Things We Ate In The Lockdown: Day Twenty-Four

EV calls us in the morning to report he’s making a shopping trip to Albi and asks us whether we need anything. It’s become the new ‘how are you’ in these quarantine times, whenever we happen on someone in the neighbourhood. As is the case with the former how are you, we aren’t completely certain whether people want the truth when they make their inquiry, but we’re grateful for the question nonetheless and I forward a mishmash of items that will have him wandering down the ‘exotic aisle’. I remain positively expectant of an Easter miracle.

I’ve acclimatised to my constantly weeping right eye now despite the fact that there’s undoubtedly a serious root cause given that this situation is going into its four month... I’ve reconciled myself with the fact that I look like a late-to-the-party Emo, and that’s fine; so long as people don’t attribute my climate change affected slow drip waterfall as an indicator that I’m infected with Covid.

Shopping in town — neighbours in queue becomes the new celebrity spotting. We fill trolley, or trolleys, so we can flout the no families rule (one trolley per customer), with items to feast on and distract us over Easter. We buy more items for the garden — some succulents to add to the ones already growing on our walls.

The meat section of the supermarket triggers sudden nostalgia and I remember last year when I chose goat for our Easter Sunday lunch. We braai’d in the garden with our friend, the owner of the only bar/restaurant in town who’d never tried goat. We ate and drank and blasted afrobeat tracks like it was the middle of summer.

Dinner is kedgeree, purely so there can be enough leftovers for breakfast, which should remind me not to eat yogurt with bacon or enact some type of foolishness pre-coffee before remembering what day it is (i.e Good Friday).

Kedgeree always reminds me of an early boarding school. It was one of few happy culinary moments amidst soggy boiled potatoes, suspect pasta bakes and some kind of mystery meat called King Ribs that my friend used to love, and siphoned off my plate as though she was some top dog in maximum security prison… King Ribs looked like Yorkie bars except they were no doubt made from reconstituted meat factory floor scrapings and were slathered with something masquerading as BBQ sauce... No siree.

But kedgeree I could get down with. What’s not to love?

Rice, smoked fish, shallots, peas, spices, boiled eggs… Sustenance and must-enance in its deliciousness!

This series was first published on Medium