Originally posted on September 1, 2014, by cruisingrunner
When you are having a potluck, and you make a pasta salad that is WAY too big for the number of guests, what do you do with the leftovers?
At home, I probably would have saved just a little for my own lunch the next day and tossed the rest. Well, that may be getting ahead of myself a bit, because at home it would be unlikely I’d be having a potluck at my house in the first place. In contrast, out here, potlucks are a way of life. And so is not wasting. There were a lot of valuable provisions that went into that pasta salad, and some would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace, like a can of hearts of palm from the U.S. or a can of salsa from Mexico. So, I resolved not to dump it, and once that decision was made, the first task was to figure out how to fit the HUGE bowl into our tiny fridge. Fitting things into the fridge is often like a big puzzle, and I can usually find space for that one last item. But this time, the puzzle could not be solved, so the lettuce and the bok choy had to spend the night on the counter in order to make room.
The next task was to figure out how to serve so much pasta salad to a crew who is lukewarm to pasta salad in the first place. The first afternoon, I went the straightforward approach and told the boys they had to eat it for lunch. Leaving the last two loaves of bread in the freezer so they couldn’t make sandwiches instead was my only hope for success. For dinner, I made chicken Milanese, and I tried to pass off the pasta salad as a side dish with some red sauce on top. Not disguised enough. So, the next night for dinner I upped my game. I put the pasta salad in a baking dish, topped it with red sauce, sausage, cheese, and herbs, and then threw it in the oven for some sort of baked pasta casserole. Winner! The boys loved it, and the pasta salad was finally gone. No wasting.
Food isn’t the only thing we waste less of out here. Out here, you never waste an opportunity, and this applies to a whole variety of different things. If you see something you want or need at the store, grab it right away, you never know if it will still be there or be restocked when you go back. If you want to do a particular hike or snorkel, do it as soon as there’s good weather or good sunlight, do it then, because the clouds can roll in any time. If there’s a highlight of a particular anchorage or town that you don’t want to miss, check it off the list first or you may end up leaving or missing your chance. If there’s fuel at the fuel dock, go now, because there might not be any tomorrow, or they might be closed because of some holiday you, the foreigner, didn’t see coming. If there’s a good place to run, run everyday, because the next anchorage may have nothing but a rocky beach. OK, you get the idea.
Yesterday’s run was along a spider lined trail again, but I pressed on and did it anyway, and I even did a bit of speed work. Turns out to be a good thing, because although we are in an amazing spot on the outer eastern edge of the Vava’u island group with nothing but a small island and a reef separating us from the pounding pacific ocean, and we get to hear waves as we drift off to sleep at night, there is sadly not much running room. So, yoga, paddling, and swimming will have to hold me over until we move again.
There may be little to no correlation between the fact that out here we waste less, and we also want less, but I thought I’d take advantage of the tired ole cliche anyway.
-D.
Gresham Family Exodus 