Can You Cook From Scratch? A Challenge...

This is actually a serious question.  Given a bag of rice, an onion, 1 pound of raw meat of your choice, and say, a carrot and a stalk of celery, can you make that into an edible meal that will feed several people?  Or just yourself for several nights?

Oldest child is in Graduate School right now.  He's a smart cookie, no doubt about it.  But what is he known for?  The fact that he can cook a meal from scratch.  Where some of his peers are spending $100 or more a week for easy to make stuff in boxes and bags, he's making his own food, and he's spending less than $30 a week on groceries.  He uses his slow cooker on Sunday to make food that feeds him for the rest of the week.  He will keep out one or two servings, and then he freezes the rest in single portion sizes.  He's got a very decent selection of dinners at this point in time that he pulls from every night.  When he was home for Thanksgiving, he told me that he frequently rounds out his dinner with a salad.

What kinds of food does he make?  Well, there's a good question.

He's made a Moroccan Chick Pea stew that comes from a recipe we found on Mother Earth Living.  He told me he usually doubles the recipe, and sets the garbanzo beans out the night before to soak, and then makes the rest of the recipe the next morning.  He's taken this to a couple of potluck meals this semester, and returned with an empty pot both times.

He makes pancakes from scratch.  Flour, sugar, eggs, etc.  He mixes a double batch, and freezes the leftovers for breakfast the next morning.

When he was home for Thanksgiving, he was the one who began stewing the leftover turkey carcass to make a turkey stock.  Since he was the one who made the stock, we let him take it back to school with him.  Instead of making broth cubes, he took back 2 big mason jars full of turkey stock.

So, back to my original question.  Given a bag of rice, an onion, a pound of raw meat of your choice, a carrot and a stalk of celery, can you make an edible meal?

Spices?  Use only what you have on hand in your cupboard.  No going out to get something extra!

What would you make?  I'm really curious.  Post your ideas below.  I'll post my ideas tomorrow.