Lockdown Living: How’s the Chow?

After 100 plus days, this lockdown time has certainly brought with it a heap of new experiences, challenges, joy, and more. 

As you’ve navigated these unchartered waters you may have found yourself having to adapt to new routines and rhythms, as lockdown living has moulded different parts of your daily life. Along with other daily activities, eating might be one everyday experience that has been changed by #stayingathome.

In sharing tales of lockdown life, we’d love to know, “Have your eating experiences changed over these last few months?” 

With lockdown looming, did you succumb to panic buying and now find yourself with tinned goods you’d never normally purchase just because the sign on the shelf said, “only 3 per customer”? 

Did you find yourself swept up in the banana-bread-baking-movement, frantically googling “how to ripen bananas in one hour” in order to prime your ingredients for that perfect loaf? 

Or maybe you’ve become a fermented food fan, who now has multiple-starters-that-start-other-starters? This could’ve re-ignited a love for science, as you did precise calculations, daily “check-ins” and tried to create the perfect environment for these micro-organisms to flourish and grow. As you now find yourself fighting for counter space with your carefully cultivated cultures; you’re hopefully reaping the rewards of home-baked sourdough, kombucha, or kefir. 

Alternatively, April may have kicked off with turning your outdoor space into an extensive veggie patch, complete with compost heap and self-sustaining hydroponic system. There may have been times when you considered cultivating grapes, as you wondered whether your climate was conducive to wine farming. Having realised that that would definitely be a long-term investment, you may have re-directed your focus onto other nutritious fruit and veg. You might now be living off the bounty and thinking about going completely off the grid. 

Maybe having more time has you eating more mindfully. Or maybe extra time has you dreaming all day about food, with 90% of your daily step count being achieved through frequent commutes to the kitchen. 

Lockdown may have also had you reaching for those recipe books that had, up until this point, just been preventing your shelf from being blown away in a gale force wind. You may have vowed to work through them from cover-to-cover, and spent the first 80 days making your way through starters and main courses. Now, deep into the desserts section, you could be wondering what the health implications are for eating sweet treats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All these recipes may have sparked a love for cooking that you never knew you had, and may even have you now boldly substituting ingredients and adjusting quantities because “it just feels right”. 

This time may have also had you searching to the depths of your freezer or the back of your kitchen cupboards. You may have made a commitment to finally use that enormous rack of lamb or “make your own lasagne sheets kit” that seemed like such good ideas at the time. As you questioned the importance of expiry dates, you might have decided that the 10-tins-for-the-price-of-3 that you bought in 2002 should still be fine…what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Hopefully you’ve made your way through the pantry unscathed…… 

Or maybe none of this resonates with you at all. 

Maybe you’ve hardly been home. Maybe you were working long hours throughout lockdown, and the sudden absence of ready-meals presented a big challenge. 

Or if you were at home, maybe this time has made it really hard to be productive and creative. Maybe all the time indoors has you feeling like you don’t want to be in the kitchen at all. There have been many who have experienced financial strain that has left them with no choice but to change their shopping and eating habits significantly. 

On the other hand, maybe you’ve been in a position to help and support others who have been struggling to make ends meet. 

Everyone’s realities are different. 

But everyone, almost everywhere, has found themselves living through a new and very unusual time in our history. As we try to find our way through uncertainty and disruption, it’s inevitable that we’ve had to make lots of changes. Some of these may be changes that we intend to carry into the future, and others may be things that we intend to learn from and leave behind. Your new eating habits might feature in either of these categories; but ultimately, we hope you’re feeling healthy, strong and well. 

Sending lots of love and strength to you all, from the MM Team. 

P.S. If yours was the freezer with the enormous rack of lamb and you’ve found yourself with left overs, we like ours roasted with garlic and rosemary….DM for our postal address. Ok. Thanks. Bye. 

Written by Claire Willows