Consolations of a Pantry

There is something to be said about clearing out your pantry if you are willing to do so. If a part of my cupboard was empty, I used to automatically fill it with new ingredients I could cook with. Part of the reason for this was that I used to have a genuine excitement about cooking but more than that, maybe it was my unconscious way of relishing the fact that I was not lacking space. After sharing a kitchen with multiple people for many years, having enough space to store all of my food comfortably felt like a relief.

I pared down though at a time when I no longer felt the energy to cook or care much about cooking for myself. I pared down things out of my life as if that would also wash away the hurt that I was feeling. I found out then that when the choice of food is limited, cooking feels less cumbersome and what I eat, which is simpler because of fewer ingredients, tastes better. When I only have three bags of dried beans rather than six, two types of herbs that I like the most rather than seven where five of them gets used maybe only once a month, and just some carrots, onion, and tomatoes, I don’t have to think too much about what to cook for dinner or what ingredients to put into a dish. I put in what I have.

Although the rich and complex flavors of dishes around the world that use a lot of spices and ingredients are wonderful, I think that in places where there is an abundance of food choices, people often think that the number of ingredients automatically equals more flavor. This is not always the case. The best food I have eaten were often the ones with the simplest list of ingredients.

The quality of the ingredients matter of course, but putting that aside, I wonder if flavor is in part a result of our attitude toward food. When there is a little of something, we cherish it more. When the dish in front of us does not necessarily look exciting or complicated, we pay more attention to the main ingredients that we can see, because they are all there is. The lack somehow makes us see better.

I see this as a challenge to go one step further and consider elements of the food to which we never used to pay much attention, such as the texture, the way it seems to actively nourish our bodies as it slides through our esophagus into our stomachs, the differences in flavor among the ingredients. The experience of eating becomes less a chore to not be hungry but a pleasure and a practice of loving what you have now.

I wonder now maybe if the lack I felt was not a matter of space. It was a matter of approach.