A post was merged into an existing topic: What will the future of dining out be…
I’ve missed good cheese. Or, even, reasonably decent cheese.
Farmers markets are shut, where I would usually buy local farmhouse cheeses. We’re in the government’s “extremely vulnerable” group so are pretty much under house arrest, which means we’re not going to supermarkets, so can’t buy what they would usually have on the deli counter. So, that means we’re reliant on whatever the supermarket has on its online ordering system for home delivery or “click & collect”. Which means that it’s all pre-sliced, shrink wrapped block cheeses. It’s been OK - you adapt, as you have to. But we’ve got bored.
So, this morning I set to Google. Neither of the cheese shops nearish to home sell online. And one that had come recommended on a local foody site had little availablity. However, found one in London (the “famous” Neals Yard Dairy - which I’d recommend anyone visiting London to go and have a look at).
No, it isn’t at all cheap. But it is always good quality in the shop so I assume will be for this delivery. We’re about to be able to indulge in:
Duckett’s Caerphilly - made from raw cow’s milk
Gubbeen - my favourite Irish cheese. Semi-soft like many French cheeses. Not readily available in supermarkets here.
Sparkenhoe Red Leicester - probably the best known farmhouse Leicester which you can get in supermarkets, but this is an extra matured one. Another raw cows milk one
Montgomery Cheddar - often considered to be the “best” farmhouse Cheddar in the UK - and I’m not going to disagree. Raw cow’s milk.
Had I been buying just for myself, I would have looked at the goat and sheep milk cheeses, as well, but Mrs H isnt too keen on them, so we stuck to all cow’s milk.
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@Harters
Almost like Christmas shopping. 
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But without the really good sausages and bacon from the local smokehouse.
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I know we discussed the shortage of garlic earlier on the thread. Here’s a recent write up
The Real Reason There’s a Garlic Shortage
I’m happy to report that on my weekend trip to Costco (first since pre-lockdown) I found many bags of garlic, though each garlic bulb was notably smaller. I hope they’re not harvesting early to meet demand.
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Interesting. It may be that there’s less of it than usual (and I haven’t paid a lot of attention to where it’s been coming from), but we’ve had no really noticeable shortage of garlic around here (south Brooklyn, NY) and that price didn’t even shoot up, the way the price of ginger did when “they” started sourcing it from Thailand instead of China. (Though to be fair about the price, it’s also mostly much nicer ginger, too, though presumably the price was higher than the local market was willing to bear before the pandemic…)
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Somehow I missed that post.
My really good news is that, for the first time since mid March when all this started for us, we’ve able to score a supermarket home delivery from the chain that we usually shopped at in “normal times”. Even though the shopping experience is obviously very different, it was good to see familiar things. It’s due in about an hour.
Also scheduled for today, is a fruit and veg box that we’ve ordered from a trader at an outdoor market on the other side of the metro area. Such markets are currently closed and this trader is keeping going with the boxes. This will be the third we’ve had (and we’ve also bought one for the sister in law and her husband - who currently have absolutely no income and are reliant on family help). Good value for money, decent quality and a fairly wide range of items, if fairly run-of-the-mill. And it’s a bit exciting (yes, I know) as you don’t know exactly what’s coming.
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I went grocery shopping this morning. Last shop was three weeks ago (combined with my last yacht delivery provisioning). I’ve been going right at opening time at 6a. 6a to 7a is supposed to be reserved for at-risk people including over 60. This morning was enlightening. No line to get in. Very few customers. I don’t know if that was correlated with the holiday weekend last weekend or people are just tired of getting up early. Still no toilet paper, very little paper towel, very little facial tissue. Odd holes around the store but fewer than previously. Perhaps people are adjusting to the new normal and are retreating from Soviet-era shopping practices. grin Most of the holes are in frozen and convenience food. I continue to conclude that a lot of people simply can’t cook.
We do have incipient supply chain problems in the US and that is starting to show up in meats. Pork products are getting fewer. Beef and chicken still look okay. Canned goods (meat and seafood) are fine.
Oh - plenty of garlic. grin Produce in general is in pretty good shape.
Previous shopping trips during lockdown were exhausting. Today was not as much fun as days of yore but not as stressful as the last handful of trips.
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This sounds akin to what I’d know as a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share.
We have subscribed to a CSA share from a local farm for more than a decade. How it works: You pay a flat fee for the season and then receive vegetables picked each week. In our case, I drive to the farm for a weekly pickup.
