Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

This morning I was thinking about this as we ate breakfast. Our oven igniter went out two weeks ago and we’re waiting on the part, translation I’m unable to bake our weekly loaf of bread. Instead of a loaf this week we’ll be eating flatbread and pita pockets, both of which could be made on the stovetop. I kind of smiled to myself, we’ve been overcoming cooking challenges our entire marriage.

Improvise, adapt, overcome is an unofficial slogan of the Marine Corps, and 16 years ago when I married a retired Marine this phrase became a way of life. We’ve lived in four states, owned three homes, and faced countless challenges along the way. Life has given us a lot of lemons, but that never stopped us from figuring out the challenge and moving forward. 

When we moved to Missouri, in an ice storm, as newlyweds and took up residency in our first home we had no kitchen appliances. No biggy, we improvised. It was December so a cooler could be put outside our backdoor with groceries until we could get a fridge. We had a crockpot and bought a toaster oven. I baked muffins and coffee cake, made toast, cooked frozen pizzas, and countless other things in that little toaster oven. 

When we were living in Texas, our kitchen would become a furnace in the summer due to poor insulation in the garage and the landlord sealing the only kitchen window shut. We became masters of the grill, making anything that required heat outside, including breakfast. 

The home we bought in Alaska came without appliances. On this go-round, we borrowed a mini fridge and fired up the toaster oven yet again. Challenges in the kitchen don’t end when you get appliances. Rural Alaska comes with random power outages, usually because of the wind and a tree taking out the line. Improvising and adapting during an outage is always interesting. Our longest power outage was about 20 hours over the course of two days. I’m blessed to have a gas stove, so we can light a burner. There’s a French press in the cupboard for just such occasions, so no one has to go without coffee.

This is the second time the igniter in the oven has gone out in the nearly 13 years we’ve lived in the house. It’s funny how when the igniter goes out all you can think about are things that require an oven. We find a way around it. Corn muffins have been baked in the toaster oven. We make flatbread and pita pockets to replace loaves of bread. We use the air fryer to bake a batch of biscuits. We improvise, adapt, and overcome the obstacle of not having an oven. 

I’ve found that when you’re willing to adapt you get much farther in life. Adapting is a skill that is priceless in my life. I’ve adapted to new locations, new jobs, and new experiences, and have fantastic life stories to tell as a result. Improvise, adapt, overcome - it’s not just an unofficial slogan of the Marines, it’s an amazing way to look at and live your life.