Flexible Meals

Last week, I made tortillas for supper. I usually use my huge iron pan over a high powered gas cookstove for this. After the first round of tortillas was partially cooked, the little gas tank for this stove was out. No matter, I finished the tortillas on my two burner stove with my cast iron skillets. They turned out delicious, and it didn't take much longer. We were having company for the next day and with the busyness of life, I forgot about that empty gas tank. Until a few days later, as I was cooking pizza pockets (trying them for the first time), my larger gas tank went out. A lesson learned: always replace one tank as soon as it goes out. Maybe I will learn a trick for telling when one is low, but I can't order a new one until the old one is out, otherwise I'll lose whatever is left in the old tank when it is removed. For now, I will aim to have a small tank available to switch over to finish the meal.

When we lived in the United States, I had an arsenal of meals that my family all enjoyed. Many were casseroles, allowing me to clean up, take the dog and kids for a walk, or weed the garden until supper was ready right on time. During late spring through fall, I planned meals based on what we had growing in our garden and were receiving from our CSA (community supported agriculture) share. I also always had the ingredients on hand for a number of quick and easy meals for those evenings when I couldn't or just didn't want to really cook: jars of home canned spaghetti sauce and packages of noodles, homemade pesto in the freezer, tortillas and refried beans, peanut butter and jelly, to name a few.

Upon moving to Thailand, most of the ingredients for my repotoire of meals were too expensive, too hard to find, or both. Also, we do not have an oven, so the casseroles were out, although some of them have proved to be adaptable to stovetop cooking. I've gradually rebuilt my list of regular recipes and am now able to plan my weekly meal schedule with less frustration that at first. However, I found myself needinng to be more flexible with fewer readily available options.

I generally depend on the neighborhood "vegetable truck" for my chicken. I have not quite built up to buying raw chicken hanging in the local market. The smell is too strong and the sanitary conditions too questionable. I can get chicken at the indoor supermarket, but it is more expensive and I have to try to keep it reasonably cool until I can get it home on the bus. The truck is the best option, as it stops literally right outside my gate and the price is good. The problem is that I never know which days the truck will come. I've gone entire weeks, with all the vegetables sitting in my refrigerator just waiting for chicken to make complete meal. In the end, I have to scrap together a vegetarian meal with what I have.

I don't have a lot of ingredient just sitting around in my cupboards, for two main reasons. Firstly, everything I have in my house has to be lugged from the store to the bus stop and then from the bus stop to our house, usually while carrying a heavy 14 month old and trying to keep the other three children from getting run over by mopeds and taxis. Secondly, ants are really persistent and swarming here. On principle, we refuse to use any poison in our house, since we don't want our children harmed along with the insects. But ants are everywhere. I have not found a tupperware container, jar, or sealed bag that they have not been able to get into given enough time. So the key is to use up ingredients before the ants can find a way to get in. If I buy and use a bag of beans or pasta in the same week, I have yet to have it spoiled by pests. I do store some particularly vulnerable items, like sugar, in the refrigerator and others that are susceptible to weevils are in the freezer. On the whole, however, I buy ingredients by the week. This means when the chicken truck doesn't come, I don't have the range of options to improvise meals that I might otherwise have.

So last week, what did we eat for supper? First we ate the one cooked pizza pocket while it was hot, and everyone agreed it was delicious. Then I quickly put the remaining ingredients into the fridge. Philip kept three kids at home, while Meriel and I walked to a neighbor's to order a new tank. I think she said that it would be at our house in 30 minutes. It was 5:50 pm. I considered going back home and finishing making pizza pockets. They would be all ready to cook when the delivery man arrived, and since they only took about 5 minutes or so, we would have a only slight late supper. (I usually aim to have supper at 6:00 pm). I thought I would hurry on to the convenient store down the street and see what I could get there. Tesco Lotus Express is wonderful in that it sells milk, bread, and some other basic food items at the same price or less than the bigger supermarket. And it is much closer to home. However, they are chronically understocked. I never know when or how long they will be out of bread or some other Cardin "necessity." This day they had bread, cans of tuna fish, and potato chips. We had mayonnaise and homemade bread and butter pickles at home. We bought the items and rushed home. Total away time: 10 minutes. I decided to make the sandwiches, as I figured we could be eating by the time the delivery man arrived, if he was on time. Turned out to be a wise decision, as the gas tank did not arrive that day at all. I had to make a second trip to the neighbor's before I got my tanks. The pizza pockets were still delicious!