While the veg are the freshest you’ll
find, it took awhile for me to adjust to preparing whatever is in our weekly allotment. Sometimes I supplement with other vegetables—like when the deer chomp all the lettuce in the field. Bad deer.
Our share this year will probably begin in late/end June, given the cold, wet spring we had here. I can’t wait!
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Similar to a CSA scheme but without the link to a farm. Most box schemes in the UK source more generally, particularly if they are 100% organic (this one isn’t). These guys will be sourcing their produce from the wholesale market, in the main, rather than directly from famrs.
There is a farm fairly near to us that does boxes of its own produce - but they arent accepting new customers. And that is a rarity - there’s very little agriculture in the UK that isnt focussed on mass production for the supermarkets. A farm may only produce a couple of items or so.
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Yes, conditions are much the same here in the US.
I wasn’t actually able to even find a CSA when I first wanted to buy from one. Word of mouth only back then. CSAs are a minor blip here, though they’ve gotten more attention in recent years along with seasonal farmers’ markets that have sprung up in some towns.
CSA farmers either wouldn’t be able to farm anymore all or they might produce for their farm stand or specialty restaurants only. They don’t have the scale to grow for the supply chain.
Also in our local papers—which we still get, because I believe journalism is important—I’m reading that all-but-extinct milk deliveries are now making a comeback. Folks are likewise seeking out farm stands as an alternative to grocery stores they’d rather avoid.
While not much local agriculture is left, I hope that this awful pandemic leads to more people valuing local producers in a way that lasts beyond this crisis.
Somewhat of an aside: Friends who live in Northern Italy haven’t experienced the unavailability of products we have seen here In the US during the pandemic. They’ve been able to reliably buy things like meat, eggs, and even toilet paper the whole time. We hypothesize this could be due to more regional sourcing and production there than in the US?
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Similar in the UK. We used to have doorstep milk deliveries, every day, but it’s dwindled over the years. I came across the local company early in the crisis when I was Googling for vegetable delivery (milk companies diversified long ago) - and they had been inundated with new customers that they were declining any more.
As for the Northern Italy info, I have an e-friend who was on her annual several weeks holiday in Spain when the lockdown came in. She said there was no panic buying and, hence, no shortages. Including toilet paper!
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That’s exactly what I was thinking of, @tomatotomato. You never knew what you might get - weeks of lots and lots of lettuce and kale, then all of a sudden, you’d get a flurry of “new” vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, green onions, beets, leeks).
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We used to get a weekly box of organic veg. But, you’d hit periods for weeks of getting the same stuff and we got bored with it, so stopped the delivery.
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I used to share a full weekly CSA share with two others in my office. But after the second year of having to put kale in my freezer for use at a later time in soups, I dropped out of the share.
And I FINALLY got rid of 3 quart-sized vacuum ziploc bags of kale from 2015 this past weekend. So I even got tired of it from the freezer and stopped using it! LOL (They had fallen behind other stuff, and I had forgotten about it until I was digging around on Sunday.)
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Agreed, I went grocery shopping yesterday. I have abandoned my local Giant, where I used to do the bulk of my shopping, for Redners, which is smaller and ordinarily less crowded. The place was empty . . .as in I walked right up the register empty. And for the first time since the mid-March lockdown I actually got everything on my list. And all in about 30 mins.
Then I went to the meat market and got some nice-looking steaks and chicken . . . they seemed fully stocked for beef and chicken, but the prices are quickly rising: 2 strip steaks (1.6 lb) that used to cost about $14 cost $20 yesterday. Chicken prices seemed less affected, but pork prices were through the roof. I also noticed there was no lamb and far fewer fish choices than usual.
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LOL, there’s only so much caldo verde a human can eat. Actually, I make a greens pie with feta and olives during the summer that can pack up to 7 cups of blanched greens. But only one of those greens should be kale or the flavor is overly strong.
Our farmer got to the point where he gives out kale just once or twice in the summer and treats it an an optional extra at other times. Too many people declared “Kale, no!” I guess. 
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Being a meal planner, I thought I would hate the surprise element of our new CSA - but it turns out, as our groceries dwindle between shops, I have to improvise anyway. And it’s really nice to have a steady supply of fresh things to work with!
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When I lived in Delft NL we had doorstep milk delivery and doorstep beer (Grolsch) delivery.
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