Find cuisine?

August 9: Find Cuisine To create a fine meal using random items around the kitchen . This includes never before used spices and the culmination of three different pasta noodles and a can of diced tomatoes thus creating the pasta stew mess.
Stephanie: "What you cooking there?"
Nadine: "Some randomness with pasta. Kind of like a pasta stew. But messier."

Stephanie: "I love your find cuisine, Nadine."

-- from UrbanDictionary.com.

Oh, so there's a trendy name for the kind of cooking I excel at. Back when I was a single working mom, find cuisine was, like, the soup du jour. It's how we lived.

Find cuisine is for foodies on a budget, for busy people with no time to grocery shop, for bachelor-types who don't remember to go to the grocery store until they're starving, for creative stoners with a case of the munchies. In the current recession it's still a good way to keep food on the table. Most people I know, even poor working folk, have enough food in their cupboards and 'fridge to live for a week, at least.

Find cuisine is an art form born of necessity and honed through practice and imagination. To succeed you must develop a certain panache, a devil-may-care attitude. Be bold, be spontaneous, go beyond Urban Trend, and keep in mind there are starving children in third world countries who would cheerfully eat whatever strange fricassee you create and rate it five stars.

One of my facebook friends Neil posted this find cuisine recipe: looked through the pantry and found a 5 year old can of pizza sauce and a long forgotten bag of pasta. Added Tabasco, jalapeño, and a bit of habanero pepper to the sauce...grilled an Omaha steak that I found in the dim recesses of the freezer... and had a delicious Steak Diavolo dinner without spending a penny!

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

Bon appetit!