NPR: Cook Your Cupboard

[GoCubsGo]

Confounded in the kitchen? With a little help, your strange and surplus food could be dinner!

Submit a photo of what's stumping you — or leave comments to help someone else out.

We'll ask chefs about our favorites on NPR's Morning Edition.

Round 1 ends Sunday, April 14!

http://cookyourcupboard.tumblr.com/

Submit a photo of some confounding item in your pantry, or make suggestions regarding someone else's weird items. Sounds like fun!

[Major Nikon]

1. Anyone else have canned snails?

[surrealAmerican]

6. I think I might.

I'm vaguely afraid to look now.

[bif]

2. I've got a bottle of Hires rootbeer extract

That I bout about 30 years ago. It's been in our Lazy Susan ever since.

[GoCubsGo]

3. It might still be good.

No telling what's in it. But, after 30 years, it's probably time to dump it.

I have some Chinese sweet potato balls in my pantry that I got from my dad, who thought they were something else. They're little hard things, and I think you have to cook them up like pasta. After that, I have no clue as to what to do with them.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

4. I have 2/3rds of a bottle of gin that I bought in 1992

It turns out that no one in my family likes gin. The one use I have found for it is making sauerbraten, which I do once or twice a year -- I put a couple of tablespoons of gin in the marinade.

I just tasted it: It tasted remarkably like gin.

[libodem]

5. I love the bitter, nasty taste

And it is bitter and nasty. What can I say?

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

8. Heavily hopped beers are also bitter and nasty

But many people like it that way

[libodem]

9. I think one developes a taste for it

[dem in texas]

11. Hires Root Beer Extract

When we lived in Anchorage, Alaska in the 70's, we had a neighbor made root beer from that extract. It was a big occasion for the kids when Mrs. Kelly made root beer. They would be looking everywhere for glass bottles. She'd wash the bottles, then mix-up the root beer and pour in the bottles. She even had a bottle capping machine. The root beer had to ferment for a while (I don't remember how long) before it was ready to drink. One Saturday, we took the kids our kids and the Kelly boys down in the Kenai to fish for rainbow trout. We packed a picnic lunch and took along plenty of her root beer. It was a day to remember, we caught a lot of fish and that root beer tasted mighty good.

[dem in texas]

7. Spotted Dick?

Three pics of this canned stuff. What in the world is it? I am pretty sure I know what is is Not!

[MADem]

10. It's DELICIOUS!!! It's dessert!

It's a pudding-ish kind of thing, sort of along the lines of New England brown bread, Steam it, serve it hot with either hard sauce, or the more trendy New World whipped cream or ice cream.

[freshwest]

12. Quinoa? The recipes on the box aren't appealing. n/t

Seems like a side dish, not an entree.