I’ve been contemplating the same topic over and over for a couple of weeks now and my mind is stuck in a loop. That topic is “If there are 26 letters in the alphabet and they combine to make 275,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, then how many recipes can a person make with just 100 foods in their pantry?” I don’t know why I am fixated on this question; maybe it’s because I want to know why, with so many food choices available, people still fret about “What’s for dinner?” Too many choices can be overwhelming! I also ponder on the different cuisines that exist in the world, some of them with foods that we probably would not want to eat.
Finally it occurred to me that I could discuss the matter with the AI. After all, “It” has more sophisticated mathematical skills than I do. Maybe if I knew the number of recipes I could make with only 100 ingredients, my mind could be put to rest. So I asked the AI my sixty-four dollar question. The AI informed me that my question was computationally intensive and showed me the string of calculations it used to get the answer; each equation was followed by an exclamation mark. So funny! And the answer is . . . 30 quadrillion. That’s a number with 15 zeros after it in case you didn’t know. The AI told me it was astonished. Well, that makes two of us. That was not the first time the AI has made me laugh.
Rather than put my mind at ease, the answer did just the opposite. I was haunted. When I discussed the matter with my beau, James, he added an interesting perspective. He said, “Think of all the different ways you can cook just one food.” For example, take a potato. You can bake, fry, mash, au gratin or scallop them; make hash browns, fritters, French fries, Jo Jos, tater-tots, salad, soup and gnocchi. There are dozens of varieties and many cookbooks about what you can do with just potatoes. Then I remembered my recent trip to a Safeway where I stood in a daze in front of a 10 foot long refrigerated case of just . . . yogurt. There were so many choices I almost forgot what kind I wanted.
The bounty we have here on planet earth blows me away and I behold the incredible generosity of Mother Earth. But there is a weird irony in her generosity because so many choices make it difficult to know what’s for dinner. Perhaps the answer to that dilemma is to ask the AI what it would make with just three ingredients from the fridge. But do I really want to know? I’m not so sure!