Quarantine Cookery

I see you, budding gourmets. I see your photographs of spectacular yeast breads, succulent slow-cooked masterpieces. I don’t know how you happened to enter quarantine with a supply of marinated figs or phyllo pastry.  I felt fortunate that our quarantine found us with with adequate supplies of ketchup and Ranch.

I don’t judge you. But neither can I emulate you.

I have found myself applying the kind of weird creativity to my cooking that was common when I was young and broke: things like adding that last sliced up hot dog to a bowl of ramen noodles. I counted myself quite the chef when I mixed one container of McDonald’s honey mustard with one packet of hot mustard leftover from Chinese takeout. Perfect with chicken tenders or as a dip for hard pretzels!

Last night a friend posted that the leftover bits at the bottom of a bag of kale chips make a great topping for pizza. Another friend is refilling her soy sauce bottle with her stash of soy sauce packets. None of us is down to our last meal. But there’s a kind of frugal ingenuity that kicks in when your trips to the grocery are limited and you are trying to be a good steward of your financial resources during an uncertain time.

My husband brought me an iced coffee but it had been prepared with sugar by mistake. I’m a cream, no sugar sort of person. Did I throw it away? No. I froze it, then threw it in the blender with a scoop of chocolate ice cream I had on hand and enjoyed a fancy frozen coffee drink. I don’t normally have the time or energy to fool with things like that.

Right now time is the biggest asset I’ve got going for me.

How about you? Do you have any quirky Quarantine recipes to share? Any unlikely cupboard combinations you’d like to recommend? What’s your go-to ingredient? Is there one item you wish you had purchased before we all hunkered down that you really miss?

For me that’s got to be hot sauce. We are out and I can’t bring myself to buy it because it isn’t really “essential”.

You hereby invited to share your current gourmet adventures of any variety. If I get enough responses  I will do a follow up post. Here’s where to submit your delicious examples:

https://www.facebook.com/VillageGreenTownSquared/?ref=bookmarks