I should be making dinner

but I haven't been to the grocery store in five days, and I don't know how to make dinner with what I have left in the fridge and cupboards. I've been trying (as have we all) to save money, and one way was to use some of the bounty from my cabinets. We've made it a couple of weeks that way, but unfortunately, that now means creating dinner using ingredients like: two limp refrigerator carrots, cheddar cheese sticks, a can of water chestnuts, three unopened jars of curry powder, Cheetos, a can of baked beans, and random segments of deep-frozen lamb that would take hours to defrost.

I need to pitch a new reality TV show to some network.  I'd call it "What's for Dinner?" and send a celebrity chef into a randomly chosen home, giving him or her 45 minutes to create a nutritious, balanced, tasty meal with whatever is in the cupboards/freezer/fridge of the house in question, and regardless of the state of the kitchen (What?  You have to work around dirty dishes in the sink? There are no sharp knives? Welcome to the REAL world). It'd be particularly fun (challenging) to send gourmet chefs into households in food desert areas (under-priviledged neighborhoods where food is only available from convenience stores or big-box stores) and see what they can do. All recipes would then be published for real families to use.

Ultimately, a second review of the deep freeze turned up some hamburger, which, when combined with the tortilla chip crumbs from the back of the pantry, chopped up cheese sticks, slightly fermented salsa (vegetables -- with a kick!) and some canned (white northern) beans should be able to pass as nachos. Dinner, anyone?