2020 The Year Everyone Went Back to the Kitchen

I revisited my 'store cupboard' and am okay for pasta and pasta sauces, tea and coffee for the rest of this year and next.  My bread maker is in constant use and bread flour is something I also tend to keep a store of although you cant keep flour too long.  Yeast is another thing I made sure I had a stock of.

My freezer is ram jam full so I've always got the makings of a meal but things like fresh vegetables, fruit and milk can't be stored.

Cooking is something I enjoy as an activity so we usually have home cooked meals but I've tried new recipes whilst I've had time on my hands and nowhere to go other than the supermarket.

I can't remember the last time we actually 'ate out' but, at the moment, we're in no hurry for that.

 

 

😁 Nice thread Brue. 

We have done very well in terms of deliveries, mainly because we were already used to having them, and are lucky enough to have a big choice of supermarkets around us. I had already got a Tesco order booked for our return from a March holiday, so just added a few things on to this. The only thing that was difficult to get back in April was bread flour and dried yeast, but my Sister sourced some, and she has baked some fantastic bread throughout the year, and eventually we got some and I used our bread maker again. The downside is the calories of course, fresh bread is delicious, too easy to eat😉

Our local plant nursery linked up with local farms early in first lockdown, and we were able to get some great veg boxes, fresh milk, and the added bonus of being able to buy garden stuff with the food, so that meant we were trying different veg, new recipes.

I even popped a couple of times into our nearest Waitrose when we had to go into Sheffield to vets, somewhere we seldom shop when at home. Good for some more obscure food choices. Gave up on the Ocado/M&S option, don’t like the website, and don’t eat a lot of M&S ready food, so it doesn’t suit us. Our first foodie treat was online ordered fish and chips, collected locally. It’s our favourite fish and chip shop at home, they were only closed for two weeks initially, but got their act together, and now we just use it every time.

Tesco are very reliable re substitutions, rarely more than one, and that’s usually advantageous. My only mistake was pressing “1” for fresh ginger, thinking it was for one piece. Ended up with one kilo, but it’s frozen now, and will get used.

The cook books came out, we bought a new freezer to store more home produced stuff, and have shared a lot of our makes with family and neighbours. 

Tesco still gets our vote for reliability and ease. Asda are good, Morrison’s are good, Sister has used Iceland, safest place to shop was our local Aldi, worst place was our local Co op, don’t feel safe in there. 

My stumbling block has been adding orders from our elderly neighbours onto our own.They can't remember the names of things so we often have a Two Ronnies type conversation where we finsh each others sentences hoping something makes sense. Yesterday they struggled to remember the name of some instant coffee, we got as far as recalling the colour of the cap on the jar and I managed to find it. Success! 

Write them down brue😂 I would create a separate ‘favourites’ list for them, easy to do on Tesco website. 

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Yes, I had to chuckle AD around energy bills. Showing 12 months of Bills was a condition of getting our boiler for free. When the surveyor came he was surprised at how small our bills were, until I told him to look carefully.........it took a while for him to spot the stove, then the penny dropped. Varies of course with weather as well, we had that gloriously hot April and May period here, heating hardly used at all.

I always cooked a lot - farm workers to be fed every weekday dinner time, so nothing has changed there. Coincidently we put one of our own cows (via a local abattoir of course) into the freezer (bought second hand just before lockdown when they became harder to get), so I never have to shop for meat (as long as it’s beef). I’ve being making my own bread for about 15 years, and always bought flour online in bulk, so just continued. 

Luckily our localish Booths started “Click and Collect” so we’ve been  using that since April, with an occasional top up from Asda delivery. I don’t like shopping, I’m happy with the way things have turned out. 

I do miss eating out - especially as a break from cooking - but we’re happy with a call and collect fish and chips about once a month.

I know we’re luckier than some. If only we still grew our own vegetables - but my farmer is too busy for that now.

 

 

Believe me, I have a very long favourites list, it's the new things that fox me! 

Being someone who actually enjoys cooking this year hasn't been too different on the cooking front. We tend to eat freshly cooked food, no takeaways but the logistics have been somewhat of a challenge.

With trying to stay out of supermarkets as much as possible we found it difficult in March but once the first national lockdown took effect and supermarkets got their act together with supplies and even a one way system we settled into a weekly routine. This isn't what I am used to as I like to shop for fresh food twice a week but safety came first. We couldn't get a delivery slot for quite a while as none of us were on the shielding list. However eventually Tesco expanded their slots and we've ordered all heavy and non fresh food on that medium since.

I still find drawing up a weekly menu disconcerting but have to accept it as the best for us.

The lack of flour didn't bother me as I use specialist stuff but was annoyed that non Gluten Free people were raiding that shelf when ordinary flour was hard to find. This fact was relayed to me by friendly till staff when I asked where my GF plain flour had gone to.

I'll be glad to be able to shop normally again without wondering which of the fellow shoppers is a C19 carrier.

Difficult if you need specific ingredients WN, only to find it has been raided as a substitute.

One of the reasons I have succeeded with online has been because I occasionally book a slot at 2,3,4am in the morning😂 Log in, pick a slot, click on a bottle of milk and some carrots, save. Got it down to 30 seconds now. Back into bed before it’s even cooled😁😂