Eating from the pantry

One of my favorite ways to cook is to look in the pantry and see just what I can make without having to shop for ingredients. Having a passion for food, I often pick ingredients up with the intention of cooking something marvelous. Of course life gets busy and I forget my great ideas and, you guessed it, there is a whole lot of stuff in the pantry.We won't even talk about the yarn and fabric that have been picked up for the amazing knitting and crafting that I plan on doing. Once the holidays have passed it's time to get real and make use of those goodies so that I can get more.......dah! Last years trip to KING ARTHUR FLOUR I found the greatest deep dark chocolate cocoa..........of course I had to have it. And now the sad story of how it really was used. No unbelievable biscottis or over the edge brownies for me,no sirree!

A quick look in the freezer revealed 1 lonely patty of pie dough which I rolled out and baked.

From the pantry came 1/2 cup of white sugar

3 tablespoons of the cocoa

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/8teaspoon of salt

I wisked all the dry ingredients right in the pan then slowly added 2 3/4 cups of milk and continued to wisk till all was blended and started to thicken. They say stir occasionally but, every time I try that it burns to the bottom so.......I just stand there stirring for about 10 minutes really it's not that long.Then remove from the heat and stir in

2 tablespoons of butter

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Pour this into your pie shell and you've got a great dessert for the family.................much better than that little box of pudding.

Of course if you doubled your recipe like I did

You've got a little something for the cook............said the hobbit