People are spending much more time cooking and baking while social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. You can’t miss the luscious loaves of homemade bread and plated meals everyday people display on social media, using hashtags like #coronaviruscooking and #coronavirusbaking.

While I have been trying lots of new recipes, I’ve also been more conscious of using up what we have since we can’t get to the store as frequently as we used to.

On Saturday, I made a snack dinner with leftovers, as I blogged about previously. I pulled out the last bit of cheddar cheese from the fridge, roasted peppers that I tucked away in the freezer, hard boiled egg, leaf lettuce, carrots, marinated artichoke hearts, clusters of red grapes and Kalamata olives and I baked wedges of corn tortillas to make fresh chips that I sprinkled with cheese. With a glass of sauvignon blanc, it was dinner. It was nice to have an assortment of foods on a night when we couldn’t make up our minds about what we wanted to eat. The possibilities are endless when you combine leftovers with pantry staples and seasonal fruit and vegetables.

I recently received a blog from Kathleen Flinn, author of the Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Novices Into Fearless Home Cooks, where she shared her “Cooking During the Coronavirus Guide.”

She offers lots of useful information on pantry recipes, how to jazz up your meals with new flavors and much more.

It’s worth checking out as we expand our cooking skills and make the most of what we have.