I wouldn't hold out to much hope, i paid a visit to the local Sainsburys a couple of days ago and was a bit taken back by how bare the shelves were and I'm not just talking about loo roll and other essentials, they were low on things like bread, potatoes, coleslaw, fruit, chocolate and most other food stuffs. I did wonder though if they may not be restocking the shelves so readily simply to make people think twice, maybe that's wishful thinking on my behalf though.
From what I've seen the items that are out of stock due to morons are: Toilet paper Hand wash / soap Bleach Pasta Rice Tinned foods Beer And for some reason: Eggs *May vary depending on restocking policies of store.
And those morons are primarily in the lowest risk groups with next to no chance of being severely affected.
We shop at some godforsaken organic shop here, and last night when we went it was deader than disco, but most products were still available compared to the more normal super market type affairs. I'd wager the dirty hippy style stores are going to be a little better stocked for a little while longer owing to their price. Even still had (Although with a limit of 2 per customer) toilet roll. Which goes to show that, even when panic buying, no one wants organic **** tickets.
Flour, especially bread flour, seems to be a target too. A pain in the arse for us because my wife makes all our bread.
Similarly, mate of mine went shopping at his local Polski Sklep and they had everything he needed, poo-tickets included. Most of the panic buyers are concentrating their efforts on mainstream supermarkets and online shops, it seems.
Ditto here in North London, the local corner stores seems to be fully stocked albeit at slightly higher prices than the batshit crazy, rammed with mouth breathers, empty shelved huge Tesco down the road.
Didn't even consider corner shops - But then, I've not seen one for nearly two years. They're not much of a thing around here..
There's one literally at the end of my street. The corner, if you will. Not that I can go there now we're self-isolating, mind!
That's something I miss about England! The corner shop with odds and sods just doesn't exist here. Walking distance there's a post office with an assload of office-related supplies (How they stay in business in the digital age, I'll never know), an antique store, a tattoo parlour, and a Netto. Which I'd not go to even if there were no virus.
So all in all a pretty successful shopping trip. The farm shop car park was overloaded so drove straight past and went to a Sainsbury's local down the road. The shop wasn't what I would call well stocked, but with the items on my list there was no problem for the most part. Did get a dozen eggs, loaf of bread and a pack of bread rolls - obviously choices were limited in that you're getting this particular bread, or no bread at all, but that's fine. I had to get creative with meat - I was after mince beef and diced steak, ended up with burgers and steaks that I can deconstruct. Other than that plenty of chicken in stock, some bacon and fish. Again limited selection and you might not find exactly what you had in mind or what would put in your normal shop, but nobody would go hungry. I did theoretically want beans as the beef and steak was to make a batch of chilli, but was totally correct in my assumption that it just wasn't going to happen. If anyone has a good tried and tested beanless chilli recipe I'm all ears! The list was primarily fruit and veg anyway, and no problems there at all. They did limit me on a couple of things. Rule of one-per on a bunch of things that we normally buy two of anyway, but not on other things. I'd heard limits of three items, and one on the "most critical" items, and did a totally normal shop which was in line with that anyway, so it was kind of awkward being told to put certain things back... I'm sure I got some disgusted looks from overhearing. For instance - Always get 2 cucumbers, one for us, one for rabbits, only one allowed - Picked up three individual bell peppers, had to put them back and grab a sealed pack of three instead - Corn on the cob, picked up two packs of two like I would always do, but only one pack allowed But being smart about it you could work your way around it with substituting certain things with other items as well. If you wanted to stock up on onions, you could quite happily buy white onions, red onions, tiny onions and shallots together. I was fine buying fancy broccoli for us and normal broccoli for the rabbits (which again, I normally would anyway) On the other hand, was allowed to buy two pizzas, two packs of ham, two half-dozen eggs (no 12s in stock) - so I'm not sure what the reasoning behind it is. I would have bought more ham in normal circumstances since it seems to just disappear in this house, but only put two in the basket assuming any more would be a problem. And Cornettos. Fresh fruit and veg being what it is, we'll need another shop in ~10 days unless we switch to a beige-only diet, but we've worked out we can probably stretch what we have in to a month with some careful planning. A really useful exercise has been to index everything in the cupboards and freezer to figure out what we can and can't make, and how long it can last.
Daughter doesn't like the beans or visible onion, so 1/3 of our chilli is bean free and still good. We really like the Hairy Bikers' Chilli recipe, complete with red wine, and lots of ground coriander and cumin
All good tips. I'm not too bad, I have a separate room set up as a mini office anyway - it's comfortable, with proper PC desk, TV etc. and small couch. However, both my wife and I are working from home, she prefers to work from the kitchen table - always has when she works from home - but it's starting to become difficult to differentiate between work and home. I noticed I spend more time at the laptop now than I did when in the office, can't just take a walk to the restaurant so end up eating at the desk whilst working. Just getting used to a change of environment, and trying not to feel the need to prove I'm working - I can take breaks away
Has anyone listened to the press interview the CMO did that's been playing on BBC News? I'm not sure whether to laugh that someone can be heard coughing throughout or terrified.
Cat is thankfully asleep and not directing work any more... She was draped between the keyboard and screen on Mrs A's 'desk' My new office is in the spare room with a family PC in it, which has been commandeered for work and (worryingly) my gaming PC connected to same monitor.... I do have to work out where to squeeze in the stand alone accounts package PC and monitor; thankfully it's not needed daily, but my visiting bookkeeper (another little thing to sort) needs access a couple of hours a month. Maybe clone it to a laptop, it ran fine on a P4, so maybe a lightweight C2D will be OK for that duty. It could be handed over and wiped down on return!
My office is the loft with a 4 port KVM connecting my work laptop, my main rig, my gaming PC and a "spare" for anything else I plug in - I agree it is worrying to have the gaming rig available at the click of a button.
