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igenlodeI was turned away from my first shop this week for being unhygenic -- although that's not really how it went. But the charity shop had an earnest volunteer (presumably) guard stationed in the doorway who instructed me that I needed to 'sanitise' before entering, an instruction which (since I had both hands very full already) caused me to look confused and back away to allow the people behind me to enter while I tried to juggle my various packages and free at least one hand. At which point I thought 'actually, I'm not going to bother going through this', the shopping impulse having been effectively quashed, and walked off.
I'd only turned to go into the shop on a moment's whim, in the hopes of browsing through their shirts to see if they had anything at all suitable; I had little expectation or intention of actually buying anything. And any germs that I was supposedly carrying on my hands (lots of them, I should think) would have been instantly transferred back onto my fingers from the manuscript cover, bag handles etc. that I had been touching previously, making the entire exercise in 'sanitisation' pure lip-service in the first place.
So I went off and bought the stuff that was actually on my list from shops that actually allowed me to enter. But I have been very consciously stock-piling in consequence, in the anticipation of being increasingly barred from this brave new world, and have been spending over a month's worth of food budget in advance, buying all the things that people were stripping from the shelves earlier in anticipation of being confined to their homes. Pasta. Pulses. Tinned tomatoes. Refills for all my spices. A jam-size bag of sugar. A sack of flour (unfortunately bread flour is still at a premium). *Three* bags of powdered milk (of which I'm a little ashamed, but it does allow me to breed my own yoghurt as well as my own bread -- and the unheard-of demand for dried milk does seem to have gone down, so there's plenty in the shops). Stock cubes. Recycling bags. Tinned ham and fish, and mince-and-onions, in anticipations of cravings from a perforce even-more-vegetarian-than-usual diet. And I finally caved in and bought a large tub of made-with-palm-oil cooking margarine, so that I can save my butter for things other than making cakes and pastry.
Ironic, given that I spent most of lockdown, when we were supposedly in extreme danger, visiting multiple shops daily to forage for basic ingredients, and am now going to lengths to ensure that I don't have to visit any :-(
The Guardian's pork in milk recipe from my scrapbook (can it really be twenty years old?) was as successful as ever, especially when made with lumps of astonishingly-cheap misshaped bacon offcuts rather than sliced rashers -- it's an excellent and most delicious way of dealing with an embarrassment of milk that is about to go off, although I used half the quantity of pork (and still had half left over for future use as 'pulled pork'; it ends up literally falling apart) and twice the quantity of potatoes suggested. I think I may have used a little too *much* milk, as it was in no danger of disappearing entirely even after I used it to steam the green vegetables over, but I just ended up having to use a spoon ;-p
It really is extremely tasty and deep in flavour despite minimal spices, albeit somewhat extravagant in milk. And it's one of the few dishes I know that doesn't require onions (which I had run out of) -- possibly due to the use of leeks!
I'd only turned to go into the shop on a moment's whim, in the hopes of browsing through their shirts to see if they had anything at all suitable; I had little expectation or intention of actually buying anything. And any germs that I was supposedly carrying on my hands (lots of them, I should think) would have been instantly transferred back onto my fingers from the manuscript cover, bag handles etc. that I had been touching previously, making the entire exercise in 'sanitisation' pure lip-service in the first place.
So I went off and bought the stuff that was actually on my list from shops that actually allowed me to enter. But I have been very consciously stock-piling in consequence, in the anticipation of being increasingly barred from this brave new world, and have been spending over a month's worth of food budget in advance, buying all the things that people were stripping from the shelves earlier in anticipation of being confined to their homes. Pasta. Pulses. Tinned tomatoes. Refills for all my spices. A jam-size bag of sugar. A sack of flour (unfortunately bread flour is still at a premium). *Three* bags of powdered milk (of which I'm a little ashamed, but it does allow me to breed my own yoghurt as well as my own bread -- and the unheard-of demand for dried milk does seem to have gone down, so there's plenty in the shops). Stock cubes. Recycling bags. Tinned ham and fish, and mince-and-onions, in anticipations of cravings from a perforce even-more-vegetarian-than-usual diet. And I finally caved in and bought a large tub of made-with-palm-oil cooking margarine, so that I can save my butter for things other than making cakes and pastry.
Ironic, given that I spent most of lockdown, when we were supposedly in extreme danger, visiting multiple shops daily to forage for basic ingredients, and am now going to lengths to ensure that I don't have to visit any :-(
The Guardian's pork in milk recipe from my scrapbook (can it really be twenty years old?) was as successful as ever, especially when made with lumps of astonishingly-cheap misshaped bacon offcuts rather than sliced rashers -- it's an excellent and most delicious way of dealing with an embarrassment of milk that is about to go off, although I used half the quantity of pork (and still had half left over for future use as 'pulled pork'; it ends up literally falling apart) and twice the quantity of potatoes suggested. I think I may have used a little too *much* milk, as it was in no danger of disappearing entirely even after I used it to steam the green vegetables over, but I just ended up having to use a spoon ;-p
It really is extremely tasty and deep in flavour despite minimal spices, albeit somewhat extravagant in milk. And it's one of the few dishes I know that doesn't require onions (which I had run out of) -- possibly due to the use of leeks!
