Cooking like my mother

On March 5th, my office asked all employees that could work from home to work from.  Within weeks with shelter in place announced, and schools/university closed, our family of four started our stay at home routine. At the 3 months mark, I thought it will be fun to record what we have been cooking/eating and how making infrequent trips to the grocery store impacted our cooking.  Looking at all the food photos for last 3 months, It was easy for me to categorize everything we cooked and ate into following categories 1. Comfort food, quick and simple -  This is the first category of dishes, each one we have likely cooked multiple times. These are the dishes I resorted to when I did not have time to plan in advance and needed to quickly get something on the table. Many of these dishes are using ingredients I usually keep a good stock of in the pantry. From top (L to R) - Pesto pasta with tomatoes, Noodles with Tofu and vegetables, Pasta Puttanesca, Beans and Rice wit...

My pantry is usually very well stocked with different types of grains, flours, beans, legumes, nuts, spices, noodles, pastas, sauces, oils etc. I keep a running shopping list on my phone for items that run out or running low as a reminder to buy it when I am at the store next time. I don't like to waste food so I am on the lookout for things that might go stale or bad. But periodically or sometimes a month or two before a long vacation, I go through a more formal cleaning approach where I stop buying ingredients for stocking and start planning meals with the intention of clearing out ingredients in my pantry and freezer. Since ingredients that linger longer in the pantry are typically the ones I don't use a lot of to start with, it takes some effort to plan meals around it. For this spring cleaning, I have moved all items that need to be consumed completely to an eye level shelf in the pantry. Having these items in front of me will serve as a reminder and my goal i...