Cooking With Gas

By Dana McMahan FoodConnect Louisville dana@foodconnect.com Cooking With Gas It sounds like a cooking reality show challenge. Using only ingredients about to go bad and what you can find in your pantry, cook dinner on a gas cooktop without the use of any electrical appliance. This reality-tv style challenge is my new dinnertime. Welcome to Louisville, where upwards of 75% of the city lost power Sunday afternoon in Hurrican-Ike related wind storms. Thank goodness we have a gas cooktop stove (and a gas water heater so we can wash dishes, among other necessities.) Monday we emptied the refrigerator of nearly all our perishables, a sad and expensive waste. We put a handful of things in the freezer, which we had crammed with some of the little remaining ice left to be found in the city. Monday night we made an early dinner (lots easier to cook in the daylight than dark) with the use-it-or-lose-it sour cream and slices of sharp cheddar from the freezer and an assortment of pantry goods. My mom used to make this quick and easy dish when my brother and I were growing up. She called it five-way for the five ingredients. I call it easy dinner when there’s no electric. Just boil some pasta, heat up a can of chili, then mix together. Top with cheddar cheese, sour cream and oyster crackers. I used Hormel Vegetarian Chili, which actually has no corn syrup or hydrogenated oils – not too bad for canned food! It may not be fancy, but it did the trick.