Temporal Tuesday: What Can I Eat?

When I arrived in my first area, Palo Alto, CA, I was possibly over prepared for missionary work -- more on that later -- but woefully under prepared to live away from home.  On my first day Palo Alto, we got some important temporal things taken care of -- I bought a bicycle, bed sheets, and food.

However, I was befuddled on my first trip to the supermarket as I literally had no idea what to buy.  The only thing I really knew how to make, besides peanut butter sandwiches, was open face cheese sandwiches (melted cheese on toasted bread, this was the extent of my cooking skills).  So I bought some bread and some cheese, and milk, of course.

It didn't take long for me to realize that this was not going work, so in my first letter home I asked for simple meal ideas. Fortunately for me, my parents wrote back with some good ideas, such as heating up a can of soup and mixing it with ramen noodles.  Ramen noodles became a staple.

Another simple idea is spaghetti.  The instructions on the package of spaghetti noodles are easy to follow, and it is a simple matter to heat up sauce from a jar.  One can decide later if they want to try cooking ground beef to add.

Yet another idea is a variation on the open face cheese sandwiches I started with: cheese quesadillas.  Instead of bread, you melt the cheese on a tortilla, and instead of the oven you use a pan on the stove.  I found corn tortillas worked best as the flour tortillas burned more easily.

The point is that moms don't need to teach their prospective missionaries to be gourmet cooks.  Instead they need only give them some experience preparing a few simple, low cost meals before they get into the mission field.  Cost does matter as a missionary' budget does not provide much room for comfort.  In the late 1980s I spent an average of $20 a week on groceries.