We all have days/weeks in which we do not grocery shop. We eat what we have in the fridge, the pantry, the freezer, and in the secret stash behind the muffin tins.

We forgo grocery shopping for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we are exceptionally busy and just don’t make it to the store. Sometimes the primary grocery shopper goes in strike, claiming ‘there’s plenty of food here to eat’. Sometimes we are trying out a new diet plan called ‘I have $10 until Friday’.

Whatever the reason, there are few things that compare to the stress of grocery negligence – or, as I like to call it, creative eating.

Meal times become dreaded events. The already spare shelves empty further. You find yourself eating things you would normally avoid, as your standards lower every time you enter the kitchen. Stale foods, out of date foods, freezer-burned foods all look more appealing. Canned goods disappear. You reconnect with your inner bachelor-college-student-hobo.

These are tough times! Strange food combinations are born:

(This is half of a grilled cheese with jalepeños on it – S’s creation)

However, every now and then, a brilliant idea comes into being by pure accident. I can make a killer dinner I call ‘Magic Soup’. I literally throw a bunch of stuff in a pot (sticking as close as I can to broth, beans, vegetables), season the crap out of it (with a very distinguished spice selection process commonly known as ‘eenie-meenie-miennie-moe’), and plunk it onto the table (turns out, if you smile confidently when you present sketchy foods, people are more likely to trust the food).

S started making these quesadilla things on one such week of creative eating, and they’ve become one of my favorites.
They’re so simple. Corn tortillas, lunch meat, cheese, and spice, cooked on a warm skillet until the cheese is melted and the tortilla slightly browned.

Have you ever made food from pure necessity that turned out awesome?