Last week we went camping for 6 days.
Not glamping, camping.

Bring-your-own-cooking-water camping.
No-shower camping.
Long-drop-toilet camping. (Don't google it, DON'T.)
Giant-motherfuckin-spiders camping.

Thankfully, we went with a high-functioning family with plenty of experience.

I was briefed to prep bolognese, Japanese curry, miso pork udon for 8.

I was instructed to cook, flat-pack, then freeze the meals into an esky cooler.

Pro tip: don't use ice, freeze water in bottles instead.

By the time you defrost the ice, you have drinking water again.

We then reheated the sauce with one of our double stove-top connected to gas burners.

We cooked pasta, rice, beans, noodles on the other.

Like I said, high-functioning.

So it's day 4, while making the Japanese curry, I realised there was a miscommunication.
I expected the other family to bring rice, and they us.

So I had to improvise - enter the emergency instant noodles.

I emptied the 5-pack Shin Ramyun and cooked the noodles like pasta.

Now, my usual curry is already pretty darn good, but we all know when we freeze our sauces overnight - curry, bolognese etc., weird and exciting things happen.

Different flavours and aroma compound starts to mingle and overlaps and do, you know, bow-chicka-wow-wow stuff.

I learned from a Japanese TV show ages ago that CoCo Ichibanya freezes their curry overnight for that reason.

Now imagine on top of the curry, we have the Shin Ramyun soup sachet as seasoning.

Fire and umami overload.
I had to cook more instant noodles.
The dad had 2 serves.

I suspect this was how most of our staple food was discovered.

Not by a bunch of Michelin-starred chefs in their test labs.
But out of desperation.
Lack of option.
Necessity.

That's why, deep down, I feel a little contempt against fine dining.

Of course, you can make stock with the whole chicken.
Puree a whole potato to make a smaller potato.
Of course, you can afford to 'lacto-ferment' 5 kg of fresh plums.
Of course, you can just walk out to the market and buy lobsters, wagyu, truffles from a shelf.

You guys are the first world.
You won the war and dictated the negotiations.
You have the time and resources to go back to your own lives.
Deconstruct food like toys.

Meanwhile, many of us needed to be creative with whatever scraps we have.

Our ancestors ate potato skins, bread with ketchup.

I swear, every time a young chef talks about his or her discovery on fermentation, mansplaining about kefir and kombucha my BP goes up by 20.

Hello? Soy sauce is fermentation, fish sauce is fermentation, dried seafood, miso, chocolate? COFFEE??
Someone and their ancestors had sorted that out centuries ago, currently into mass production.
You're just riding the waves, scratching the surface.

-

Sometimes, we are so spoilt we forget to appreciate what we have.

Like camping.
Camping makes me miss WIFI and a comfy bed.
Electricity and running water.
Since I come back I just like to watch running water from the tap.
It's really a work of art.

You can probably tell I really, really DID NOT want to go camping.
The reason I played along was to 1. give my daughter an education, and 2. we never know when the next lockdown will happen.

You guys from the States have no idea what I'm talking about.
Back in July, Melbourne implemented a 3-mile radius ban.
The police were checking up on vehicles and you needed a permit to be out and about.
The fine was $10k for individuals and up to $100k for businesses.

So that lockdown actually made me appreciate the freedom we never fully utilised.
So I'll take outback camping to not hear anything about Frozen or Baby Shark for 6 days, thanks.

Because all we need is another breakout and who knows what will happen.

Is panic shopping still a thing?

I really don't understand why people worry about food.

We have the solution to the food shortage 50 years ago.
It was solved by a Taiwanese chap, Goh Pek Hok.

He later married a Japanese and became Momofuku Ando.

That's right, the inventor of instant noodles.

We have instant noodles.

Appreciate them.
You never know when they'll come in handy.