Last month mood was very mellow. August being a holiday month for everyone, we basically “closed the shop”, and retired inside. With most of our friends in Puerto gone on vacation and our kids back to home schooling, life has been quiet: no dinner parties, no trips away, a couple of casual dinners out to patronise the local restaurants but hardly anything to write about. Being in the middle of the hurricane season, we sat thru a couple of storms, too mild to be dangerous, still strong enough to keep us indoors.

Boat bound, and wanting a distraction from Grade 4 assignments and constant rain, I decided it was the perfect occasion to clean out our cold storage, and use up whatever meat and other frozen stuff had accumulated in our freezers over the past year or so. It felt like a Masterchef mystery box challenge: duck breasts, Italian sausages, NZ mussels, , Australian lamb, cookies and cream ice-cream,…what on earth could we do with all this? Looking for new ideas and inspiration, I turned to some of my favourite food blogs: Dinner a love story always makes me smile, 101 Cookbooks has enough recipes to turn me into a vegetarian (one day…) and if you really want to know how to while away a rainy afternoon, grab a nice cup of coffee and browse thru Food 52 ( I dare you not to spend an obscene amount of time looking thru recipes, funny stories and gorgeous Instagrams! I have).

Luckily our fresh fruits and vegetable market is only a short walk from the boat, so with a head full of ideas, working out dinner was a matter of picking what looked best on the day, and play matchmaker in the galley!

That’s how the duck magrets were paired with sweet potato slices, guacamole and fresh tomato salsa,

the Italian sausages found a perfect partner in cheesy polenta,

the mussels happily swam in a Portuguese style stew, thick with tomatoes and chickpeas

and the lamb teamed beautifully with cauliflower “rice” and steamed green beans. As for the ice cream, I finally got around to make ice cream sandwiches, thanks to the half opened packet of coconut cookies the kids had left laying around. What a perfect snack for unexpected guests!

You’d think I would have rushed to re-stock our clean and empty freezers, but I liked the idea of a minimalist pantry (sort of) and thought: why not use some of our dry goods for a while, just buying fresh produce when necessary? Couscous, rice, beans, canned tuna, olives, nuts…all found their way in semi-vegetarian dishes. We ended up eating tons of salads, some fancy like this  spinach salad with couscous

that oyster mushrooms and avocado salad

or even my own “everything but the kitchen sink salad” concoction

Staring at the quantities of flour I had purchased in the US, I also obsessed about using it before it reached its use by date, so embarked on a breadmaking experiment. This proved to be the most frustrating and infuriating exercise, as no two breads ever came out the same. Some way worse than others, for which I blamed the high Mexican humidity, but Terry reminded me that I used different  recipes each time. Ooops! I could not help it, I had to try: Buttermilk and Maple Syrup bread, Olive oil bread, Simple French loaf,… Ok, the Buttermilk and Maple syrup failed as a bread, however, it made a wonderful base for Bread and Butter pudding (just needed to add lots of cream, butter, extra sugar and a good handful of sultanas). The Olive oil bread was pretty good on its own, but was 10 times better when toasted and filled with left over roast pork (and since I happened to have pickles, swiss cheese and American mustard in the fridge, we ended up with our own version of a Cuban sandwich)

Have I made a dent in my provisions? A little. The freezer is nearly empty (one lonely lobster remaining, waiting for a worthwhile plate companion). So mission is not quite accomplished yet, but I found there is something uplifting about using what is at hand. It forces you to think (and cook) outside the box, try new produce, new techniques, new pairings…. I like to imagine my galley is going thru its own detox! And not to be outdone, Terry joined in the cleansing spirit and has kept the drink fridge empty for the past 4 weeks. Now I wonder how long we could keep going this way?