12 Foods Worth Keeping in the Kitchen Every Week

The fastest proper meal in the house. Two eggs are a breakfast, a lunch, or a dinner with whatever is left in the fridge, and they are cheap for the protein they carry. Keep a dozen and you are never more than seven minutes from food.

Boil six at the start of the week for the days you cannot think. Scramble them with the last of the spinach. Fry one and put it on top of rice, beans or yesterday's pasta, and the leftover becomes a meal.

A bag of plain oats costs very little and lasts for months. Oatmeal in winter, overnight oats in summer, a spoonful stirred raw into yogurt when you want something with more hold. They bring fiber to a breakfast that would otherwise be all sugar, and they keep you full in a way that boxed cereal never does.

Buy the plain kind, not the packets with flavorings and sugar already in them. Cook them with milk rather than water, add fruit, and you have a breakfast that holds until lunch.

Chickpeas, white beans, black beans, whatever you like. A can is protein and fiber for very little money, and it is already cooked. Drained and rinsed, they go into a salad, a soup, a pan of garlic and tomatoes, or a bowl of rice. Mashed with lemon and olive oil they become a spread for toast.

Keep four or five cans and dinner is never further away than a can opener. If you only ever buy one kind, buy chickpeas. They do the most jobs.

The base of half the dinners worth making. A can of tomatoes, simmered with onion and garlic for twenty minutes, is a pasta sauce, a place to poach eggs, the start of a soup, or the thing you pour over beans to make them a meal.

Whole or chopped, it does not much matter, though whole tomatoes tend to taste better and you can crush them with a spoon. Keep three cans and you will reach for them more than anything else in the cupboard.

The vegetable you can always find. Frozen within hours of picking, they are as good as fresh and far easier. A handful into pasta in the last minute of cooking, into a risotto, into fried rice, or into a soup. They need no washing, no chopping and no plan.

They also mean there is always something green in the house, even the day before you shop. Keep a bag at the back of the freezer and treat it as insurance. Most of the time it will be half full, which is exactly right.

Fresh berries are expensive, go soft in two days, and are only good for a few months of the year. Frozen ones are cheap, last for months, and were picked ripe.

A handful on yogurt or oats, thawed in a minute, or blended into a smoothie with a banana and a spoonful of peanut butter. They turn a plain breakfast into one with fruit in it and no added sugar. Keep a bag and stop buying the little plastic boxes that go furry on the second day.

A large tub of plain, unsweetened yogurt is the most useful thing in the fridge. Breakfast with fruit and oats. A spoonful on soup or chili instead of cream. Stirred with garlic, lemon and salt, a sauce for almost anything roasted.

It carries protein, it keeps for a couple of weeks, and it costs a fraction of the small flavored pots, which are mostly sugar. Buy the big tub of plain, whole or low-fat as you prefer, and add your own flavor.

Not glamorous, but almost nothing good begins without them. An onion softened in oil with a clove or two of garlic is the first five minutes of a soup, a sauce, a curry, a pan of beans, or a tray of roasted vegetables.

They keep for weeks somewhere cool and dark, they cost almost nothing, and they are why a meal made from cans and a bag of frozen peas can taste like someone cooked it. Buy a few of each every week and you will never run out at the wrong moment.

Half the time a dish tastes flat it is not missing salt, it is missing something sharp. A squeeze of lemon wakes up soup, beans, greens, fish, rice, and anything that has come out of a can. The zest goes into yogurt, dressings and oatmeal.

One lemon a day is not too many. They keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge, and a bowl of them on the counter is the cheapest good-looking thing in any kitchen. Buy three or four every week and use them without thinking.

Almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, or a jar of peanut butter if you prefer. Nuts bring protein and good fat to the things that lack it. A handful on oats or yogurt turns a light breakfast into one that lasts. A small bowl at four in the afternoon stops the hunt for cookies.

Toasted in a dry pan and scattered over a salad or a soup, they make a simple meal feel considered. Keep one jar going and refill it before it empties rather than after.

Sardines, mackerel, tuna or salmon. A can is protein and good fat that keeps for a year and needs no cooking. Sardines on toast with lemon and black pepper is a lunch. Tuna stirred through pasta with peas and olive oil is a dinner. Mackerel flaked over rice and greens with a soft egg is better than it sounds.

If you find fish difficult, start with tuna and work up. Two or three cans in the cupboard are the difference between a meal and takeout.

The last item is a habit, not a food. Every week, buy one vegetable because it looks good or is cheap, without knowing what you will do with it. A head of cabbage, a bunch of beets, a bag of greens going for very little.

Everything else on this list exists to make that vegetable into dinner. Roast it with onion and garlic, pile it on beans and tomatoes, squeeze lemon over it, put an egg on top. A kitchen stocked this way does not need a plan. It needs one good thing to cook.