No plans

I've been thinking about cooking lately. Saturday morning I had some boating plans that were cancelled and I found myself at Saratoga Farmers Market, buying veggies and goat cheese. Food with no dinner plans.

The day was supposed to start busy, but with the cancellation I spent the morning getting a bike tune-up, going to the market, stopping at a new chocolate store, and checking out BBQ grills at Lowes. All this activity wiped me out so that I felt compelled to take an afternoon nap. Sometimes the best days are the ones when plans change and activities become ad-libbed.

In the early evening I was oiling the bike chain to complete the tune-up when I thought of my friend Mike, who's wife was out of town. We get in touch and decide to do dinner. I pick up a few more things at the store, show up at his new house (in the clothes I napped in), and we're making steak and crab an hour later.

Mike and Carole had just closed on the house Thursday, so I before I went over I asked what would be available in the kitchen and Mike said just pots and pans. I didn’t really understand he was being literal until I arrived and found exactly three pots and one pan. Luckily I had brought most everything needed to cook. In fact, after going to the grocery store I even made one more stop at home to make sure I brought a knife and a bottle opener. Oh yeah, Mike had four plates. All we had to do was go to the store to pick up plastic utensils!

I've taken a couple of cooking classes. In each class part of the grade was determined by what you produced but a significant portion of the grade was also based on how you coped with unplanned events. What would you do when a sauce didn't thicken, when you burnt the onions for french onion soup, when you mistook salt for sugar? There wasn't always time or resources to start over. Staying relaxed, going with the flow and improvising were all part of the process!