Cooking Without Ingredients

Arrrgh! Has anyone every tried cooking without ingredients? Its a situation that happens everyday at our house, and it is pretty challenging. It is not that I don't buy ingredients. It is just that they are gone before I have a chance to use them in a recipe. Frequent past situations include the chocolate chips being gobbled before I can put them in muffins, and limes gone before I can make a Thai coconut or Mexican chicken soup. Last night's crime occurred within minutes after I arrived home from the store with a particularly nice loaf of french-type bread, nice and wide, and dusted with Italian spices. I told the kids they could have a piece, but emphasized that I had bought it for a special recipe, so not to ruin it. The next thing I know, they had stripped ALL the soft insides out of the loaf, leaving only the crusty outside. I looked into the gaping cavity of the loaf, wondering how to make a delicious bruschetta, when there was nothing to hold up the topping. So, I sliced and broke up the crust, planning to serve it with a nice olive oil/balsamic vinegar dipping sauce for lunch the next day. After pouring out the oil/vinegar, I reached for the bread. Umm, kids, where are the bread chunks. Oh, we ate them all, they were soooo good. McKay also threw one of the lemons that I bought to have on hand if I needed it in a recipe, into the blender with blueberry Kefir and apricots, for a very sour smoothie. Luckily he peeled it first. C'est la vie, I guess. Tonight we will have pot roast with roasted carrots and parsnips. The kids are really going to regret their picky eating and junk food addiction over the past few weeks (months more like.) We're going to start having a lot more veggies going on here!

Still waiting for church to start. I hate 1:00 church, it seems like the day is twice as long.