No marshmallows?! And other food fiascos...

With my scrapbooking supplies somewhere in the Pacific and my kids needing something from me about every 15 minutes (only 18 more days until school starts!) , my usual past times of creating and working have been postponed. Once we get our household goods shipment (the move inspector said it is scheduled to arrive before the end of the month. Yay!) and the spouse can be home long enough to field questions and requests from the kids so I can get the courses I am teaching online this semester organized, I will be back to my favorite past times.

Meanwhile, I have been, >ahem<, cooking. Anyone who knows me for more than an hour discovers how little I like to cook. Cooking sucks. It seems like an awful lot of work for 15 minutes of meal - and there is no guarantee that it will turn out well. But, I do love to eat good food - cooked by someone who loves to cook. Cooking, to me is like accounting and nursing... God bless the people who love to do it, because I'm sure not cut out for it! I'd rather work on something that lasts a little longer than a meal and maybe some leftovers... like a scrapbook. With acid-free adhesive and paper, those should last a few lifetimes.

But now that I have the time, and I would rather spend money on fun, Japanese stuff - not eating out -  so I am attempting to cook. Two nights ago I Googled a recipe that included two of the ingredients I had on hand: chicken breasts and sweet potatoes. Allrecipes.com gave me a recipe: Golden Chicken with Autumn Vegetables. Thank God for the internet, since all of my recipes are somewhere in the Pacific.

That meal went over well with the family, so I decided to try again, stepping it up a notch. Today I found three separate dishes to try, Dixie Pork Chops,Ultimate Twice Baked Potatoes and Easy Homestyle Green Beans. This time I needed to pick up some things at the commissary (grocery store on base) to create the recipes. One of Rodney's family's favorite, apple salad, was another dish I planned to make over the weekend, and I needed marshmallows for it, so off to the store I went.

And apparently there are some shipping issues I was not aware of previously.

Certain shelves at the commissary were empty - or pretty close to empty. The only times I have ever seen this in my life were during hurricane warnings. It was like the Great Bread Phenomenon comedian Henry Cho warned us about: When the threat of snow hits his small Southern town, the citizens rush to the grocery store and buy bread like it is the only thing needed to survive a half-inch snowfall. If you are too late to react to the phenomenon, you are left with the dregs of the bread aisle - hot dog buns. I was reminded of this comedy bit when I took a glimpse of the bread aisle as a pushed my cart by. To begin with, the bread aisle at the commissary is more of a bread shelf. It's about a quarter of an aisle long. And it was clearly not being restocked:

And, yes, of course I bought two loaves of bread we did not really need. I was not going to make my husband and kids be the losers with the hot dog bun sandwiches if there was a Great Bread Phenomenon in Iwakuni! Marshmallows (no apple salad, >sniff<) and baking powder were sold out, along with everything resembling yogurt:

Here is a close up of the sign that was taped to the case:

Interesting. So, I'm not the only one who has got stuff somewhere in the Pacific. Hopefully I will not be experiencing shipping issues with my household goods. But, then again, they aren't being refrigerated. But guess what the commissary does have plenty of... Halloween candy! Apparently that ship arrived a couple months early.

I better stock up now. You never know when the Great Halloween Candy Phenomenon might happen!

But for those of you concerned about my family, the three recipes I mentioned earlier turned out well even though I have limited kitchen tools to work with.... the family was fed and gave their thumbs up. I hope they don't get too used to my cooking. Especially if the ingredients I need are somewhere in the Pacific.