It’s official then

March 24, 2020

I had already been self isolating as I am prone to serious chest infections from seasonal flu but now it seems the majority of the UK is joining me. Welcome. It’s not actually as bad as you may fear. It’s different but we can manage that. I was so achy yesterday that I couldn’t do any longarm quilting and even sitting to do my piecing wasn’t good. I did have my first telephone physio appointment. It went pretty well. Yes it was a little odd and my physio was having to adjust her way of working but we got there. It was a lot safer for both of us so we will cope.

I had a food delivery arrive and as expected it wasn’t terribly close to what I ordered. Having heard about the huge increase in food waste locally I thought I would share my technique for minimising that. Until the stores can get properly set for deliveries and recover after the hoards stripped them we really really shouldnt be wasting anything. OK to be honest we should never be wasting anything but more so now. After unloading cleaning and storing the perishables (I leave the non perishables in quarrentine and only clean them as I need them if they haven’t waited long enough, for example I don’t need the bottle of squash today it can wait till I finishe the one I am using) I prepare a chart for how long I need hope want the food to last. I then go through the main meal components and check the dates. I schedule to use them at least 1 day before they say on my first pass. Yup I do do this on a piece of scrap paper first, I may have to shuffle things. Bread if I am eating it untoasted I try to schedule for the 2 days after I get it. I don’t like how the flavour changes as it ages. Yup I am that picky. It’s fine toasted until it goes green so it’s not a big issue.

If I get date clashes, it’s pretty inevitable when someone else picks your shopping, I know i can move items a day later because I left that margin on the first try. I do try not to move fresh chicken. In my experience it doesn’t keep as long as the date says. It is better since we moved but still chancy. Once I have the main meal elements in I look at what will have leftovers and how I can slot those in. Today and tomorrow we have left over boiled ham as our lunches. I suspect mine will be with the left over sauce and left over mash, while the other half will have a sandwich one day. Nothing will be wasted and if all else fails the scraps get added to the animals meals.

Yes it is a bit of a faff working out the meals, but I feel it is worth it. We aren’t sure what we will get when we can next get a delivery slot so better to use every part of what we have. I know if the worst comes to the worst we can always have apple cake and ruhbarb crumble the switch to ruhbarb cake and apple crumble. I froze a lot of our produce last year so apple and ruhbarb I have and we like. It may not be a balanced diet but it will be tasty