About.
A small, transparent project by someone who got tired of deciding dinner. I publish the spreadsheet, the recipes, and my mistakes.
Why I built this.
Most food writing is autobiography dressed as advice. I wanted the opposite: a pantry chosen by rubric instead of story, and a recipe library that never sends me back to the store. So I sifted 198,899 ingredient names across millions of real recipes, scored the contenders against published nutrition research, and kept the 75 worth owning.
I'm feeding a family of five — two adults, three young children — and I watched the same friction play out every weeknight: what's for dinner, we don't have what the recipe needs, the kids probably won't eat it anyway. The fix wasn't a better recipe. It was a fixed pantry and a library built exclusively from it.
This is not a wellness brand. I don't sell protein powder, meal plans, or mindset courses. I publish a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet keeps pointing at legumes.
What I promise.
Every claim cites a source.
Health and cost numbers on this site trace to a primary source — peer-reviewed paper, USDA data, or a named framework — collected on the Sources page. If I can't cite it, I don't write it.
The math is public.
The MVP score's axes, weights, normalizations, and known weaknesses are published in full, including the parts that are unflattering (the brand ingredient does not rank #1 — and the Sources page says so).
The score describes; the curation decides.
No algorithm gates the pantry, and no scoring threshold quietly removes an ingredient. Changes are human calls, logged in the changelog.
Closed-set recipes.
Every recipe uses pantry ingredients only. If a dish would need something else, it doesn't get published. No surprise shopping trips.
No miracle foods.
Nothing here is a superfood. Everything on the list is a boring ingredient that quietly does its job across cost, health, taste, convenience, waste, and simplicity.
Paid relationships get disclosed.
The pantry links to Amazon for stocking up (that's how a free site pays for lentils) — as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Every link is labeled, and the payout never changes a score or a ranking.
The six axes.
No single axis is the north star — the blend is. Every ingredient and recipe is weighed across the things people actually care about when they cook. The pantry deliberately doesn't chase the last 20% on any one of them.
cheap enough to cook from daily
whole-food, plant-based by premise
genuinely good — including satiety
low-friction for a busy week
lasts until you need it
a nervous beginner can cook it
The list is chosen by judgment, then backed by the research. The scores and citations behind every item are receipts you can inspect.
The score, in the open.
Every pantry item gets a composite MVP score on a 0–100 scale: nutrition, cost, shelf life, and versatility, weighted and published — a receipt you can read for every staple on the list.
Nutrition starts every item at a neutral 50 and moves it only on published evidence — Food Compass 2.0, Nutri-Score, Health Star, NOVA, nutrient-density percentiles, and dietary-framework endorsements. Versatility is measured reach across the recipe corpus. Cost and shelf life are tracked per item, sourced on every row.
Top of the ranking.
Crushed Tomatoes
MVP80 #01Garlic
MVP80 #03Chia Seeds
MVP79 #03Chickpeas
MVP79 #03Canola Oil
MVP79 #06Black Beans
MVP77Who built this.
I'm a former software engineer who quit my day job to build the recipe website I always wished existed. I've been developing my own recipes for seven years and sharing them with friends the whole way — Minimum Viable Pantry is that system-level thinking, scaled up and shared with everyone.
The rest of the household — one adult, three young children — is the reason the system exists: the same what's-for-dinner friction, every weeknight, until the fix turned out to be a pantry, not another recipe.
Fill the jar.
This site is free and stays free — no paywall, no login, no perks to unlock. If it saved you a grocery run, you can chip in. It buys lentils, mostly.
… or name your amount →Processed by Stripe · goes to Sky Forward Design · no perks, purely support.