Lockdown

While this whole Covid lockdown thing has been very challenging and in some cases deadly for many people across the world, I guess we are very lucky and very well placed for this sort of thing.

I can work for home, as well as anywhere, so it makes little difference and my work is no more or less busy and the company I work for has been excellent both in support and flexibility.

We have plenty of storage, although a bigger freezer would help, it's not a huge issue.  We've always shopped with lists and always bought in bulk things we like, so if long lasting things, i.e. olive oil, pasta, rice, toilet paper are ever cheap we buy loads.  We cook most things from scratch, use a lot of dried / canned goods and ignore Best Before and Sell by dates.  I also buy a lot of very long lasting hams and chorizos on our frequent trips to Spain, similar things when we go to Italy.

I counted up what we had, before this happened.  I had nine types of pasta, five types of rice, canned and dried beans, chickpeas, lentils, couscous, polenta, bulgar wheat, fuets, chorizoes, jamons, morcilla....
I also had six different flours and another 4 bags of strong, although most of that has gone now and flour is the one thing, especially strong and 00 that is still in short supply
The freezer is either meat, cheese, cooked portions or green veg.  These are all well packed, not extra packaging  / air as in pre-made meals and I know what's in the freezer, I know a spreadsheet is anal, but it works, especially for shopping.

A shopping list App (AnyList - excellent) and a meal planner both also help in buying what we need and no more, we are both passionate about minimising  food waste and nearly have a wake if we have to throw out anything

Even did a bit of foraging for the laff this week, picked some wild garlic (ramsom) leaves in the Castle's park and made pesto

As I'm home a lot, I've tried choux pastry and made some eclairs, plenty of granola bars, brownies, as well as lots of sourdough,
I've had beer delivered by craftcentral.ie and wine from winelab.ie, I will be ordering some veg for delivery this week

While it terribly tough for many people, certainly people in Ireland, seem to be being responsible and listening ot the HSE and government and hopefully some good, positive habits will come from this