By Madame Escargot Sometimes we don’t feel like walking to the shops, or it’s raining too much to go out. Other times, we may not know what we want to eat for dinner, and don’t fancy what’s in the fridge. Occasionally, there is nothing in the fridge with which to make a meal.
Enter the Emergency Blue Box.
The Emergency Blue Box is an 18 litre-sized, lidded plastic crate, from the Really Useful Box Company. It fits perfectly on that part of the bed that we don’t sleep on, tucked in behind the fridge housing unit, so that it is in no danger of falling off when we are on the move.
The EBB is where I keep the staples of meal-making. I always have a can of crushed tomatoes in there, and various curry-making components. Packets of this, cans of that. There’s usually some Tuna in there, along with sweetcorn, chickpeas and/or beans. Pesto often features. Really, anything useful that comes in a small, packable size.
The general idea is that we should always be able to throw a meal together from the contents of the box, in conjunction with dry store staples.
There is a single top locker in our van that is dedicated to things like Rice, Pasta, Lentils and so on, along with my herbs and spices, and a few condiments. There is no longer room for canned goods up there, so there is a case to be made in renaming the EBB, by taking the “Emergency” out of it.
We were a little over-provided for a while and had extra supplies in carrier bags that were scattered about the van. I have been working on using up the excess, and we are now currently under-provided. I honestly get twitchy when I run out of Crushed Tomatoes or Coconut Milk!
This week’s “don’t know what to cook” meal raided the box for Thai Curry Paste, Coconut Milk, and canned French Beans. I used a Red Curry paste with Hard-boiled Eggs, Green Beans, and Mushrooms. Unfortunately, I can’t find the photo that I thought that I had taken. This is a shame, because I went to some trouble with my presentation.
We elected to use two tubs of ready-cooked rice from the BB. These are intended for nuking, but we do not have a nuking machine. I do find that once crumbled by hand, they reheat very well as a stir-fried rice etc. On this occasion, I stirred the rice around in a hot pan with coconut oil, ginger, peanuts, red chilli, and chopped coriander… before pressing into a mould and turning out into bowls, before pouring the curry around the rice. It was colourful, pretty, and tasty.
It is a measure of The Blue Box, and of my level of preparedness, that after making that meal, I still have three packets remaining. Fortunately, these new-to-me pastes are actually pretty good. I purchased them at Baptista in Praia da Luz. Even more fortunately, they are good into 2027.
Now I need to stock up on Coconut Milk!