Originally Posted by
lhrsfo
I've always enjoyed cooking but my repertoire has changed. I now shop exclusively at the farm store, which is strong on its own meat (I do have to stare the cow or lamb's sister in the eye as I'm walking back with my meat), and its own vegetables. It has fabulously expensive store cupboard items (but I'm not eating out any more, so that's a huge saving). Otherwise, any other ingredients need to come with online delivery as I don't want to set foot in a supermarket.
In many ways, my diet has improved. The quality of the meat and vegetables is beyond compare, and I'm using nearly no additives. This allows simpler cooking as the flavours of the prime ingredients are so much more intense. The celeriac I had yesterday was like none I've ever bought from a supermarket.
Similarly we’re accessing recently established delivery services for high quality local veg, meat and fish.
Most of the suppliers I get the impression didn’t sell to retail pre Covid, they relied primarily on high end restaurants but now needs must and they are doing what they have to to survive. So we’re getting access to day boat caught fish, live lobsters etc. which would’ve been very difficult to get before, not least because of the hours we worked in the office.
I suspect even at high volume the suppliers are not making anywhere near the money they made selling large orders to restaurants (and in many cases they are swallowing the delivery charges) so if/when that business starts again and crucially everyone isn’t home all day every day to receive the fresh food packages I wonder will it fall away.
But as it stands, we’re cooking more, with better ingredients and expanding our repertoire of dishes.
we also have a local Michelin starred restaurant which is doing “complete at home” meal kits which we’ve tried a couple of times. They provide detailed instructions for finishing the dishes along with Instagram pictures and It’s been fun getting the tweezers out to place the edible flowers and smear the various sauces and gels on the plates.