QFD Week 4 (6-12 April): A system emerges

By now, we were getting into the routine of producing two meals a day, but the mental juggling act of keeping on top of best-before dates, leftovers, half-empty tins needing to be used and fridge/freezer space was taking up a good deal of processing power. The solution: in lieu of a whiteboard, sheets of A4 paper taped to the kitchen cabinets, containing meal planning notes, freezer inventory, lists of things to be used and by when, and ideas for upcoming meals.

Monday's dinner: kale stamppot as suggested by my Dutch friend Gerard: basically sausage, mash and kale.

Tuesday was chicken rice day: a Proper Food Project! Using Thorfinn's famous method, with the added tweaks of frying the rice in the chicken fat and cooking it in the stock, yielded very satisfactory results plus plenty of leftover chicken and stock.

Wednesday was pizza again, using the yeast culture that had been happily bubbling away in the fridge, with an occasional 1:1 flour and water feed.

On Thursday, leftover pizza dough became focaccia to go with minestrone for lunch; adding miso paste to the leftover chicken stock produced a soup for ramen noodles, topped with more sliced chicken and gyoza.

Then it was Good Friday, so I mixed up an experimental batch of hot cross buns using my yeast culture and adding egg, butter and spices together with a packet of fruit&nut trail mix. Dinner was broccoli and cauliflower cheese plus roasted vegetables.

Saturday: Hot cross buns were a success! As it was a sunny day, we decided to have a living room picnic featuring grilled halloumi, a roasted vegetable and quinoa salad and various deli-style goodies.

Sunday featured the becoming-traditional cooked breakfast, and a quick sticky pineapple chicken for dinner.

QFD: Week 3. "In which we take a suitcase to the supermarket..."

Essentials such as food shopping only, they said. Try to limit shopping trips to once per week. There was a debate over whether more than one member of a household should go to the shops. But with two of us, we thought, we could stock up on a month's worth of food and not have to leave the house until May! Hence the suitcase...

The Royal Mile, deserted

AAA....

The shopping trip itself was a slightly hair-raising experience, since at this point very few people were taking seriously the lockdown and especially the social distancing measures. We returned both physically worn out by hauling half our bodyweight in shopping across cobbled streets, and psychologically exhausted from playing Pac-Man up and down the supermarket aisles. Next time, grocery delivery!

Having survived this harrowing venture out of doors, the next day (I have no memory of what we ate after coming home from shopping...) merited some comfort cooking: specifically, a Thai Panang curry with fried tofu and pineapple -- spicy, sweet, rich and full of vegetables -- and a fresh crunchy salad with chilli, lime and garlic dressing. Plus the only rice we'd been able to buy at the Chinese supermarket was Thai sticky, so this fit the bill.

Leftover sticky rice became cheesy rice cakes with nuoc cham sauce and salad for lunch the following day; and as local businesses shut their doors and turned to the online market, home delivery G&T started to become A Thing...

Weekend lockdown breakfasts also quickly became established as a thing: when you're spending every day at home, it's nice to have something to mark out the weekend.

I really like spring onion pancakes but almost never order them in restaurants, because there's usually something more exciting I want to eat instead. Knowing in theory how to make them was one thing, but it took lockdown to give me the time and inspiration actually to try. Fortunately they were very easy! (Understanding a bit of the science behind hot-water vs cold-water dough and the limits of lamination was useful as well.)

I was also interested to try out this version of Kung Pao Chicken from NoRecipes.com. Verdict: tasty, but the dark soy was a touch overpowering. One to keep experimenting with!

And finally, because there's nothing like a good plate of leftovers: kung pao fried rice with salad and that classic SE Asian street food bonus topping of a fried egg!