You
don’t know how good you have it until it’s different. While I’m always up to a
challenge, I don’t expect the whole world to have to go it along with me. If I
ever made a joke that most American pantries have enough to feed a family for
weeks on end, I didn’t want to have to prove it.
We’re
together, alone for a stretch and we’re giving it our all. Some food writers
are craving comfort food. I’m in a “making do” mode.
After
Harvey flooding when a house guest noted we were down to eating leaves out of
the yard, I corrected her that we were harvesting fresh herbs I’d planted on
purpose.
It’s
always been the advice to rotate pantry goods each hurricane season, but it
sounds like many of us haven’t been doing so. And grocery runs for self
quarantine times have focused on potato chips. It’s time to get creative and
I’m still praying the lights stay on and we always have safe water.
I’m
looking at fresh food first, then to what’s frozen, then the cans. Here’s what
we’ve been creative with at our house:
*
Tortilla pizzas with cheese, tomato sauce and toasted pecans. It happened and
they’d have passed the taste test under any circumstances.
*
Relish with a fresh Serrano pepper that was waaaayyyy hot; avocado mayo to calm
that down, crunchy jicama (the
last of the first one I’d ever bought) green onions and oregano from the garden
and waaaayyyy tart cranberries that my niece convinced me were easy to cook
with sugar for Thanksgiving. Umm, those cranberries were still in the freezer,
but not forgotten.
*
Eggs cooked in seasoned oil and topped with home-grown oregano
*
The last of the radishes, sliced and substituted for crackers with cheese.
That
comfort food angle does have its appeal and marketers are on the job to make
sure I have experienced the following:
A
crumb of comfort
New
York is famous for slices of pizza, but I didn’t know that crumb cake was a
thing over there. Clarkson Avenue Crumb Cake Company is shipping comfort food
to your door in classic form as well as blueberry, salted caramel and
gluten-free. Cakes are made in the USA with natural ingredients and are
preservative free. Forget coffee break. I didn’t mind that some of my crumbles
mixed in with an over-easy egg for breakfast. We all need to start our days
best as we can now! You’ve got to give them extra credit for flavors of the
month: Danny Boy for March was a chocolate stout cake with Irish cream topping.
See what they did there?
Just
the Cheese
– One of my home “accidents” is already a thing and now it’s a winning thing.
That time a glob of cheese came out like a crunchy disc in my skillet resulted
in a heavenly bite I’m always trying to recreate at home. Just the Cheese is an
actual product made from 100 percent Wisconsin cheese baked into mini bars and
bites, and has been for sale. It is now the first-place winner in the Natural
Snacks category of the prestigious World Championship Cheese contest. That’s
the “preeminent cheese authority in the world,” proud Just the Cheese makers
tell us.
My
sample of jalapeno cheese, low-carb bites were oven baked to caramelize the
texture. Wisconsin Cheddar is another of their popular flavors for on-the-go
snacking. Tip: I served these for breakfast as an egg side dish. It was Just
the Cheese… and the egg.
Absolutely
Gluten Free Potato Crisps are hyperbolic paraboloids that come in a canister, so
we’re familiar with that concept. The new deal is that this no-artificial
ingredient brand is guilt-free for our gluten-intolerant snacking partners in
Culinary Thrill Seeking. Sometimes you’ve got to have that stand-by salty
crunch and these crisps are ready to please.
Darragh
Doiron is a Port Arthur area foodie who knows food is still a big topic no
matter what’s going on in the world. Reach her at darraghcastillo@icloud.com
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