I didn’t want to be that sad person, standing bare footed in my mother’s kitchen and eating a Bisquick-and-parmesean-cheese creation straight over the cast iron pan.

But here I was, eating my cheesy biscuit thing. The Bisquick was at least 4 or 5 years old. Yeah, I know.

Cooking in my mother’s kitchen, with her pantry, presents a unique set of challenges. After leafing through two cookbooks, one from a mythical land called Middle America (The Pioneer Woman Cooks) and the other from Sex-and-the-City-ville (The Pleasure is All Mine), I was reminded that to prepare Western food in this kitchen would be an uphill battle.

Eating this random thing was almost an act of defiance. It would have been too easy to make a bitter melon stir fry, or to wilt a head of bok choy and stir fried an egg, steamed some white rice, called it a day.

We have no crushed tomatoes. (Our pastas never feature red sauce, and there’s not a box of elbow macaroni in sight.) We have no cheese. If we do, it is 1) moldy or 2) frozen, breaded mozzarella sticks that will never be eaten. We have no basil, but we do have star anise, Szechuan peppercorn, and dried chiles.

So I bought crushed tomatoes. San Marzano, the right kind. I figured I’d make a cast iron skillet pizza on the stove, or turn the pan upside down as a makeshift pizza stone and crank up the broiler. I bought fresh mozzarella and parmesean. I even bought a basil plant. (“It’s so smelly,” my dad said distastefully. Basil is not big in Chinese cooking.)

Then I tried to start today, while my mother is out, and it’s a unique sort of culinary torture. Ran out of flour. Yeast hidden away, unfindable. Left with a jar of fancy tomato, wondering if my dad was lying about there being garlic in the house. I flip through the cookbooks, trying to find something to make.

Meatloaf? Nope. Mac’n'cheese? No mac, unless you count the soba or cold Korean noodles. We out of avocados and tomatoes – though we’ll often have them. Buttermilk? Ha! As if.

The fridge is full, the crisper bin is overflowing, the freezer is well-stocked. The pantry is crowded with glass jars; the cabinets have ready-made packets for stir fry sauces; we have 12 varieties of tea. A kitchen full of supplies and nothing to cook.

That is how I ate half a protein bar and two cheesy biscuits. Maybe the white flour is hidden away somewhere, along with the yeast. And then I’ll make my pizza. I hope it doesn’t suck.

Related posts:

1. Asian Girl Cooking: The Great Pizza Update
2. Small Asian Girl vs. Pasta From Hell — East Coast Grill’s 100th Hell Night
3. The Berkshires’ Amazing $5 Tomato
4. My mother’s cooking
5. Eating at Motorino East Village (NYC)