Just curious, what has lockdown done to your menu
June 2, 2020I hear a lot in the news about lockdown changing our eating habits, and I am curious. How much effect has it had on yours? It has changed ours, though perhaps not in the way the news suggests. We eat a lot more home cooked food, pretty much nothing ready to eat. Admittedly that is partly because I can’t get a delivery from my preferred supermarket and haven’t been able to get a slot since the beginning of March. Yes I am pretty unimpressed. As we can’t get reliable food deliveries we can’t buy things like bread so most of the bread we eat is home made and most of it a wholemeal mix. So white bread is all but gone from our diet. We still eat fish, but it is much harder to get and we tend to only have it for the first few days after our meat box arrives. I think we enjoy it more than ever. I now eat pickled herring, and love it. It is one of the fish I can get at a reasonable price and with a better date so it has become one of the things I really look forward to each month.
We started eating breakfast regularly when Fenrir joined us. Mostly because I have to get up very early for him and that means by the time he has been walked I am hungry. So at weekends we now have a cooked breakfast each day. Maybe a traditional one or perhaps something like waffles. On the subject of waffles, I now keep a supply of packet mixes. I was always sniff about them, but something that contains powdered milk and powdered egg is very useful to keep for treats. Egg and milk is tricky to get so products that let me fake it are very welcome. The partner product to that is mixes that will use up any spare milk. I really hate to waste it now, so if it does get close to date it can become cheesecake or mousse. That is another change, our food waste wasn’t high, now we have it close to zero. Yup we do get a few odd meals but I am pleased to be reducing the waste.
We do still have things like pizza and icecream, but now those are home made too. As we eat the remaining shop bought ice creams I don’t foresee replacing many of them. I much prefer what I can make. This week I am planning a lemon sorbet, a coffee icecream and probably a vanilla. Interestingly I think we eat less and enjoy it more. When snacks are wanted I now tend to make those too. We usually have a tub of something that can be nibbled as needed, though again it lasts a lot longer than it used to. I wonder if it is the phenomenon I noticed at Fortnum and Mason. Higher quality products are more filling and satisfying.
The last change has been the addition of use it up recipes which have proved so successful they are now regulars. I had risotto rice because it wasn’t stockpiled. I guess those panic buying weren’t sure what to do with it. When I need to use up some Parma ham I found a recipe for an asparagus risotto, which I misread, so it got chicken in as well not just chicken stock. I love it from a cooking point of view as it is cooked directly with frozen products, so quick and easy no forward prep needed. The other use up was a smoked salmon pasta to use up some cream. It was supposed to be some thing else but gave a substitution for heavy cream and lemon juice, lemon juice and smoked salmon is clearly a good pairing so we have that a try. I now plan to make it anytime we have cream around.
So over to you. What has changed for you, do you eat differntly now? Are you in the fridge all day as the news and advertisements would suggest or are you eating lots of fresh home cooked wonder2