In which food takes on undue significance
Apr. 5th, 2020 12:29 pmI forgot to mention, on day 6, that on the way back from my walk I came across a strawberry tree. There are a number of these listed on the map of edible trees planted by the city council, and in curiosity at the name I'd looked them up and discovered to my absolute outrage that they're fruit that I frequently saw splattered on the ground as a kid and assumed they must be poisonous because they look so enticing. Decades later it turns out they were edible all along! My life is a giant lie.
So they're just coming ripe now and I finally got to taste one. It certainly tastes like fruit. I mean that's literally all I can say about the taste. Tastes like fruit. The texture on the other hand: the outside is kind of softly gritty (which strawberries can be too when the seeds are profuse) in a not unpleasant way, while the inside is kind of a soft peach-ish texture. Maybe more preserved-peach than fresh-peach. Look, they're not highly interesting to eat, but they're definitely fruit, so I can see why they would get made into jam.
Day 7: Went for a walk after work and ended up at the dead centre of the suburb hahaha yes I mean one of the (several) cemetaries -- where I discovered more strawberry trees. This is irritating because much as I like the idea of free fruit-like fruit, I'm pretty certain it's highly culturally inappropriate to be eating fruit from a graveyard. Although it'd probably make for a great horror story.
Hopefully I'll find more of the trees elsewhere.
Day 8: The PA system is back on at the supermarket. So are a few specials. There've been many complaints about high prices at supermarkets; aside from caulis (which others point out are in fact out of season) this has mostly manifested in an absence of specials. The supermarkets defend themselves that they don't want to encourage people to buy extra when they're trying to limit panic buying. People point out that on the other hand poor people shouldn't have to pay more for their regular food. It's a dilemma. As the panic buying is easing though, they're promising the return of specials and I did notice pears at a very good price (I got a few then stopped, reasoning that I can afford to buy higher priced, even though I don't usually, and leave the cheap for others who need it) and some specials on meat.
For dinner, I had apple in pork mince with various greens from my garden. It's one of the awkward in-between moments for the garden but I got some silverbeet, a young spring onion, and I figured the lemony flavour of oxalis would complement the apple quite nicely. I believe I was correct though it needed a bit more oxalis to be sure.
It's a little weird, it's not that the pandemic has reduced me to eating weeds per se, it's mostly that I've been eating more and more vegetables from my garden over the last year or so anyway. Which means I've bought less, so when I did my shop I still only bought one head of broccoli even though I was buying a week worth of everything else. I'm used to getting a few things whenever I need them, not shopping for a whole week at once. And the pandemic does make me feel weird about just popping to the supermarket for a few things when I need them. It makes me want to be more self-sufficient even though I don't logically need to be.
Thursdays are the evening we usually have a sibling night at my brother's house. I've spent the last week planning a Zoom or Skype or some kind of video chat to replace this. Much of this planning centred around sorting out my sister's technology. Long story short we finally got that sorted out -- and an hour or two before we're getting started, my brother suddenly says, 'Oh you're planning a video chat? I don't have a mic or webcam.' <head-desk> <head-desk> We had a text chat instead and he pasted in some YouTube videos for us to watch so it was nice anyway but yeah, siblings.
Day 9: Woke in the morning from a packing anxiety dream. Normally my packing anxiety dreams involve packing (obviously) in preparation to either travel overseas or to come home again afterwards. This time however I was packing for a stint in prison. (Mostly socks, underwear, t-shirts, and stuff for periods.) After due pondering I've concluded that the symbolism is probably not coincidental.
The start of the morning's work was fairly blah. The neighbour had some annoying music blaring, and I was in the state where I went to the kitchen to get some water and came back having forgotten the water. As I foolishly volunteered to be health and safety officer just before everything hit the fan, and am therefore in these times also the morale officer, I took inspiration from the mood to email my department with one of the "You're not working from home, you're at home during a crisis trying to work" memes and got grateful replies from about a quarter of the department: it obviously hit home for many more than just me!
Things improved during the day. After work I went for another walk. Found a note in my mailbox from a neighbour checking on me, so texted her back. Did a bit of gardening -- there's a patch of stuff I've been meaning to dig up, but today its seedpods started to open up so I finally leapt into action and now my green-bin (organics for city composting) is overflowing. Made one of my favourite lazy dinners, and watched episode 11 of Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter (an absolutely delightful kdrama, the blurb does not do it justice in any way) while knitting a jersey I've been knitting off-and-on for about half a year.
I've been aware the last few days -- well, when I'm in crisis mode, I want All The Information. And I get this by obsessively following Twitter, but then empathy makes me anxious, so then I curate my Twitter feed very carefully (in this case, I've focused heavily on New Zealand-only news, because it's simpler to know what I actually have to personally worry about), but then I run out of Twitter to follow. But concurrent with this process, I come slowly out of crisis mode. So over the last few days I've been becoming aware that my brain is beginning to be ready to pick up some normal hobbies again. Watching TV (that's an easy way to start), reading books (that requires a little more brain so is the next step up), maybe writing something and/or learning some more Ancient Greek or Te Reo (I can be ambitious....)
