NPR's Cook Your Cupboards Helps Us Use Up All Our Pantry Odds and Ends and We Are So Excited!

This is genius: NPR started a Tumblr called Cook Your Cupboard, and it's the answer to every strange ingredient you've ever bought on impulse. Users submit photos of the odds and ends from their pantry, and submissions so far include a sack of rice flour, a can of vegetarian haggis, Iranian dried rose petals, bonito flakes, Melba toast, and a bag of candy corn. Then the smarties at NPR take your weird crap and tell you what to cook. It's like a look inside a culinary junk drawer––documenting random ethnic store finds, specialty ingredients from vacay, and items of regrettable whimsy––that winds up magically organized!

Our cupboards, for one, could use the help. Right now I've got a half-used bag of gluten-free pasta, some dried shredded pork, a cup each of green and yellow split peas, a jar of whole mustard seeds I'll never get through, and a can of smoked trout that seemed like a good idea at the time. These are items I'd be tempted just to throw away––who doesn't want a clean slate this time of year?––but the frugal Yankee in me just won't allow it. Now there's a cooking wizard who can solve all my surplus ingredient problems! We should do this for, like, a million other things, am I right?

So what weird sundries have been hanging around in your cupboards, half-eaten or wholly neglected? What ingredients in your cabinets are you just wondering what to do with?

Send us pics @YahooShine via Twitter & Instagram using #inthepantry.

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