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Good question :) Well that is one of those things that we just stock up on at the grocery store: chicken breasts. I was originally going to see if I could ONLY cook with stuff from 7-11 but that proved impossible for me when I want to include meat. Since 7-11 only carries things like bacon. Which is yummy nonetheless.

So I expanded my rules to be like "if I'm at a grocery store by chance and stock up on some staples" then those can be used. I just want to get away from the habit of getting a recipe and writing out the list of stuff I need then having to hope we find the time in the next couple days to actually buy that list. This way, we use what we have more often.

And yep, might have used salsa if I had some. But we had pasta sauce on hand already.

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I imagine the hardest stuff to work around will be fresh produce as it just has a short shelf life. I rarely follow recipes exactly myself although I haven't gone this far out there yet. I usually look at a few recipes to get a general idea of ratios and ingredients and then come up with a blend that sounds most appealing to me. I haven't gone this far out there yet though. I'm not even sure what all is available at most 7-11s and Walgreens other than snacks - although I have been noticing that 7-11 seems to be trying to carry some produce. Any other unusual combinations you're thinking of trying?

Yeah, the produce thing is a problem. 7-11 by me has been carrying things though like fruit, so more recipes I'm making explore stuff with apples and oranges. I've also been exploring what I can do with fruit snack cups that have peaches and stuff in them. I found a recipe for a mango chutney, I didn't have mango :) but I had a peach snack cup from 7-11, turned out great.

7-11 has been carrying avocados and potatoes every now and then. And I hear walgreens started to have onions sometimes.

One of the most fun cooking experience we've had was when my wife was signed up for Freshpicks http://www.freshpicks.com/cms/. So she would get pretty random assortments of fresh vegetables and we would figure out what to make with them or try and screw them into some recipe that called for something else. I'm thinking of signing us up for that again because it plays well into this habit of making stuff with what you already have without planning.