Have you ever come home from a long day at work, need to prepare something for supper, and you don’t have all the ingredients? Happens all the time, right? What do you normally do –
1. “forget about it, let’s order out?” Or
2. “Let’s see what we got, and throw it all together?” Or
3. “I’ll pop out to the store and get what we need?”
On a normal day any of the above 3 options work – these past few weeks with the covid-19 pandemic it’s been anything but normal. People that have come back from outside the country and have to self-isolate for 14 days might find that only option 2 will work – and you don’t have all you need. So what can you do? Improvise, improvise, improvise. If nothing else you can make a satisfying meal and not go hungry 
I’m lucky – I love to cook and have been mis following recipe directions for years, so it’s relatively easy for me to throw stuff together. Normally I have a well stocked fridge and pantry but when we go on vacations we like to use up as much fresh produce as we can before leaving so that it doesn’t go bad. When we got back the other night, I thought ok, make something simple like a Shepheard’s Pie – quick and easy to make, tasty, and filling. We didn’t have any ground beef so I thawed out a pound of ground lamb. Perfect – real shepherd’s pie with real lamb. Except no potatoes or shredded cheese for the topping 
But, I had a package of corn meal and slices of Monterey Jack in the pantry. So we ended up with a Mexican Shepheard’s Pie with a Corn Meal Topping by combining my Tamale recipe with my Shepheard’s pie recipe. The next couple of days I had ideas for supper, but when I went to make them – yup, missing key ingredients – so, I improvised. I’ll be adding revised alternate supper dishes throughout the week.
Alternate For Shepheard’s Pie
Recipe for Corn Bread Topping
Recipe for Shepheard’s Pie
Recipe for Singapore Noodles
Recipe for One Pot Chili