As the economic climate has turned even the well employed into the “working worried,” people accustomed to eating most dinners out are cooking at home — despite the long hours and killer commutes that initially drove them out to restaurants in the first place, to seek sensual solace for the day’s draconian soul-drain.

But how do you cook wholesome, high-end, restaurant-quality food when you have some skills and money but little time or energy? For me, the answer is having tasty, useful ingredients at hand (including some high-quality “short-cuts”), bought locally or on the internet. With a pantry, fridge, and freezer filled with weapons of deliciousness, a passable cook can make real and good food, rapidly, and even if the ingredients cost more than marginally edible junk, you’re still not paying restaurant prices, tips, and tax. If your neighborhood has a weekly farmer’s market, you can start to cook like Alice Waters. (“Whole Paycheck” stores offer everything you need — except for Alice.) But there’s also nothing wrong with simple dinners, like a great grilled-cheese sandwich or a five-minute cheese omelet, if you’ve got terrific cheeses in the fridge for the fillings. (No Velveeta allowed!)

Major chain supermarkets are minimally helpful in this quest. They’ve finally added some organics, but for a cook who reads, gee whiz, Gourmet or Bon Appetit, most local outlets have hardly anything the recipes call for. Hello — Von’s? Ralphs? Albertson’s? Have you reached Starfleet Food Year 1980 yet? No celery root, Asian eggplants, pea-shoots, favas — not even fresh shiitakes? Well, shiitakes on all your heads!

Occasionally, supermarkets do flirt with superior products — ahh, those splendid Muir Glen Organic Fire-Roasted Tomatoes, tasting like homegrown and home-roasted! — but all too soon they’re apt to vanish, as the chains often replace them with store-brand shlock. Okay, I admit — I do have big-store mainstays, including Nancy’s frozen quiches, Michael Angelo’s frozen eggplant parmesan, Monterey refrigerated pastas, C&W frozen petite peas, Ranch Style Beans with jalapeño peppers, S&W no-salt diced tomatoes, Ortega green chiles, Peloponnese pitted Kalamata olives, and any brand of canned tomatillos, cannellini beans, chipotles, bottled roasted red peppers, capers, caper-berries, and marinated artichoke hearts. But onward to even better stuff.

Organicville:
Normally, when food publicists deluge me with burbles and squeals about the latest junk, I just hit the spam button — but Organicville caught my attention. Their products, available at Whole Foods, Henry’s, Keil’s, at their website store (organicvillefoods.com), and on amazon.com, are kitchen staples certified organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, no sugar added. The person behind them is Rachel Kruse, a third-generation vegetarian from the Midwest. She invented this line of foods because she didn’t like the available organic bottled dressings. (I hear ya, sister!) Her products don’t have that awful “good for you” bad-tasting flavor of virtue.

The ketchup enticed me. I use the stuff rarely, but in quantity, for dishes like Oakland-style homemade barbecue sauce and a favorite Venezuelan version of chili. In place of high-fructose corn syrup, this brand has low-glycemic agave nectar — turning a carbo-bomb healthy. Organicville’s ketchup tastes like Heinz. Try it in salsa americana, Chile’s minimalist version of Russian dressing: good mayo (see below), a little ketchup to taste, a scootch of Scotch or Cognac, and a few optional drops of fresh lemon or lime juice. Presto! — instant dressing for chilled cooked shellfish or artichokes. (BTW, Trader Joe’s also sells an organic ketchup. Haven’t read its table of contents yet.)

(Re Mayo: several mainstream brands now offer olive-oil mayos — hurray! — although they still contain superfluous sugar. If you don’t have time to build an aioli from scratch, olive-oil mayo is a more authentic aioli-starter or salsa americana ingredient than bottled mayos based on no-flavor, genetically engineered soy, canola, and/or corn oils.)

The other Organicville products I’ve tried have been gentle tasting, a bit flowerchildish. Products include salad dressings, sauces (barbecue, teriyaki), and salsas. The Herbes de Provence Vinaigrette is much closer to a Frenchwoman’s homemade dressing than mainstream brands are — delicate, mild, no childishly sweet undertones. Use on mild lettuces like Bibb, ripe tomatoes, and summertime salade niçoise. The Miso Ginger looks like a winner for Asian-style salads — I can already taste it on ready-shredded bagged “cole slaw mix” from the salad case. The Sun Dried Tomato Dressing obviously gravitates toward Italian greens — and green beans.

With my own crazy schedule of restaurant dates and writing deadlines, buying perishables is chancy, so I often use marinades to preserve meats (and the occasional procrastination-prone fish) until I can get around to cooking them. Surrounding protein in liquid in an air-tight zipped freezer bag (or a vacuum-sealed marinator-container) extends its life several days. I was attracted to Pomegranate Vinaigrette, since it mingles pom and rosemary, both natural allies to lamb. The dressing proved too mild in that application, but might make a pleasing marinade for chicken breast or fish (even, subtly, for grilled salmon). Or, duh, it can also dress salads, especially with sweet ingredients like fruits, beets, or firm-tender cooked carrot strips (add touches of cilantro and roasted cumin to the latter for a Moroccan spin).

