The 10 ingredient shopping list

Thought this would be good to share... to see the recipes go here.

Many people turn to unhealthy restaurant meals and takeout because they don’t have time to shop. In his latest “How to Cook Everything” segment on the Today Show, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman makes it surprisingly easy to cook a week’s worth of dinners with just a 10-ingredient shopping trip.

Mark assumes you’ve stocked your pantry with easy basics like spices, good cooking oils and vinegars, long-keeping carbs like pasta, rice and udon noodles, as well as soy sauce, garlic, lemon, butter and Parmesan cheese. With these staples, you can just pick up a few fresh ingredients every now and then, and “cook for days at a time,” Mark says.

Here’s a 10-ingredient shopping list that will give you five days of meals.

Chicken breasts (4 boneless)
Bacon (1/2 pound)
Shrimp (1 pound)
Spinach (1 pound)
Tomatoes (6)
Ginger
Onions
Asparagus (2 pounds)
Button mushrooms (1 pound)
Loaf of good country bread

Sound impossible? The ingredients can be easily combined, using oils, herbs and spices, to create the following five meals:

Stir-Fried Chicken With Asparagus

B.S.T. (Bacon, Spinach, Tomato) Sandwiches

Grilled Chicken and Shrimp Kebabs With Vegetables

Shrimp With Asparagus and Udon Noodles

Pasta With Bacon, Spinach and Breadcrumbs

You can also see all the meals by checking out Mark’s Today Show appearance on the Bitten blog. And pasted below are the full recipes for each dish. And if you have a problem with bacon or any of the ingredients, feel free to substitute. (Mark notes that the amount of bacon used in these dishes is so small that he doesn’t fret about the fat content.)