Last week I wrote about the conundrum so many of us face when we ask ourselves the age old question “What’s for dinner?” What a strange irony it is that even with our incredible bounty of food, at five o’clock we still stroll into the kitchen and wonder what to eat for dinner. If I don’t know in the morning, that question will repeat itself throughout the day like a woodpecker that hammers on my shoulder. Eating dinner is more than just eating dinner. It’s the period at the end of a sentence, or the note that ends a song.
An intelligent, organized person would solve the problem and make a plan. In an ideal world, they’d sit down with a cup of coffee sometime over the weekend and just figure it out. But for some reason, that’s never worked for me. I would make a plan and things would not go according to plan. Surprise! Or, what I was supposed to eat that day didn’t sound good, wasn’t what my body wanted to eat. Then I’d be left with a lot of fresh, uneaten food that went to waste.
Eventually I learned that for the most part, having a well-stocked pantry answered the “What’s for dinner?” question. A well-stocked pantry invites you to go into the kitchen to cook. Imagine your pantry as a musical composition and every ingredient is a note on the scale. Think of it like this: an unlimited array and variety of music arises out of that finite set of musical notes. Likewise, the possibilities for food combinations and creativity are practically infinite with a simplified selection of food in your pantry.
A melody rises out of the pantry in complete and spontaneous harmony with the body’s requirements and the soul’s mood. While the food doesn’t exactly jump off the shelves and cook itself for you, it almost seems like it does. Ingredients naturally orchestrate themselves into nourishing, tasty combinations that suit the day. Since each ingredient has a perfect pitch, it doesn’t take much accompaniment to create symphonic flavor and aromatic crescendos. Having a plentiful supply of food on hand allows a nice food rhythm to develop. Sometimes you may run across a specialty food item or fresh, locally grown meat or produce. This special food item can be a guest artist in your musical repertoire of food. Once you get it home, you can combine it with what you already have in your pantry. Then the creativity really explodes. You may even have several “What’s for dinner?” questions answered then.
It’s amazing how much freedom you can find in a well-stocked pantry. Then you can just say goodbye to that pesky woodpecker, if you have one, that is.
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