The Bean & Seed

While I soon plan to launch an ongoing easy recipe series, I want to first talk about staple foods and kitchen staples. I’m making a distinction here because there are staple foods for the population as a whole, and kitchen staples, which would be those ingredients you enjoy and use all the time. Staple foods, by definition, are the building blocks of a population’s nutrient intake and include foods such as rice, grains, and potatoes. Kitchen staples are your personal go to ingredients that you return to time and again as a solid start to a number of different meals. While you should keep a stock of both staple foods and kitchen staples, it’s your kitchen staples that will give you flavor and allow you to experiment and grow as a cook. It’s the kitchen staples that will become your signature flavors and the tools you can use to meet your specific dietary needs.

While a kitchen staple could include a particular seasoning, we need to start by thinking a little bigger. Both in terms of ingredient size, but also, why do we choose the foods we do? If I’m going to cook, I want to be purposeful about it. What do I need from my food? It’s easy to say we need more vegetables in our diets, but can we get more specific? Personally, I find that I crave the foods that my body needs. Note that I’m not talking about the cravings we have for ice cream, chocolate, french fries, and other foods high in salt, sugar and fat. We crave those foods for the instant gratification. But, I’m talking, more specifically, about the cravings we have where we say, “That’s weird, why do I want tomatoes?”

Craving tomatoes really does happen for me and I suddenly want them in everything. Canned, fresh, sandwich, soup… it doesn’t really matter, I’ve really been enjoying my tomatoes. A quick search of what they can do for your body tells me exactly why I’m craving them. They protect your skin from the sun. I play a lot of disc golf and I need that. They protect your eyes from digital devices such as phones and computers. Definitely need that. They lower blood pressure and decrease blood sugar levels. Need those. Inflammation, mood enhancement, cognitive function… Yes, yes, and yes. While there are even more benefits provided by tomatoes, each of the ones I’ve listed addresses specific concerns I’ve already been trying to treat through medications and supplements. As such, tomatoes have become one of my biggest kitchen staples and I try to include them in my cooking as often as I can. Another recent example of a craving I’ve had is for cucumbers. You’ve guessed it, the specific needs of hydration and the lowering of blood sugar levels addressed right in line with being outdoors during the heat of summer.

Our bodies tell us what they need through cravings and we’d be wise to turn these cravings into kitchen staples that we can rely on during food prep. I now buy a mix of fresh and canned tomatoes every week and use them for a variety of different purposes. For the purpose of illustration, I want to highlight one product in particular; Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes with Basil, Garlic, & Oregano. This product has become a kitchen staple for me because it is already seasoned and relatively low in sodium. So much of what I’ve been making lately starts with these canned tomatoes as the primary flavor. This is actually really helpful when starting out because they’ve already included and balanced the spices for you and you’re able to learn how these interact with your staple foods such as meats and pasta. Even though I use the same canned tomatoes in a few different meals, they ultimately taste different and interesting based on what they’re being added to.

Do you have healthy cravings that seem to have come out of nowhere? Do these foods address some of your body’s specific needs? Over the next couple weeks I’ll be sharing some easy recipes that incorporate canned tomatoes to give you some ideas of how the same kitchen staple can be used in different ways. These will be some of the first recipes I ever came up with, so they will be easy enough for anyone!

Thanks for reading, Matt

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August 11, 2025 Update: “Easy Vegetable Soup” posted. This is the first recipe I came up with on my own and uses the Hunt’s Diced Tomatoes referenced in this post.

August 21, 2025 Update: “Easy Beef & Macaroni” posted. This is one of my wife’s favorite recipes.

September 23, 2025 Update: “Easy Tortilla Chicken Soup” posted.

November 7, 2025 Update: Changed layout to match current posts.