Sometimes, I wander into the kitchen, hungry or pursued by hungry children, with a clear idea of how to satisfy that hunger. More often, I need to poke around in cupboards and the fridge before I can figure it out. Then there’s what happened the other day: a plan that I’d been hatching in the back of my mind — ruminating on it while I answered email, went for a run, edited two essays and went about the rest of my morning — took a detour when I opened the fridge.
I’d been planning to make chilaquiles. We’d had tacos recently and the fridge was stocked with leftover beans and rajas. We had fresh eggs from our CSA and some good salsa. And we had an open box of crispy tacos, no longer so crispy, a package I’d taped shut and even labeled, in a rare moment of organization, “chilaquiles.”
But when I finally got into the kitchen to make my long-planned meal, I opened the fridge and spotted the nice bag of fresh spinach that had also come in the CSA share. The slightly-stale taco shells seemed suddenly less appealing as a bed for my meal, so I skipped them. I’m not sure I can still call them chilaquiles without the tortillas, and I won’t always leave them out, but it was a good change of pace. Here’s to taking a detour.