Ingredients App

My wife and I cook a lot, generally 4 or 5 days a week and leftovers for the remainder. Being americans, we've approached cooking by finding a recipe we like, then purchasing the necessary ingredients and incorporating any ingredients we happen to grow in the garden. We've been trying to take a different approach by starting with the ingredients we already have on hand or in the garden, and come up with a recipe. Sometimes this can prove difficult, and we seem to lack lateral thinking and imagination. We do have a few cookbooks like The Classic Zucchini Cookbook and Onions Etcetera which are great and useful if you have bushels of zucchini and onions around and want to eat those all the time (which we don't). Do any of you out there know of or use an App where you input ingredients you have on hand and it provides a list of recipes to try?

Stir-fry: Take any combination of meat and/or vegetables. Chop them up. Saute them over high heat until tender.

Soup: Take any combination of meat and/or vegetables. Chop them up. Add water or tomato juice. Boil until tender.

Roast: Take any combination of meat and/or vegetables. Chop them up. Put in a roasting pan. Bake at 350 for about 1.5 hours or until tender.

Lactofermented vegetables: Take any combination of vegetables. Shred them. Add 1 Tablespoon salt to 1.6 pounds vegetables. Put a weight on them to immerse the vegetables in the saline solution, and ferment for 5 to 10 days.

Salad: Take any combination of fruits, cooked meat, nuts,  and/or vegetables. Chop them and serve as a salad with your favorite salad dressing.

I could go on and on, but I think I've portrayed the gist of how I use the things I grow in my garden.

I make almost everything into curry.  Just follow Joseph's soup recipe above and add Indian spices (Turmeric, Cardamom, Cumin, Cayenne, Ginger, etc) to taste.  Thicken if desired with starch, serve with rice if desired.  Curry spices help disguise slightly yucky or bitter tasting veggies and slightly weird meat such as gamey venison.

For specific ingredients I'll just do a search "Zucchini Recipes"  (or whatever) and usually there are a ton of hits.  I don't like cooking with a lot of different storebought ingredients, so I'll usually end up falling back on my standard recipes which are very much like Joseph's.  I don't know of an app for this, just Google or other search engine.

Tyler: Much of my cooking is also curried. I make a point of eating lots of turmeric/ginger, cumin, garlic, black pepper, and hot peppers for what I think of as their health promoting properties. Guess that I aughta check out cardamom. I'm unfamiliar with it.

I like allrecipes.com because it has an ingredient search function.  Like Joseph, I make a lot of soups or stews but mine have names like gumbo or chow mein.  I am always disappointed when I try curry, though the ingredients have lots of health benefits.

Living in Kenya has taught me about eating and cooking simply.  Its kinda boring sometimes, but it sure saves a lot of time and money over recipes with lots of ingredients.  Almost all vegetables are good sautéed with some onions and tomatoes and salt.  Kick it up with some garlic, pepper, chili and ginger.  Too bitter? Mellow it out with a bit of yogurt or milk.  Beans, lentils, and other legumes also taste great stirfried with onions and tomatoes.  We also like to add cumin and tumeric and a squeeze of lemon juice or vinegar.  Also coconut milk in legumes adds a great flavor.

But to address the ops original question, most recipe sights have a search by ingredient option.  I've seen some recipe apps with that option, though I don't remember which off head.  But what I find is most recipes online or even in cookbooks are unnecessarily complicated and expensive... Its like a requirement for publication.
Simple is better.

I just read the ingredients list on commercial package of curry powder. It contained 9 ingredients with weird things like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I didn't like the taste of the commercial curry powder.

My curries typically consist of only turmeric, cumin, garlic, and black pepper.

Thank you all for the replies! We've winged a few stir-fry's in the past and they usually turn out nice. We're gonna start branching out and will definitely be applying the suggestions everyone has mentioned. If we wing it one night and happen to stumble upon something stellar I will certainly share the process we did to create the dish!