The Quarantine Food Diaries: Weeks 1-2, "And so it begins..."

The last photo from the Before Times

I was on the last leg of a Maldives liveaboard when everything started shutting down around the world. The day we returned to port, 15 March, was the day the Maldives shut to new incoming travellers; arriving visitors were refused entry and put back on flights home; instead of disembarking and heading to town for the day, we were asked to remain on board until departure and then go straight to the airport; and instead of readying the boat for the next week's group of passengers, the crew prepared to stand down operations.

The conference I had been heading back to in Cambridge had been cancelled two days earlier; by the time I landed in London on 16 March and waited for the flight I'd booked back to Edinburgh instead, all my events that week had been cancelled. 

By the end of the following week, everything was cancelled.

Zooming each other from different rooms

Looking back, those early days of the lockdown are slightly blurred, unreal. Although the official UK lockdown didn't begin until 23 March, it was clear that we were in a state of emergency. The University closed its doors the day I got back, with working from home the new standard. We learned to use Zoom, set up virtual social events with friends and calls with family, somewhat tickled by the strangeness of it all even though we were taking it Very Seriously. We counted our toilet rolls, fortunate in having just received a large order; and made plans to keep ourselves fit and strong without having to leave the house.

Toilet paper stocktake complete!

The lockdown diver's weights workout

And, of course, I cooked.

Being home for long enough to cook properly, as well as being forced to cook through not being able to go out or order takeaway, was something of a novelty. I cleaned the kitchen, defrosted the freezer and finally sorted out the store cupboards into some sort of sensible order -- the value of having a clean, tidy and workable space rapidly grows when you are using the space several times a day every day, rather than once every few weeks.

What did I cook? For the first couple of weeks, I don't really remember. It wasn't particularly important at first; we had various things to use up. No takeaway though, so I decided to try making pizza. The sachets of yeast in the cupboard were best-before dated variously from 2013 to 2017, and the last time I'd tried to use one, the dough had simply sat there and done nothing for two days before going in the bin. Wise to this, I tested them by mixing with warm water and sugar; it took three packets before one finally "doubled in size and became frothy". Yeast and flour shortages were already rife in the shops, so I figured I had better keep some of this batch going. Treating it like a starter, I kept back some of the dough, mixed in extra water and flour, and popped it back in the fridge...

... where it led to early experiments with crumpets and focaccia, amongst other things. (The same culture is still alive in the fridge today, over four months later.) Working our way through the odds and ends accumulated in the fridge, freezer and cupboards, I came up with some inventive combinations: a "lemon and lime" chicken made with the end of a jar of Rose's lime marmalade, kaffir lime leaves and frozen peas, the last green vegetable available to us. I also appealed to friends on Facebook, not because I didn't know how or what to cook, but because I wanted to cook what they were cooking -- to eat the same foods they were eating, even if we couldn't eat together. Some 133 comments later, I had a long list...

Lemon-lime chicken

Lentil soup, from Catherine

Un-photogenic but tasty!

And thus we muddled on randomly for the first two weeks, virtuously using up our old supplies and planning towards a more organised shopping day. The lockdown had begun...

Oyako-don, as suggested by Jayne