Do pots and pans determine what we eat?

January blues, grey sky’s, no money, deadlines pending – that’s my life right now. So Friday night, the six Canada girls had a come dine with me night in celebration of a ritual we used to have every Friday night in Canada last year. 

We called it family dinner. As we stuffed ourselves with nachos, couscous and pasta salad, chicken, brownies and pavolva inevitably the conversation led to last year dinner menus and we remembered the one pot we shared between the six of us – god love you if you wanted to cook something which required two!

When we arrived in Canada we each bought, at great cost, a pot, sharp knife and fork and a plastic bowl. These we carried to and from our bedrooms religiously three times a day because if we didn’t they would end up in a cardboard box full of dirty dishes and pots where the cleaning people deposited all unwashed items.  By the time we left, we had one pot between the six of us which was shared between us because each person clamed it was their pot and nobody wanted to search through the fermenting cardboard box.

I also had a yellow one-egg frying pan, which also served as a one pork chop frying pan. Our fermenting George-Forman Grill (which was secretly used by the other 30 people on the floor) was in quarantine, embedded with charred and sterilized food, which had collected there for months. The small child’s plastic dish, which acted as a bowl for cereal, plate for chili and cooking pot for scrambled eggs was a very strange colour and had furry texture towards the end which couldn’t be washed away.

Our weekly shop became an obstacle course, we religiously avoided the junk food isles. Eyes closed we choose the same items every week automatically and had a competition to see who could spend the least – needless to say I never won that competition. Pork chops, pork chops and more pork chops. We hated the two seasoned in a pack for $2.69 pork chops but, my god, if they were gone we cried in the aisle – seriously that was two meals for $2.69 but I haven’t eaten a pork chop since. ‘Chilli’ was the other stable item on the menu.  Minced meat cooked with a can of tomato sauce -with Franks hot sauce and rice it was called chilli  - minus the hot sauce with pasta it was called spaghetti bolognaise. These two meals and the pork chops were dinners for 4 nights. On shopping day we cooked ‘chicken fajitas’ but without the chicken, who can win the lowest shopping bill if you buy chicken? So pepper, onion and sweet corn chicken-less fajitas – mmmmmm delicious…. Not. 

You can imagine what a grand occasion of the week it was to be invited out to someone’s house for dinner?  Describing the food afterwards caused spiteful comment as the others, mouths watering, ate their pork chops and looked forward to their Frank’s chili. 

While sitting at the table last Friday night, we realized we had enough food to last a whole week for the six of us in Canada, grateful for an abundance of pots and pans, knifes and forks and a fridge full of food every time we open it. 

We all remembered the night we bought the cupcakes - it was such an important occasion we actually photographed it

As we laughed, remembering our frugal, pot-less existence, we wondered did other people have the same experience living away from home?