Puttanesca! The Art of Making Something Out of What You Have

Photo by Doğu Tuncer on Unsplash

No plan. No recipe. Still dinner. Still love.

Puttanesca! My husband will yell when one of my magical meals appears on the table, and they all cringe.

I can whip up an occasional delicious dish that often looks repulsive using whatever ingredients happen to be in the house. My husband, on the other hand, always needs to run out and grab something we forgot, while I make it work with what we have. It’s just a different way of looking at the same situation.

He is a wonderful chef and loves cooking for our family. We are banned from the kitchen for hours while he builds flavor and makes it perfect. The kitchen is his zen zone until I enter, moving through the room like a tornado when we’re in a time crunch, or I just can’t wait anymore.

On any random day, we may get a family member or five stopping by for a meal. We start with an inventory of what we have on hand. Where he sees a quick grocery run, I see appetizers and a pasta concoction.

Motherhood has gifted me the talent of making twenty-minute meals that appear from nowhere. Oh! We have a can of artichoke hearts, some bacon, bell peppers, frozen spinach, crescent rolls, pasta, sausage, and some questionable leftover grilled chicken? No problem!

Wait! Chili in the pantry? Score!

I might as well use the rest of that cream cheese. Now they can fill up on dips while we figure out what to do with the pasta and whatever else I might find.

Puttanesca! my husband will yell as we cook together, and the meal rapidly appears. There is always that moment when he realizes he is taking instructions in his own perfectly organized kitchen, while I start opening cabinets and pulling out ingredients with the excitement of a kid looking for the golden egg. When he finally takes a bite, he gives me a look that is part admiration and part disbelief that this worked at all.

I write like that, too.

One memory opens the fridge, and suddenly everything else starts coming out. Something from years ago sits next to something that happened yesterday, and before long, the present starts making a little more sense.

My thoughts spiral that way. I circle back a lot, reuse things, throw pieces together that do not seem related at first. Sometimes it looks messy while it is coming together, but that is usually how the best meals start, too.

Our love is puttanesca.

We live in bodies that rarely want to cooperate. My husband is a disabled veteran who does not always get a say in how the day will go. And me being a menopausal hot mess means an adventure is usually right around the corner. There is always a plan for the day, of course, but reality has a way of walking in with its own ingredients.

So we take what we have and make something out of it. Some days it’s careful, slow, and intentional. Other days, it’s thrown together because that is what the moment allows. Sometimes the ingredients are not what we would have chosen, and the whole thing looks a little rough while it’s coming together. But it works. It feeds the people we love. It fills the house and keeps things moving without waiting for the perfect recipe.

That is what puttanesca is to me. Not chaos exactly. More like trust. Trust that something good can come from what is already here. Trust that love does not need perfect ingredients to be sustaining.

Originally Published on Medium