A really easy emergency dinner:
Cook some pasta.
Dump in some pesto from a jar.
Add grated cheese or Tabasco to taste.
Stir vigorously and consume with gusto with your feet up in front of the TV, secure in the knowledge that you’re getting a filling meal with relatively little fat depending on how much cheese you went for.
A few:
butter & olive oil in a pan. Saute garlic and add cracked red pepper. Put on spaghetti. Might or might not add tomatoes – I always have cans.
Curry paste and coconut milk in a pan. Add frozen vegetables, or any leftover meat & potatoes I might have. Put on rice.
If I have ground beef, sometimes a quicky is ground beef and onions. Mix with rice. Make a “Big Night” omelet to cover the whole thing. A weak-ass “bi bim bap”, if you will.
This is getting a little outside the range, but if I’m home on a Saturday or Sunday and don’t have any ingredients, I consider homemade pizza a pantry-meal. I always have flour and yeast and tomato sauce on hand, and we have a stand mixer, so I can just toss the stuff in, and turn it on (pretty much). I might have pepperoni. I might have an onion. I probably have romano or parmesan cheese sitting around. It’s a bonus if there’s mozzarella.
I use something I got right here from the Dope. IRISHGIRL’s couscous recipe really is quite easy, quick, and filling. I have changed it around a little.
I get my trusty wok out and get it smokin hot. Then I add some chicken or zuchinni (you could really use just about anything… I think I’ll try some paneer or cauliflour soon) to some veggie oil and brown. Then comes the couscous followed quickly by the liquid, water or broth. Add the tomato paste (this is what is meant by IRISHGIRL’s “double concentrated tomato puree”) and sugar (easy on the sugar) and mix. Get the couscous to the consistency you like (it should cook for four to six minutes or so) and add the peas. Then add some salt and whatever seasonings you like (sometimes I use garam masala or biryani masala). Heat through and serve. If you are going to add garlic/onions, you will want to do it when adding the chix/zuchinni (don’t burn the garlic). I am thinking that you could also add some nuts (like cashews) near the end.
I don’t measure much when I am cooking so I don’t have any amounts or measurements for you, but it is pretty freeform - just add what you like until it tastes good. But this is pretty quick and easy to cook. Once you have your misonplas, er um, mizzenplaas, oh hmm, missin… your ingredients chopped up and ready to go (like your chix, onion, and garlic) the whole thing should be cooked in under 10 mins.
Also, do you think I have used enough parenthesis (because I think I have)? 
Get a frozen kielbasa out of the freezer, chop it up, dump it into the rice cooker. Add a packet of one of the Zatarain’s rice mixes–gumbo, dirty rice, cuban rice–add a can of chicken broth and a can of water, stir in a package of frozen vegetables, turn that sucker on and go play on the computer for an hour.
It might require a quick stop at the store on the way home, but it doesn’t get much easier:
Slice 1 kielbasa sausage (beef, turkey, whatever) into little disks, about 1/2" thick. Do the same for 2-3 zucchini.
Saute kielbasa (you won’t need much oil, if any, unless you’re using a low-fat sausage) until nice and brown. Set aside in serving bowl. Saute the zucchini in the kielbasa fat until cooked through but not soggy. Add to serving bowl. Open 1-2 cans (based on your preferences) of Green Giant Niblets corn (NOT creamed corn! ew!) and saute until hot. Add kielbasa and zucchini back to pan, stir and heat through. Serve.
Yum! Very easy, requires no seasoning. You could probably even do the slicing in advance and let kids help with the cooking, as long as they’re careful about the sausage spitting hot oil.
Don’t be too sure that you are getting a low fat meal. I don’t know what kind of pesto you are using, but most store-bought stuff is absolutely loaded with fat.
pre-cooked penne
extra sharp cheddar
a little grated parmesan
jarred tomato sauce ideally trader joe’s
a few slices of trader joe’s peppercorn crusted salami cut into small pieces
Put in bowl in microwave for a minute and half to allow cheese to melt. Lazy and yummy.
The WryGuy often jokes that I could concoct an edible meal if we had nothing but lentils and marshmallows in the cupboard. This is not strictly true, but I am pretty good at whipping something resembling a meal out of whatever is at hand.
Of course, “whatever is at hand” usually consists of at least pasta, mushrooms (fresh or jarred), onions, canned diced tomatoes or some kind of canned tomato product. There’s always SOME kind of cheese around here, and assorted spices and herbs. If I happen to have beef or chicken or shrimp, sometimes that’ll get thrown in (I’m vegetarian, no one else here is, so I scoop out my portion before adding any meat to anything.)
One of my favorite quickie things to make is vegetarian taco filling: a can of black beans, a can of corn, a can of diced tomatoes, some diced onion and taco seasonings. Heat it all through and throw it into tortillas. Or pitas. Or scoop it up with tortilla chips or cornbread or crackers. Or pile it up on baked potatoes or rice or noodles. Or a pile of shredded lettuce, for that matter. Cheese is good - either cold shredded as a garnish or melted into the beans and tomatoes.
Chop up some cabbage, add some ring bologna – cover with water and cook till the cabbage is tender. Or cook the cabbage with chunks of ham and some potatoes. You’ll be gassy, but it’s good.