Impromptu

Today, I came home to an almost empty fridge and an almost empty pantry.  This has never happened before.  We've never ran out of groceries.  On the contrary, we often find ourselves overstocking and throwing away perishables that don't get cooked in time before they turn bad.

Then it occurred to me that it's actually been a while since we last went grocery shopping.  We've been away so much on weekends--in fact, we were home probably only one weekend in the last 2 months that we haven't had the chance to replenish our supplies.  Well, Charles and I have both made short visits to the store to get milk, yogurt, bread and baby food.  But nothing like the usual grocery shopping that we would do every other week.

So I struggled for a moment trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  There weren't any leftovers so I had to come up with something.  I was so tempted to just pick up the phone and call for Chinese take-out, but we had Chinese food just a few days ago.

I started browsing--through the pantry, then the fridge, then back to the pantry.  I thought, "there has to be something here I can make".  I saw a box of spaghetti noodles and a can of tomato sauce, and in the freezer was a pack of cooked swiss meatballs.  Aha!  Traditional spaghetti was what immediately came to mind.

This was done for a little less than 30 minutes.  I didn't have all the right ingredients but it turned out ok.  The sauce was actually pretty good but the meatballs didn't go very well with the dish.  These swiss meatballs are better paired with thick mushroom gravy.

I sprinkled it with parmesan cheese and served it with love.  We had dinner!