Other people of course use creativity right from the start to deal with All The Feelings. In fact when I was a teenager so did I. I'm not sure what changed. Me? The type of crisis? But after the earthquakes I couldn't write for years. <shrug> The brain deals how it deals. I enjoy being creative, but if/when I can't be creative I enjoy enjoying other people's creativity.
So they're just coming ripe now and I finally got to taste one. It certainly tastes like fruit. I mean that's literally all I can say about the taste. Tastes like fruit. The texture on the other hand: the outside is kind of softly gritty (which strawberries can be too when the seeds are profuse) in a not unpleasant way, while the inside is kind of a soft peach-ish texture. Maybe more preserved-peach than fresh-peach. Look, they're not highly interesting to eat, but they're definitely fruit, so I can see why they would get made into jam.
Day 7: Went for a walk after work and ended up at the dead centre of the suburb hahaha yes I mean one of the (several) cemetaries -- where I discovered more strawberry trees. This is irritating because much as I like the idea of free fruit-like fruit, I'm pretty certain it's highly culturally inappropriate to be eating fruit from a graveyard. Although it'd probably make for a great horror story.
Hopefully I'll find more of the trees elsewhere.
Day 8: The PA system is back on at the supermarket. So are a few specials. There've been many complaints about high prices at supermarkets; aside from caulis (which others point out are in fact out of season) this has mostly manifested in an absence of specials. The supermarkets defend themselves that they don't want to encourage people to buy extra when they're trying to limit panic buying. People point out that on the other hand poor people shouldn't have to pay more for their regular food. It's a dilemma. As the panic buying is easing though, they're promising the return of specials and I did notice pears at a very good price (I got a few then stopped, reasoning that I can afford to buy higher priced, even though I don't usually, and leave the cheap for others who need it) and some specials on meat.
For dinner, I had apple in pork mince with various greens from my garden. It's one of the awkward in-between moments for the garden but I got some silverbeet, a young spring onion, and I figured the lemony flavour of oxalis would complement the apple quite nicely. I believe I was correct though it needed a bit more oxalis to be sure.
It's a little weird, it's not that the pandemic has reduced me to eating weeds per se, it's mostly that I've been eating more and more vegetables from my garden over the last year or so anyway. Which means I've bought less, so when I did my shop I still only bought one head of broccoli even though I was buying a week worth of everything else. I'm used to getting a few things whenever I need them, not shopping for a whole week at once. And the pandemic does make me feel weird about just popping to the supermarket for a few things when I need them. It makes me want to be more self-sufficient even though I don't logically need to be.
Thursdays are the evening we usually have a sibling night at my brother's house. I've spent the last week planning a Zoom or Skype or some kind of video chat to replace this. Much of this planning centred around sorting out my sister's technology. Long story short we finally got that sorted out -- and an hour or two before we're getting started, my brother suddenly says, 'Oh you're planning a video chat? I don't have a mic or webcam.' <head-desk> <head-desk> We had a text chat instead and he pasted in some YouTube videos for us to watch so it was nice anyway but yeah, siblings.
Day 9: Woke in the morning from a packing anxiety dream. Normally my packing anxiety dreams involve packing (obviously) in preparation to either travel overseas or to come home again afterwards. This time however I was packing for a stint in prison. (Mostly socks, underwear, t-shirts, and stuff for periods.) After due pondering I've concluded that the symbolism is probably not coincidental.
The start of the morning's work was fairly blah. The neighbour had some annoying music blaring, and I was in the state where I went to the kitchen to get some water and came back having forgotten the water. As I foolishly volunteered to be health and safety officer just before everything hit the fan, and am therefore in these times also the morale officer, I took inspiration from the mood to email my department with one of the "You're not working from home, you're at home during a crisis trying to work" memes and got grateful replies from about a quarter of the department: it obviously hit home for many more than just me!
Things improved during the day. After work I went for another walk. Found a note in my mailbox from a neighbour checking on me, so texted her back. Did a bit of gardening -- there's a patch of stuff I've been meaning to dig up, but today its seedpods started to open up so I finally leapt into action and now my green-bin (organics for city composting) is overflowing. Made one of my favourite lazy dinners, and watched episode 11 of Mama Fairy and the Woodcutter (an absolutely delightful kdrama, the blurb does not do it justice in any way) while knitting a jersey I've been knitting off-and-on for about half a year.
I've been aware the last few days -- well, when I'm in crisis mode, I want All The Information. And I get this by obsessively following Twitter, but then empathy makes me anxious, so then I curate my Twitter feed very carefully (in this case, I've focused heavily on New Zealand-only news, because it's simpler to know what I actually have to personally worry about), but then I run out of Twitter to follow. But concurrent with this process, I come slowly out of crisis mode. So over the last few days I've been becoming aware that my brain is beginning to be ready to pick up some normal hobbies again. Watching TV (that's an easy way to start), reading books (that requires a little more brain so is the next step up), maybe writing something and/or learning some more Ancient Greek or Te Reo (I can be ambitious....)
Other people of course use creativity right from the start to deal with All The Feelings. In fact when I was a teenager so did I. I'm not sure what changed. Me? The type of crisis? But after the earthquakes I couldn't write for years. <shrug> The brain deals how it deals. I enjoy being creative, but if/when I can't be creative I enjoy enjoying other people's creativity.