Who knows what puts these thoughts into your head, the “You know what’d be great for dinner tonight that we haven’t had in ages?” thoughts. But there’s no such thing as “I’ll just stop at the market on my way home for those six or seven ingredients we don’t have on hand” because it’s the middle of a pandemic and you’re recovering from heart surgery and they don’t sell lemongrass at the snack counter in the lobby of the hospital where you go for cardiac rehab. (Well, maybe they do, but you’ve never gone to the snack counter.)
Sure, you could order take-out from that place you hardly ever go even when there’s not a pandemic, but the last time you did that was the night of “How about a thick-crust pizza?” when you called to order from a new place and then you got there and you could see it was wildly overcrowded and the guy behind the counter had a mask around his chin! and you drove home furious without the pizza and made peanut-butter sandwiches—so, yeah, ordering take-out on a whim from a new place is not going to happen any time soon. But, hey, the astronauts on the International Space Station can’t exactly go to Five Guys whenever they feel like it, either.
But you are resourceful. After all, did your mother not teach you to cook with lessons like “What do you do if you don’t have tomato paste? Reduce some ketchup”? And have you not been enjoying Mr. Jamie Oliver’s kitchen-flexibility instructions? (Have you not been enjoying them unto the point of parody? “Today we’re going to make a hamburger. But if you don’t have proper rolls, you can use slicing bread, and if you don’t have ground beef you can use peanut butter, and if you don’t have ketchup you can use grape jelly! Fill your boots, lovely people!”)
So, yes, you could add scallions and lemongrass and tofu and mung bean sprouts to the shopping list and wait for the double-masked-6AM-once-a-fortnight grocery run your family is allowing itself, but by then the urge for Pad Thai will probably have passed. But a little red onion is as crunchy as a scallion and every bit as colorful. And who really knows what lemongrass is, anyway? And let’s be truthful: you wouldn’t have added tofu to the shopping list in the first place. And—best of all!—your beautiful, intelligent, and eminently resourceful spouse has been sprouting broccoli seeds in a mason jar.
So you gather the ingredients, such as you are able: that tamarind paste and those dried shrimp that have been in the bottom of the crisper for ages because they keep forever; a chicken breast from the fridge, a few shrimp from the freezer; a lime, though you would not have been above using bottled lime juice if there hadn’t been one; some peanuts; a handful of snow peas she found at the market on the last trip; soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic; No palm sugar? Who cares? Brown sugar will be fine. Angel hair, because honestly at this point noodles are noodles. What’s that, dear? Yes, of course, I can serve yours over rice instead.
Would you call this authentic Pad Thai? Of course you wouldn’t. Would you say it was good? Why, yes. Yes, you would. And as you eat it, think of mom. And Chef Jamie. And your resourceful wife and her Mason-jar sprouts. And raise a glass to those astronauts on the International Space Station who only get grocery deliveries every six months. And know that one day you will stop at the market on a whim. But until then you’ll be fine.
“Oh, and I also vacuum-sealed the Dino-Bites,” I said when she came down to collect kitchen towels for the next load of laundry.
One day it’s sunny and bright, the next grey and chill—in other words, March. While we were in Antigua a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to rain every night, overnight, leaving everything fresh and clear in the morning. I like that idea but don’t know how to get our climate to adopt it. These days it’s hard to be sure we know anything.
After you’ve driven in the rain for five hours and reached a vacation site so fog-shrouded it’s hard to tell if you might sail off the edge of the world, you order take-out.
Dinner at the Country House 