Shopping Fail

[Meckity1]

We all had symptoms at the end of March and were self isolating. We couldn't get slots for love nor money, all the local places were swamped and I really scrabbled around for stuff like bread, fruit and veg. I ended up placing an order for a veg box for the end of April and forgetting about it.

I now have a very large fruit and veg box that I hadn't planned for. A lot of it will become soup and frozen (random root veg, lentils, garlic and lots of spices - food of the gods and the household loves it). But I am overwhelmed. There's an aubergine. I loathe aubergine with the power of a thousand suns. I have unexpected mushrooms. And while most of it looks lovely, the peaches are so hard you could use them to knock nails in.

Anyone else had fails shopping in these uncertain times. Would be great to know I'm not the only one. Everyone else seems to be doing wonders.

My Nan (in her stockpiling panic) bought 9 loo rolls off eBay for £26 + postage.
She lives on her own and uses about 1 loo roll a fortnight!
She’s joking now that we’ll all get one left in her will

Poach your peaches! Stick a vanilla pod in if you’re feeling fancy.

Or even better, roast them and serve them with honey, and ricotta if you have it (it’s easy to make if you don’t).

‘I have unexpected mushrooms.’

Canesten?

Chop up the peaches and put them in a carafe of white wine

£26 delivery!!!

I ended up getting a Beelivery delivery. They picked up £1 grapes from Asda and charged us £2.50

But at least we had something.

@catinb0oots I can just drink the wine and stare at the peaches, right?

@Pinkarsedfly roasted peaches sounds great. We have honey

You need to go over to the aubergine thread, and find the link to burnt aubergine chilli (or google for the BBC food recipe). Delicious, and you would never know it has aubergine in it.

nice recipe

Off topic but whoever was selling the loo roll for £26 should seriously be ashamed of themselves.

@Chemenger Thank you, I'll have a look. I don't usually like the taste, texture of aubergine or the faff of working out if I'm preparing it right, but I refuse to waste any food, especially not at this time.

@EatShitBoswell There have been some serious profiteers around amongst the heroes.

I've heard a lot of good things about this aubergine chilli. I've not tried it yet but it's going on my next meal plan. Let me know if you try it OP.

I only remembered about my Sainsbury's delivery 7 minutes before the cut off time. I always reserve my slot with champagne, top up with items we don't regularly need (like vegetable oil or peppercorns) as I noticed we run out and then properly do the order the night before and delete the champagne. Last night I rampaged through my "favourites"'and think I have a decent selection of meat, veg etc but I imagine we'll be on some interesting combinations this week!

Also, I've got a recipe somewhere for a spicy aubergine Asian thing. I'll dig it out when I get a chance. I had it years ago (before I had to cook for my fussy lot!!) And it was lovely.

I already had a loo roll mountain before Christmas. I had Andrex on subscribe and save and I'd set the frequency too often and actually cancelled it in December. I am finally getting it down to manageable proportions. I had loads of spices in as I had starting buying those in bulk and there had been a sweet deal on handwash around 18 months ago which I took full advantage of and stocked up for a decade (it was several shopping deliveries and I lost track), so I really stressed about the fruit and veg as we were pretty good about the rest.

There have been some very miscellaneous soups recently.

Look at Annabelle Karmels spaghetti Bolognese recipe for the use of aubergines. It’s the food of the gods ♥️

I panicked and bought expensive toilet roll off amazon (it didn’t arrive with my last online delivery tbf) - anyway it came and it doesn’t even have a hole in the middle so can’t put it on the holder! Not bothered using it as just bought more proper stuff when I went to the shops which had restocked by then.

Also have loads of tins of fruit/veg etc which il probably never use as I prefer fresh (will donate to food bank at some point) and strangely lots of boxes of cornflakes and porridge (dh shoved them in the trolley) - no one eats cornflakes or porridge in our house!
We are intelligent, rational and usually rather cynical people so I am embarrassed by the fact that we got caught up in the media hysteria (reading the prepping threads on here didn’t help either!)

@working5to9 That's how I ended up with a slight overstock of brandy (since drank). This lockdown is certainly encouraging creativity! I bet you will have awesome meals.

Years ago, when my father was alive, Asda had such a great deal on whisky that even with the delivery charge and a limit of three bottles per delivery it was worth getting a delivery just for those. I had one delivery with normal groceries and then another the next day with just three bottles of whisky and a bag of cat litter we had forgotten in the last order. The driver judged

@Falafellygood That would be kind. We are a fussy household. I get ill with gluten and we all have some issues with dairy, but we can all eat veggies. I swear the aubergine is looming in that box!

I always put unwanted veg in a Bolognese or Chilli. Annihilate it in a food processor first so you lose the texture and with everything else in it you can cover the flavour. Bulks it out too so you can freeze some.

@ANoiseAnnoys Jack Monroe has recipes with tins, but it's great that you are able to donate.

To be fair, my normal shopping habits can get away from me. A few years back there was great deal on tinned soups that I like. I am somewhat chaotic anyway, lost track of my buying and finally counted up at the end of the offer and had 72 tins of Heinz soup. To be fair, I got through them all by the end of the winter as lunches but it came as a shock when I counted.

@YesItsMeIDontCare it's usually soup here - root veggies, lentils, garlic, cumin, tumeric, onion or similar, cook for a while then blitz. Fortunately I have been making room in my freezer as I can see I'm going to have to freeze some.

For the “unexpected mushrooms” and other veg you may have, google Bosh Ultimate Chilli. It uses minced (food processor) mushrooms as a replacement for mince which seems obvious but was a bit of a revaluation for me.

There's an aubergine. I loathe aubergine with the power of a thousand suns

Same. I normally dice it up small and shove it into a cottage pie or similar so you don't notice it.

What do you do with excess grapes?

DH is on a diet, son is picky and I'm not a huge fan. I have four boxes in the delivery and as I had forgotten about it I had already picked up a couple of boxes in my weekly shop.

I'm going to end up looking like a grape. Son can have the mango - and the deep, deep joy of cutting the damn thing up.