At the Improv

The normal shopping and cooking routines of the weekend were thrown a tad off course with the arrival of the holidays.

Saturday and Sunday were spent eating good food prepared by others, visiting with family and friends, and dipping apples in honey to usher in a new year.

So when the beginning of the week quickly arrived, I had no homemade bread to creatively incorporate into Wednesday night's dinner, no banana muffins to grab for a quick breakfast, and no Sunday black beans to smash for a Thursday burrito.

Improv cooking would definitely be on the menu this week.

Breakfast at the improv: yogurt, French couscous, walnuts, and agave syrup. Reminiscent of a rice pudding, this dish is where the creamy meets the crunchy and chewy. An improvised breakfast of champions.

Lunch at the improv: a bread salad with chickpeas and grated carrots was tossed in an apple cider yogurt dressing. That foccacia from one week ago was still going strong in fridge storage and made scrumptious croutons. . . TGFF! The one thing I did prep on Sunday, homemade hummus (chickpeas in disguise), was dolloped on top.

Dinner at the improv began at 7:17pm. First I scoured the fridge and pantry, lining up proteins, grains, basic veggies, and savory spices on the counter. The onion, garlic scape pesto, corn, Israeli couscous, eggs, and Monterey Jack cheese made the team on Monday night. For this hodge podge Israeli couscous and egg dish, it would be up to the food, and not myself, to be scrambling to make us dinner.

Kudos to Israeli couscous for providing good starchy satisfaction and structure to an egg based dish. If you are craving an essence of pasta, but don't want the whole bowl of linguine, Israeli couscous is a good way to go.

Using what's on hand, combining ingredients for savory satisfaction, enticing the sense of umami, and including ingredients across the nutrition spectrum, are what my improv act has been about this week.

With time, the tasting of different ingredients over and over again fosters imagination and cultivates the curiosity of "what could be" when ingredients are combined in creative ways.

Sometimes ingredient combos work and sometimes they don't. That's what being at the improv is all about.

Be Well.