What's the weirdest meal you've ever made from the contents of a sadly depleted larder? From your almost empty pantry, freezer/fridge?

I’ve actually come up with some creative things in times like this. The last things to survive are usually canned goods, and I tend to just start dumping cans into a casserole dish and toss it in the oven. As long as one of the cans is soup, it seems to work out.

Then again, this is coming from someone who never ate a casserole in her life before the age of 26… so… what do I know?

“I could make a pea and Parmesian cheese taco”

i’m in

A combo of Spaghetti-Os, tuna, corn, with Tapatio dumped into. IT WAS SOOOO FRICKEN GOOD!!

ramen noodles, with mozzarella cheese and chili! so good!

@cletrans2col You must have been smoking something.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I could add crumbled up bits of my dogs duck tenders jerky treats but that might be overkill on something that already sounds so delicious.

hahahahahaaaa… oh send me to bed with a smile!

Ichiban noodles with Cheese Whiz (there was no seasoning packets). It wasn’t very good.

eeeewww cheese whiz! lol

I hope you all starve if you don’t give more GQ’s to this GQ.

We could be learning to feed a nation here. Jeesh!

@lillycoyote Nope, just broke as hell.

@cletrans2col I’ve had a number of “broke as hell” meals myself. I’ve just blocked the specifics out of my mind at this point, but they generally included ramen, tuna and/or brown rice.

Boiled potatoes with butter. They were delicious.

That would have to be chicken miracle.

In lean student days I’ve lived on rice with soy sauce night after night, relieved by the occasional dinner of spaghetti with butter. I made meals of pita bread with apples and cheese and, for one memorable week, lived on lettuce sandwiches on homemade bread. Somehow I always got by.

But the weirdest was surely chicken miracle. My husband and I were so broke. We’d both been out of work for a while, and I finally got a job. We limped along painfully through the two weeks before my first Friday payday. By Wednesday the cupboard was bare.

On Thursday, the night before I finally got my first check, my husband picked me up after work and said “A hot meal is waiting for you.” That was beyond amazing and nothing short of a miracle. I pestered him: “What is it? How did you do that?” But he just smiled mysteriously. “It’s a surprise.”

Sure enough, there was a big pot simmering on the stove, containing a watery chicken soup. It wasn’t much to the taste, but, as we said (and still say), “It’ll Keep Us Going One More Day.” How in the world did he do that? We were flat broke and everything was gone.

Not quite: in the back of the freezer he had found a lump of chicken giblets extracted from a roast and saved for some unknown reason. There was a handful of rice in the bottom of the bag. He went out to the winter remains of the preceding summer’s vegetable garden and pulled the stump of one old carrot still stuck in the dirt. A little parsley was growing alongside the house. And there was still water in the tap.

We had our fill of chicken miracle and kept going one more day. The next night we went to the supermarket and stocked up. We threw out the leftover soup, but not without nod of gratitude—and an anxious gulp, resisting the temptation to freeze the remains in case a worse day came.

We’ve never been so broke again.

@Jeruba A tip of the cap to you, ma’am.

Thank you, but that was entirely my husband’s coup. I was just the beneficiary.

Years ago my husband lost his job and after we used up almost all the food in the house, someone, out of the goodness of their heart, dropped off two huge shopping bags full of freshly harvested turnips. They were the biggest monsters I’d ever seen.

My little girl started saying, “But I don’t like turnips, Mommy!”

And I started saying, “Be quiet sweetie, and I’ll give you an egg to go with it!” <Yum.>