Life in Lockdown Part 1 (this post is mainly about food)

These are some strange times that we are living in. One of the things I have tried to do during the enforced lockdown we had due to Covid-19 was to try and support local business.  A lot of businesses have been struggling due to the pandemic and supporting local businesses (even though they may be more expensive), feels like the right thing to do.  

I must admit my online orders have reached a record high as I have been avoiding going to the supermarkets as much as possible as it is so hard to socially distance there.  Some of the small things I have been doing is getting weekly orders from my local farm shop. Yes it's dearer but the quality of the food is so much better then the supermarkets so it's worth the money.  My local farm shop now does a click and collect service where you can order online and arrange a date and time to pick up.  Then I just park up my car and open the boot and they pop the order in.  Initially while they did offer the click and collect option it had to be done by phone but over time they have progressed to online ordering and each week there are more and more items offered.  I honestly will carry on doing a weekly order with them when this is all over.

My other local business is a cafe not far from where I live. Initially it closed for a couple of weeks when all this kicked off, but once they opened again for takeaways I made a point of ordering once a week for a takeaway.  The food is so great so i'ts no hardship and I'm hoping it is a business that will come back stronger then ever.  It's only a small cafe so at the moment it's not able to open for anything other then takeaways at the moment and honestly I'm more than happy to continue with the takeaways as it is a great way to break up the week by having a meal that's made for you.  

Both the local farm shop and the cafe offer afternoon teas and I must admit that I have ordered a couple of those during the last couple of months.  

Writing this I realise that most of my support of local businesses has very much been around food as my next one is related to that as well😆.

I have a massive sweet tooth.  I could eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  So when I found out that my favourite brownie pop-up that I often see at events around West Yorkshire did deliveries I couldn't wait to order. Brown and Blonde make the most delicious, moist, scrummy, yummy brownies on the planet, so I made sure to order a batch of my favourite flavours. I really recommend the peanut butter blondie and the salted caramel brownie.  A box of 10 brownies costs £20 plus delivery.  They are well worth it and if you have anyones birthday or a celebration coming up they are are fab.

I love going to the cinema and one of the joys of this (apart from the films) is pick n mix sweets (whoops food again, I think finding all these ways to get treats has really helped me get through the lat few months from a personal point of view).   This one isn't as local as the others but still a small business I'm supporting.  So when a craving hit and I googled pick n mix,  up popped Man V Sweets who offer boxes of pick and mix sweets delivered to your door. I chose the gigantic box which cost £13.99 plus delivery for 1.5kg of sweets. I thought I would get the largest box as it would last longer and would be better value (spoiler alert, it didn't last longer). The sweets were a nice treat and I would definitely order again.  Again this would be a great surprise for any celebration or down the line party/wedding favours when things get back to normal.

Now, one thing I will say is that I have definitely put on a little extra poundage, so I have been going for walks 2 or 3 times a day.  I also completed the Couch to 5K running app during the lockdown. I am not a fan of running, so I am really proud that I completed this and managed a 5k, 30 minute run. I do want to get back into running again (as I haven't done it in a while as I slipped and fell on one of my walks and tweaked my ankle (I must the the only person that can go over on my ankle when I'm wearing sketchers😲), although I don't think I will aim for the full 5k run, but mix in a little bit of running when I go for walks.

This has been such a long post (mainly about food), so I will end it here, but I will do a 2nd post with some of the other things I have been up to during lockdown, that don't include food.

Stay safe everyone

Leigh💜