Every household probably has a go-to meal they whip up when thereās āno food in the house.ā Maybe for you itās a pb&j. A bowl of cereal can be nice. Some pasta with a little olive oil, garlic, and lemon, perhaps?
For our family itās egg bread. When youāre just about out of everything, hopefully you can at least scrounge up an egg and a slice of bread. We heat up our favorite tiny cast iron skillet, dab it with a bit of butter or oil, then crack an egg and drop it onto the hot skillet. Ahhh, that immediate sizzle means we arenāt going to go hungry tonight after all! Sprinkle a little salt or pepper on it, then take your piece of bread and smoosh it over the top of the egg, pushing down until the yolk breaks. Fry the egg side to preferred doneness, then flip over to lightly toast the bread. Voila! You have egg bread: a toasty, protein-packed, open-faced egg sandwich.
As a child, I used to love the story of Stone Soup, about a mysterious stranger traveling through a town during a famine. He needs a meal and a place to sleep, but gets turned away. There isnāt enough, he is told over and over. Thereās no food here. We donāt have anything to share. Move on.
When he offers to make stone soup in the town square, the villagers are curious. Into a big boiling pot, the stranger drops a smooth stone. The villagers are intrigued. Before long, someone brings a cabbage from their garden; the butcher brings some scraps of beef; someone has a potato, another has a few carrots and some celery. Before long, the villagers who had no food suddenly had a huge pot of soup, enough to share with everyone.
Itās a great lesson in sharing, but itās also a great lesson in making do with what you have. Some of the greatest ideas came as a result of āmaking do.ā Ice cream cones made from waffles were born at the 1904 Worldās Fair when the ice cream vendor ran out of dishes. Chocolate chip cookies burst onto the scene in the late 1930s, when Ruth Graves Wakefield, co-owner of the Toll House Inn, ran out of Bakerās chocolate to make cookies for her guests, so she āmade doā with a chopped-up chocolate bar. Potato chips were accidentally created, the story goes, in 1853 by George Crum, a chef in Saratoga Springs, New York. When a guest complained that the French-fried potatoes were too mushy, Krum (passive aggressively?) sliced paper-thin potatoes and fried them nearly to oblivion, much to the delight of the diners.
Yes, I realize these are all examples of foods. Maybe I shouldnāt write while Iām hungry.
Necessity is the mother of invention, as the proverb goes. A dash of desperation speeds it along. Just when it seems things are hopeless, when it seems options are low and supplies are depleted, our brains flip into āwhat do I have to lose?ā mode, and suddenly our eyes are opened to new possibilities.
Itās an important reminder that at those moments when it feels that things are going wrong, those are the moments when something really great can happen. It might not be something grand that changes the whole world; it might just mean that for one more night, you and your friends get to eat a hot bowl of soup with a side of egg bread. But at those moments when our cupboards are bare and our hopes have been dashed ā thatās when you might discover that all you really needed was already in front of you. Or inside you.
