The Extreme Staycation

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Fathers Day UK! Another event in lockdown. As we mark each of these dates, it seems that more and more of the year is slipping by. It's weird because I imagine many of us have by and large adjusted to our new normal - are we becoming institutionalised? Will we want to go back out into the world and interact with people as we have before? Overall, I think we will. If we look at shopping for example, people seem fairly happy to be within 2 meters of each other in supermarkets and as "non-essential" shops re-opened this week it is clear that the appetite for clothes shopping has not abated and has been uncorked. I think that the things which will take longer to recover will be in the world of entertainment. Theatres, cinemas and concert halls being full of people happy to be within coughing distance of one-another seems a long way off.

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown Cooking and Baking How is everyone doing on the cooking front? I've taken this as an opportunity to try some new recipes.  It's been quite fun and I've definitely found a few new ones which will be coming out again. However, as soon as I found a lush new south-east Asian aubergine dish, the aubergines disappeared from Sainsbury's! I've taken to shopping just once a week as much as I can. This does mean purchasing faintly ridiculous quantities of some items, namely bananas - we eat a lot in my house and yesterday I bought 17 in varying shades of yellow to green to keep us going. Apparently our shopping habits have reverted back to what they were 10-15 years ago with people doing one weekly shop rather than 3-4 times a week as has become more common. I finally got some more flour - hooray!  And celebrated by making some carrot, pecan and maple syrup muffins which were delish!