Enough for Wednesday

It’s been a busy week. It’s hot. I’m tired. And somewhere around the end of the workday, the inevitable question showed up.

What's for dinner?

You know the feeling.

Not What delicious meal shall I prepare this evening?

More like standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, staring into the light as though the Lord might provide a fully assembled casserole if I just wait long enough.

I waited. There was no casserole.

So I started doing what I believe is one of the great lost arts of home cooking - rummaging.

In the fridge I found a grilled chicken breast, one zucchini, one yellow squash, and half of a yellow onion.

Basically, a collection of culinary orphans.

I wasn’t going to the grocery store, and surely those reasonably respectable ingredients could figure something out amongst themselves.

I chopped up the onion and started sautéing it. Once it began to caramelize, I diced the zucchini and yellow squash and tossed those in too. I let everything cook down for a bit, then went rummaging through the pantry and freezer to see what else might volunteer for dinner.

I deglazed the pan with a can of crushed tomatoes I had canned earlier this summer and added about four cups of my homemade chicken stock.

Then came a little basil, a generous pinch of red pepper flakes, a dash of Worcestershire, and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

I chopped up the leftover grilled chicken and added that, along with half a cup of orzo and the sad little remnant of a bag of frozen corn I found hiding in the freezer.

And somehow, all those odds and ends became dinner.

A warm, nourishing bowl of summer vegetable and chicken soup.

I could have used less stock and turned the whole thing into more of a pasta bake, covered it with cheese, and put it in the oven. That would have been delicious too.

But Wednesday night me wasn’t feeling quite that ambitious.

I did toast some sourdough under the broiler to eat alongside it.

Did I remember to take a picture of the sourdough?

Of course not!

Because this is real life, not a cooking show.

And maybe that’s really the point of this post.

We’ve gotten so accustomed to thinking that cooking means finding a recipe, buying all the ingredients, measuring everything perfectly, and producing something worthy of a photograph.

But our grandmothers didn’t always cook that way.

Sometimes dinner was simply made from what needed to be eaten. Made from what we had. And a little imagination.

Our grandmothers were masters at it. A little of this, the rest of that, a spoonful of something from yesterday, and somehow everybody got fed.

Just good nourishing food and resourcefulness.

Maybe that’s one of my favorite things about learning to garden, preserve food, make stock, and bake bread.

It isn’t about creating some picture-perfect homestead life where every meal is planned, every tomato is flawless, and I float into the kitchen at five o’clock wearing a linen apron with a fresh loaf of sourdough cooling on the windowsill.

Good grief!

Some nights I’m standing barefoot in front of the refrigerator at six o’clock holding a zucchini and hoping for divine intervention.

There’s something deeply satisfying about looking at a refrigerator full of remnants and realizing you already have enough. Maybe not enough for the recipe you saw on Pinterest. Maybe not enough for the dinner you would have planned on Saturday morning when you were rested and optimistic. But enough for Wednesday.

And sometimes, enough for Wednesday is exactly what we need.

So when you’re tired, open the refrigerator before you order fast food. Pull out the odds and ends. Chop something. Sauté something. Add some broth. Throw in a handful of pasta or rice. Taste it. Add a little of this and a little of that until it tastes like dinner.

You might accidentally make something wonderful.

And if you forget to photograph the bread?

Well.

Eat it anyway.

It’ll be DELICIOUS!