I have thought about doing posts on that. There is a problem of regionalness. My pantry in Lesser Carolina is very different from my pantry in San Diego. But there are strategies of stocking a pantry. That are universal that people can find useful.

One thing I had to adjust is potatoes. In San Diego I could buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes and it could last two months. Here in the humidity of The South a 5 pound bag will start sprouting in two weeks.

I never had pantry moths in San Diego. But here everything that can be moth food has to be put into moth proof containers.

Sample pantry shelf picture for tax.

I literally could not survive on meals like that at my size.

Your cooking “challenge” may well be butter and small sticks.

The constraints are not in good faith.

I.e., You have two lacking ingredients and literally anything else.

Fine. I’ll pass on the ingredients and cook a steak and potato from the pantry.

Don’t worry, spawn would take care of him in a few seconds once the weird fetus demon was handled.

Nah nah, no worries.

Peppers are great no matter the colour.

I can’t stand green, but other than that I also like 'em.

Slice the pepper thin and curl each strip as a halo around some of the barley corns. Use honey or ketchup to hold shape, and then throw into the saucepan with butter, until crisp. Douse with water. Then open up a packet of crisps and dump the lot inside, shaking throughly. Don’t do this too long or the plastic/foil might melt/burn. Serve on a plate with chopsticks

What meal did you envision that includes, but is not limited to, those two ingredients?

I totally get the concern on calories. What if you boiled the barley, and added it to some canned tomato sauce, chili powder and ground beef to create a chili? Use the pepper with some onion as your sauted veg base for the chili. All your nutrients and calories and both ingredients used.

At this point the challenge is basically meaningless.

If I can literally select anything that I want to go with an ingredient or two there’s unlimited possibilities.

Those ingredients you’ve listed have literally become meaningless based on the lacking constraints of the problem.

My proposal below for different rulesets depending on how much of a challenge you want.

Hard mode: Only the very basics

Water, table salt, neutral cooking oil, white sugar, white vinegar

Normal mode: Non-perishables only

Dried stuff (beans, white rice, pasta, mushrooms, flour, starches), honey, spirits

Includes the very basics.

Normal mode: Staples only (perishable or non-perishable)

There may be certain items that you would purchase with most grocery trips to ensure you always have some on hand. Only consider sets of items that are very cheap where you’re located (or at least, somewhere on earth). As an example, I might include milk, eggs, garlic, and onion. List the ingredients that you consider to be staples.

Includes the very basics

Easy mode

Just come up with something tasty that includes the required ingredients.

Dude’s only posted this twice and is mad people are asking questions for something that hasn’t caught on yet.

If you want people to play your game, you have to explain the rules sometimes, and if you’re going to dish out rudeness, people aren’t going to play with you.

I had a great idea for it but seeing how you treated people asking about how this works put me off.

So clearly you don’t understand one of the core principles of cooking- presentation.

But that’s toasted barley.

I’d change from ‘well stocked’ to what is in your pantry.

• Easy mode : What is in your dream pantry.

• Normal Mode : What is in your pantry after a typical trip grocery shopping.

• Hard Mode : What is in your pantry right now (pics or it didn’t happen).

• Nightmare : Only items in your pantry you haven’t used in the last 2 weeks.

It’s a challenge, not a competition. It doesn’t need formal rules. Fun, not a contract.

exactly! I mean, define “well stocked”.

to me, a well stocked pantry has soups, canned meats, and other “meal ready” items.

at that point the two main ingredients just become ingredients.

Succession: Just call the first two Nightmare Mode and Hard Mode. That way you don’t have two Normal Modes.

Yeah, it’s genuinely amazing how badly OP has managed to destroy a fun premise by just being unbelievably toxic.

Nightmare and hard imply a difficulty ordering. I used normal twice because I don’t think either are strictly easier or harder than the other. They’re just different.

thinking

No competition. No rules. No contracts. Just fun.

If you’d like, I can create a list of ideas for more games.

Any rules or explanation at all would be nice, though. In all the time you’ve spent being uppity to people asking genuine questions, you could have explained what you consider to be a well-stocked pantry a dozen times over.

Use the ingredients shown. Use other things you might have to make that possible. The more detailed the rules the less fun it is.