Hmm 2 posts in a week, or even a month!
Weather has been slightly better the last couple of days, although forecast is a bit wet. So with the deep slough of winter beginning to recede and the tiny chance there may be relaxation of lockdown in the second half of the year and even the very tiny possibility of travelling this year, I'm going to give myself some targets and see how I get on in this year. Obviously the next couple of months are dead outside of the village, so I need to be realistic
Short term: cooking and eating in
Medium term: eating out
Long Term: travel
Cooking and eating in
From a cooking point of view I feel I need to do more different, the things I make I'm OK at, but I've a fairly short repertoire of maybe a few dozen dishes and their variants. Gaps are only one Thai dish, little Chinese, almost no other SE Asian, Greek, BBQ, South American - obviously lots of this is dictated by what others will eat, but I still have lunches and I can try.
I've enjoyed the two "finish-at-home" meals we've bought, both high end and I'll probably get another one or two before, if ever, restaurants reopen - and I still don't really like takeaways, we've had about 6-10 in this lockdown year, as opposed to 1 or 2 a tear normally, a couple were good, one was really good, the rest forgettable.
Eating out
This, I think will be the biggest change, locally in the village, nowhere really worth going to, a couple of OKs. Malahide has some and obviously Dublin in excellent. However Dublin's high end is funded by business lunches, like many business cities and I doubt they will ever fully return. Along with very high rents and business rates, the city centre eating landscape is bound to change a lot, possible unrecognisably. But it's done so before and may do again. There are always good cooks and always people looking for restaurants, so, while I think it will be very different, there will still be places.
There is an enormous build-up of Weddings, Christenings, Confirmations, Anniversaries, retirements, birthdays most with funds saved up, hopefully this will pour into the industry and sustain parts of it.
I think Michelin / Fine Dining will suffer without as much money from business and while I've had some great Fine Dining meals over the years, I'm probably missing this less than others. After all I've chosen not to visit USA for the last 4 years and really like their pub food and plenty of other good stuff and it's not top of my list, so FD is not top of my list.
Travel
This is the really hard bit, Dusseldorf, Madrid, Malaga, Nerja, Maputo, Palm Springs (after avoiding USA for 4 years), Rome, anywhere and everywhere else. As the song says "Anywhere but here"
Very depressed about lack of travel, have money to spend and will be travelling up the front and eating and drinking good stuff if it ever happens. One of the biggest lessons I will take from lockdown, if it ever ends, is you can't take it with you and we could get it taken away and curtailed over something real like a virus or imaginary, like brexit
Just made some cheese straws to try and fight in my losing battle against chocolate, they are lovely, so it's a thing :)