Organicville’s Pineapple Salsa: Instant faux-Hawaii, great on fish or simple grilled pork — it livened up a hopeless hunk of leftover farm-raised supermarket salmon. (Trader Joe’s refrigerated papaya-mango salsa is a good alternative.) The tomato-based Mexican-style salsas are fresh-tasting but not extraordinary.

Tangy BBQ Sauce proves very different from smoky, tomatoe-y Texas-style bottled supermarket brands. It’s light and bright, and to my delight, it’s not all that far from a Memphis-style pulled-pork sauce. It would be fine with chicken or game hens, too. Play with it. Mopped on leftover pork ribs reheated under the broiler, it made a great, crunchy caramelized coating, without any nasty burned flavor. The Original BBQ Sauce, described as “sweet and smoky,” is certainly sweet and molasses-y, but I’d add a few drops of Liquid Smoke and hot sauce. (The inventor’s a midwesterner, remember? And she’s probably barbecuing tofu.) I haven’t tried any of the teriyakis (I don’t really love the saltiness of teri), but apparently they double as Asian stir-fry sauces.

Thai Kitchen:
I confess, the owner is a buddy. Seth spends half his life in Thailand, and his love of the culture and cuisine is tasteable. Many urban Thais use ready-made curry pastes to save hours on the mortar and pestle. I’ve found Thai Kitchen’s bottled curry pastes safer and more consistent than the various canned Thai pastes I’ve tried from Vien Dong market — look, Mom, no sawdust!

This line has recently added bottled “simmer sauces.” Local stores that carry some Thai Kitchen products include Albertsons, Bristol Farms, Henry’s, Vons, and (especially) Cost Plus, Ralphs, and Whole Foods. I’m not mad for dried insta-Thai products (Pad Thai mix, soup mixes, etc.) in this or any other brand — they sit on Ralphs’ shelves whimpering “Please buy me!” until they go stale. Thai Kitchen’s coconut milk is excellent (but Chao Kuo is equal but cheaper), while the “light” milk is blah. My favorite combo: Asian baby eggplants and shrimp in green curry. The website, thaikitchen.com, has loads of recipes, including this one. Trader Joe’s now sells its own Thai simmer sauces, too. Haven’t tried them yet. You do it, let me know how they turn out. If they’re great, they’ll be discontinued next week.

Trader Joe’s:
The Trader Joe’s motto must be Robert Frost’s “Nothing gold can stay.” Or maybe “The good die young.” Two websites are worth a visit: a hilarious fake TV ad for TJ’s, sung to a bouncy Brazilian Bossa Nova melody, and — easiest route there — the Trader Joe’s fan site, with product ratings, user recipes, and a direct link to the ad-with-song: traderjoesfan.com. I won’t try to compete with the wide-reaching product ratings, some stretching back years, but as you’ll learn, most five-star products are soon discontinued. That great sauce you adore that you found in the store — it’s not there any more. Why? Who knows? Trader Joe’s!

Still, the spacious new location in Liberty Station (Point Loma) sent me cavorting through the wide aisles, trilling, “Ooh, this is half the price of Vons!” TJ Gold that stays (longtime regulars): Organic Thompson raisins (“winy” flavor); lime-chile cashews (chopped, they’re killer subs for peanuts in garnishing Thai dishes; store in freezer); strained plain Greek yogurt (thick and creamy), for anything Greek or Indian. The bottled green-olive tapenade that the fans love (see fan site for recipe ideas) has expanded into a refrigerated version with goat feta. The package suggests using it on chicken or fish, but the taste calls to mind the olive salad on a N’awlins muffaletta cold-cuts sandwich. (I loved it mixed with a handful of grape tomatoes roasted in the pan with a half-rack of lamb.)

For “healthy starches,” TJ fans embrace frozen microwaveable brown rice (three minutes, done!). Wild rice can be hard to find, but TJ’s has it, pre-cooked, shelf-stable, and swiftly microwaveable. They’re also still carrying brown basmati rice, brown Thai jasmine rice, Israeli couscous, and Peruvian quinoa — those “good for you” low-glycemic whole grains you’re supposed to adopt as dietary staples (healthier, and they taste great, too!)

The high-rated plain frozen gnocchi are gone, replaced with frozen gnocchi dressed in gorgonzola sauce, or tomato sauce, plus shelf-stable packaged gnocchi from Italy. TJ’s must have changed the frozen-dumpling recipe: The gorgonzola version, nuked per package directions, went, in two minutes on the table, from tender to chewy to yesterday’s used bubblegum. The cold-smoked Coho salmon proved coarser-textured, saltier, and less silky than the lox I buy on the internet, but beats the supermarket’s godawful Lasco. A new “aioli mustard” is still just mustard, with garlic. Nice slathered on the lamb rack, but no culinary miracle. Lots of good cheeses here, too, for that omelet.

