Ode to a little jar of Tamarind and the Minimalist

I'm frequently at a loss as to what to buy when it comes to food shopping. Even when I try to plan out our weekly meals and prepare menu plans with corresponding shopping lists in advance, invariably something goes wrong. Either I forget some crucial ingredient, the store doesn't have what I need, or ironically I end up buying everything necessary to prepare a week's worth of meals during a week when I don't have time to cook and/or we end up eating out frequently (which necessitates a frantic end-of-the-week rush to use up whatever fresh and perishable ingredients were purchased).

For these and other reasons, the traditional cookbook recipe has fallen out of favor with me. In the past, I have frequently turned to recipes since I lack the experience and ingenuity to simply whip something together out of whatever is lurking in the fridge or pantry. Although I enjoy the variety and creativity that recipes provide, I find that they're usually overly complicated and require purchasing some esoteric (and often expensive) ingredient that I'm unlikely to ever use again.

A great example of this phenomenon is when I tried to make Pad Thai from scratch a few years ago rather than from a mix or jar (well, the noodles were store bought, obviously!). The recipe called for a number of ingredients, including Tamarind, which I had great difficulty in tracking down (I went to several stores before finally locating an expensive little jar at Whole Foods). And, to top it all off, the recipe didn't even turn out that well! Of course AC and the two friends we had invited over to share our meal insisted it was good, but considering all the time, money, and effort that went into the preparation, it should have been a lot better!

I haven't used that little jar of Tamarind since (I realized I actually don't especially like the taste of Tamarind), but it was too expensive to just throw away. So, there it sits gathering dust in the back of my pantry. And every time we move (four times so far), we dutifully pack it away with our other pantry items and transport it to our next location. Right now it's sitting in a box in a climate controlled storage unit in Corpus Christi, and most likely it will end up traveling to Okinawa with us. It's had quite a life, that little jar of unused Tamarind!

Anyway, I didn't intend for this post to be so long, so I apologize for my incoherent ramblings. All of the above was simply meant as an introduction to a great article from yesterday's Dining section of the New York Times by Mark Bittman (The Minimalist) on "The Latest Must-Haves for the Pantry." You may not agree with everything he recommends (or condemns), but overall I think he offers some good advice on what to keep stocked in your home to make simple yet tasty meals. One of my goals for this year is to become more comfortable with cooking free style, that is, using what I have on hand and what's in season to come up with simple, yummy, healthy and economical meals. Of course I'll still use recipes as a general guideline or to give me ideas, but I hope to experiment more with some of Bittman's tips. These attempts will also hopefully provide good fodder for blogging. Here's to a year of healthy, delicious eating!