The Key to Cooking with What's in Your Pantry

The Internet is a wonderful thing.

Lately, I've discovered the resourcefulness of food brands' Web sites.

Situation: You have a roll of Pillsbury Sugar Cookies in your fridge that you bought on a BOGO deal and you want to use them up.

Problem: You're tired of the same old sugar cookie and want to spruce it up a bit.

Solution: Go to the Pillsbury Web site and find a recipe that uses sugar cookie dough in it, like So-Easy Lemon Bars that uses the dough as the crust. It looks foolproof to make, and you already have one of the ingredients in your fridge.

Isn't that fantastic? Thanks to Al Gore, we have access to millions of recipes at our fingertips. Here's a list of Web sites I've searched for based on items I have in my fridge or pantry:

• If I could use Laughing Cow Cheese in every meal, I would.
• Sometimes I buy one too many cups of Yoplait or Dannon yogurt.
• I really need to use up that last bit of JIF peanut butter:
• Any of us probably have something from a Betty Crocker brand in our pantry.
• And if you don't have Betty Crocker, you're bound to have something from Campbell's near by!
• That Barilla pasta that's been sitting on my pantry shelf for months, but I'm tired of the same spaghetti recipe.
• Quaker Oats has an entire recipe book you can download. (the 3-minute no bake cookies are 100 percent easy and delish!)
• To heck with the same old vegetable dish day after day. Use Green Giant's recipe bank to help.
• Sometime I'm tired of sandwiches. Nature's Own has recipes that might help use up all that bread!
• Dole even has a recipe maker based on what you have in your pantry. Use up those bananas before they go bad!
• We still have some Hershey's Kisses left over from Christmas. Hershey's has a great recipe Web site that, if you search "kisses," has a bunch of recipes to help use them up!

If you're supposed to bring a dip, appetizer, dessert or something else to a friend's house for a get together, this can be a great resource for using what you already have. Are there any other good Web sites you've found that are helpful in finding recipes based on a specific product?