OTOH, you still have to scan barcodes every time you cook with something, and you’d probably want some sort of mechanism to track partial consumption and leftovers, though a minimum viable product could work without that

If you can also keep recipes in the system you could skip scanning the barcodes here. You'd just need to input how many servings you prepared and any waste. Even if the "recipe" is just "hot pocket" or something. If the system knows how much is in a package it can deduct what you use from the total and add it to the list when you need more.