Simple Recipe Starter

!±8± Simple Recipe Starter

As we struggle to create affordable homemade meals that are healthy and delicious there is one simple option we seem to overlook. A simple starter recipe. All recipes have key basic ingredients and from those key ingredients you can create so many more options.

I dare you to pull out one of your favorite cookbooks. I bet you will find many recipes that require ingredients that you do not have in the pantry already. Another problem I often run into is that the recipes are complicated and therefore I am not as eager to prepare a new home-cooked meal because I am not sure how it will turn out.

As a child I remember my mom's meal being made from scratch. She didn't have the option of running to the store to grab some quick ingredient for dinner that night. We didn't see boxes of cake mixes or prepackaged biscuits. Every recipe my mom prepared used ingredient from the garden, the farm or the big white gallons stored in the pantry. We love our childhood memories of mom's fresh baked bread or homemade pies. Even in the modern age of convenience, we can create those memories with our children as well.

Even if you are not preparing simple meals like you mom or grandma, I bet those simple ingredients are in the pantry. We buy them all, we know we should have them available for use. Now we just need to use them. Here is a list of those ingredients needed to start a simple recipe starter:

Salt
Flour
Shortening
Baking Soda

Look in your pantry, I bet they are there. And here is the best part - one you have the simple recipe starter, most of the other ingredients necessary to complete the recipe will be right next to the ingredients you just found!

Let me show you what I mean. Say you recipe starter is for a baking mix like Bisquick. From that recipe starter you can add some dry milk for biscuits, or some sugar, eggs, vanilla and water to make an up-side down cake and how about a dash of sugar and water for some homemade pancakes.

I know it seems easy just to buy those biscuits from the bakery already made and ready to eat. I myself am guilty of buying a cake mix and frosting for the kids to make cupcakes but times are really tough right now. We face financial struggles and these items of convenience we purchase are getting to expensive.

To save money and feed our family healthier home-cook meals we have to go back to the basics and use these great starter recipes.