Life happens and inevitably, there will be days when you go to the store and you find out that a few of the items on the shopping list were simply not available at the store you went to. It is usually pretty rare that main ingredients aren’t available at more stores – they are usually pretty stocked up on meats and seafood. However, there are definitely occasions when I have arrived at the store and been surprised that there isn’t a particular fish available. This can happen when a certain fish is out of season, especially if you are looking for wild fish.
It is usually one or two of the other ingredients needed to make a recipe that sometimes goes missing in the grocery store. Personally, I live thirty minutes from a large store with a large selection of organic and fresh foods, so it is not very easy for me to just go back the next day when the produce guy tells me they will have fennel available.
And what about the times when you have a list in front of you but somehow when you get home, you realize that you didn’t buy something on the list? The probability of this happening only increases when you have babies and/or children in tow, and you are distracted several times during the shopping trip in order to take care of their needs.
So, what do you do? Do you go back to the store? Do you go to another store in search of that much needed ingredient? Do you skip over that recipe? You could do any of these things, and I have personally done all of them.
However, the choice that I usually end up taking is the one that may involve a bit of creativity and spontaneity, even changing the recipe a bit. I basically look around my kitchen and figure out what I can use in place of that much needed ingredient. Some things are easy – use summer squash instead of zucchini, oil instead of butter and so on. Other things take a bit more creativity.
Recently I was going to try out the Jicama Apple Salad I found on the “Eating Well” website. However, there was no jicama at the store I went to. Anyway, what I came up with was to replace it with a slightly firm pear. It actually worked great and still has a similar consistency to jicama.
So I am here to tell you that I welcome any changes you make to the recipes I create and publish in the menu planners. In fact, I invite them! They are inevitable anyway because only you know that you or one of your family members is allergic to mango, or that your household can eat dairy but not gluten.
Even if I end up sending out the menu planner to hundreds of people, I am inspired by the fact that no two of the dishes will end up looking or tasting exactly the same from the different households. It is like giving crayons and paper to each of you and asking you to draw a tree and a sun. It is impossible for them to look the same, but it is inspiring to see the differences.
So, relax, enjoy and be spontaneous in your cooking when you are missing celery or cumin. And if you end up creating something really exciting, I would love to hear about it!
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