About.
I got tired of deciding what's for dinner. So here's 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.
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.
Health decides what gets into the pantry at all, and it carries the heaviest weight in the score. That's the whole claim. No miracle attached. I publish a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet keeps pointing at legumes.
What I promise.
Every claim cites a source.
Health and cost numbers trace to a primary source — peer-reviewed paper, USDA data, or a named framework — collected on the Sources page. So does the math: the MVP score's pillars, weights, and known weaknesses are published in full, including the unflattering parts. If I can't cite it, I don't write it.
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.
Paid relationships get disclosed.
The pantry links to Amazon for stocking up — as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Every link is labeled, and the payout never changes a score or a ranking.
What earns a slot.
Every ingredient earns its place, and the bar is all six of the things people actually care about when they cook. No single criterion is the north star — the blend is. The pantry deliberately doesn't chase the last 20% on any one of them.
cheap enough to cook from daily
whole-food and plant-based, which clears the most restrictions
genuinely good — including satiety
low-friction for a busy week
lasts until you need it
a nervous beginner can cook it
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.
Chia Seeds
MVP78 #01Diced Tomatoes
MVP78 #01Garlic
MVP78 #01Canola Oil
MVP78 #05Chickpeas
MVP77 #06Black Beans
MVP76Who 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.
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.