Ethnic “simmer sauces” are quick routes to half-hour decent meals. TJ’s has discontinued its rave-winning Moroccan Tagine sauce, keeping three bottled curries (Masala, Korma, and “Curry”), plus those Thai curry simmer sauces. My last stop: A bottle of $10 Reposado tequila for cooking that easy Reagan Era fave, “tequila shrimp.” Regular unaged tequilas that work perfectly in margaritas are too raw-tasting for the dish — you need a slightly aged brew, even if it’s a cheap one. And yes, you can drink it, too. Oh, and in the produce section, guess what? Fresh shiitakes!

Internet Foods:
You can get everything the world offers on the internet, but shipping prices are killer. Amazon offers whatever your hungry heart desires — mostly coming from individual vendors, each with individual shipping costs. Hence, since I live in a neighborhood with, read my lips, NO GOOD FOOD (not even a supermarket), I buy huge Care packages every four or five months from comprehensive foodie-sites that offer a vast variety of goodies at lower prices than, say, fancy-dancy Dean & DeLuca or Williams-Sonoma.

Igourmet.com specializes in fabulous international cheeses delivered at peak condition (even precious Chaource, sometimes!), but also carries a tremendous range of foodstuffs — although, like Trader Joe’s, their items seem to come and go. (Unlike TJ’s, however, they usually come back.) The merchandise includes many items you’ve eaten at top restaurants, e.g., artisan butters like beurre d’Isigny and truffled butter, plus pâtés, smoked fish, Devon clotted cream, artisan Indian “simmer sauces,” ready-made hollandaise (a bit shrill, due to the inclusion of blood-orange juice), and béarnaise, and — if you’re a banker who got a bonus — fresh foie gras, Muscovy ducks, rabbits, Spanish hams, prime beef, caviars, Atlantic shellfish, etc. My most recent purchase included lotsa lox, dried salted capers, salted anchovies, olive-oil canned tuna, a refrigerated jar of mussel-meats, and shelf-stable British bottled seafood mix (cockles and mussels, etc., with a touch of balsamic) to use in a pasta or as a salad. I’ll add some canned cannellini beans and fresh herbs, and — zap — instant summer dinner!

Recently, igourmet introduced a membership “deal” — order $75 or more every 90 days and shipping is free or, if it includes perishable overnight-delivery items, reduced to $7.95, regardless of package weight. You can choose the date you want delivery, and they obey! In addition, another website, an internet coupon-clearing house, dealtaker.com (or google “igourmet” and follow the links from there) offers other discount coupons for this site.

A similar operation, gourmetfoodstore.com, offers fewer cheeses but a wider product range, including a full line of Moroccan seasonings. And they don’t seem to run out of stuff. My latest purchase included a huge jar of olive oil–bottled anchovies (I use these, mashed into the pan, instead of salt in sautéed Mediterranean dishes and sauces like pasta puttanesca), excellent boudin noir (blood sausage), rose syrup, chestnut-fed Piedras Negras Iberico lightly smoked belly-pork slices (OMG!), French-made duck rillettes, remarkably cheap Alaskan salmon caviar, crème fraîche, refrigerated blini and crepes, and — take that, Von’s! — water-packed bottled fresh porcini (cepes) and chanterelles. (Next time, morels!) They delivered with preternatural speed. Shipping was, of course, exorbitant.

Finally, bacon, everybody’s new best friend: Flavorful fats are invaluable allies. My favorite bacon source is the encyclopedic gratefulpalate.com, offering numerous cuts, smokes (applewood, maple, oak, corn cobs, etc.) and cures (even Cajun), including the exquisite Vande Rose brand. I usually buy a year’s worth of different types and freeze them. Chefs and southern cooks know to save and freeze precious rendered fat from premiere bacons and smoked hams to add outsized flavor-boosts to beans, greens, green beans, potatoes, fried eggs, and more. (And if you roast a duck, freeze that rendered fat from the pan for a gold mine to be used in sautéed potatoes sarladais, etc.)

Uh-oh, music’s coming up, out of space — but wait, just a few more: penzeys.com for great dried herbs and spices (have shocked chefs that I know their secret source); importfood.com for Thai ingredients (lately, fresh mangosteens!); tienda.com for Spanish goods such as Basque red pepper, Iberico and Serrano ham, bottled piquillo peppers, and white anchovies for instant tapas; and richters.com for an awesome assortment of fresh herbs to grow yourself. (And I want to thank my copy editor Karen, my proofreader Russ, and especially…gaah, it’s the hook!)