Lockdown

One of the many dehumanising aspects of lockdown was a constrained choice of charcuterie. Despairing at the predictability of the supermarket offering and reeling from the closure of local farm shops i visited the local butcher. Over a hastily erected hatch i was solemnly informed the local charcuterie supplier had been forced out of business due to losing access to the restaurant trade. Bereft and mumbling about the benefits of an acorn diet i stumbled back to my car. Prior to my last commute home from London I went a bit feral in M and S at Waterloo, thinking that there may be no food in the shops. This resulted in the purchase of 174 chciken goujons. I basiclaly bought my daughter her own body weight in coated chicken and felt like the best father in the world. The provider escaping to the shires from the doomed conurbation. In those early weeks of lockdown when toilet roll was harder to find than a sober Irishman we were told to only buy 'essentials'. This was never defined and so with the joy of eating out denied me I chose to include brisket and syrup cake in scope to keep up morale. It would have taken a very brave sales assistant to tell me my jaff cakes weren't essential. Home baking became a craze and the black market in yeast saw 15 gram sachets being bartered for small hatchbacks in my corner of the Surrey Hills. I turned my hand to several batches of the Swedish fika classic, the kanelbulle, a sticky cinammon thing of wonder. Sadly i didn't quite perfect them but the baked smell as I took them out of the oven was worth it. A batch of twelve lasted an hour, just. Well, unlike a good Burgundy they don't age well. With every new partial freedom came the bliss of discovering anew the pleasures you'd once taken for granted. My local smokery re-opened for take-away which meant beef short rib. Life was suddenly that little bit more tolerable. The fear of it going out of business, starved of custom by cessation of freedoms was palpable. As you picked up your food you wondered how long they could survive. Rishi tried his best of course and I wondered whether the Lottry Heritage fund could be directed towards such cultural collossi. There was a lot of column inches given over to what a post COVID world would look like. No sport, perhaps, saniters nailed to every rural fencepost. What is there weren't any oak or beech smoked products nearby. It was a horrible, horrible thought. Inevitably the conclusion of all this ruminating was that we ate even more than usual. It felt like a moral, economic and gastronomic necessity.