was sooooo proud of myself.

Except that, my throat kept scratching for the next hour. I figured it was just one little bit that I needed to swallow down, and did all I could on that score. Then I figured that maybe I'd carelessly scratched-up my esophagus via whatever? Yeah well, whatever, that should heal fast, dude.

Except no-- it just didn't go away, like a PITA post-nasal drip at its worst. (raise your hand...)

Eh, so after an hour of stupid mind-games such as that, something still seemed wrong at a fundamental level, so I grabbed my best, completely overpowered torch*, went to the bathroom mirror, and took a good, hard look. So far so good, everything seemed intact! Then I reached down to manually open my throat, and VOILA, the immediate prolonged hacking response, and a HUGE chunk of bay leaf I coughed up. oO

Holy shit, ma dudes. Bonus points for that chunk being hilariously Brasil-shaped roughly, as I've been listening to a lot of Bossa Nova lately. (I swear)

In any case, PLEASE be careful with yon Bay Leaf chunks out there, my friends. It's really kind of a badass, in truth... oO

(note to myself: "good job, dude, now everyone across the Fediverse knows that you're a complete idiot" XD)

* lithium-battery flashlight in this case, rather blinding in most cases

Brine cured pork chop with Thai Hom Mali rice and a curry masala of red and brown beans, Caribbean style salted pigtails and smoked pork belly. Masala made with Nandan Hindustani masala, cumin, Malay ketumbar, onions, garlic, coconut milk and madame jeanette peppers). Salad not pictured.

Mustard, mayo, black pepper and a mix of stuff pulled from the yard, namely duck and chicken eggs and green onions.

Cost per person $1.02

Purely hydroponic, no soil involved. Avocado oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, garlic powder.