A friend texted me to say she had bought the last four multipacks of baked beans, in a craven panic, from her Sainsbury’s Local, but felt so selfish afterwards that she tried to assuage her guilt by donating a tenner to her local foodbank. ‘Do you think that’s enough to offset my corona emissions?’ she asked.
These are unprecedented times and even the ‘proper grownups’ are at odds on how to cope. When everything feels this overwhelming, a five-kilo sack of rice or twenty-five tins of chickpeas can make us feel that we still have some semblance of control; that, despite all of the unknowns, we will still be able to feed our children.
The desperate need to continue steering the ship, despite not quite feeling sure where we’re headed, can feel in conflict with our equally strong sense of compassion and duty to help others who are less privileged. We know we must resist stampeding already depleted supermarkets by buying more than we need, but angry or mocking cries not to be selfish t*@&s! don’t help anyone. It is anxiety that drives stockpiling and being shouted at is not an effective prevention.
Both my husband and I work from home already and, thanks to an inherited fear of empty cupboards from my baby boomer mother (who is constantly freezing and bottling and squirreling things away for a rainy day), I am a natural stockpiler and find it difficult not to treat daily life as a preparation for lockdown. As such, I feel I have a good handle on what store cupboard essentials come in handy the most. I am lucky that I can (mostly) afford to feed my bunker mentality by popping that extra tin of lentils or bag of frozen spinach in my trolley, but there is a difference between taking a little extra, just in case, and taking so much that you leave others with nothing.
We must resist the urge to take more than we need, but our food is going to get boring pretty quickly without a little forethought. It looks like a great deal of us will be eating every meal at home for the foreseeable future, so now’s the time to get your spices and aromatics in order and make sure you are storing food correctly to keep it fresh for as long as possible.