Cheese in coffee/ mild meats (?) thread..

[Wilkolampshade]

Hi all,
Could some kind soul please link to the thread, it'll be from this time last year I guess, where someone posted about using cheese in coffee as a substitute for milk and I'm sure, also suggested we only buy 'mild meats' as others weren't essential?
I'm not making this up... am I?
I've tried to explain to family members but they've all been a bit

This @Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady

Whoops the quote did not attach for some reason.

@Flaxmeadow

saying something didn't happen as evidence of "debunking

But surely it's up to the accusers to provide evidence of it being said, but they never do.

The myth of 'we were told to put cheese in our coffee' has sometimes turned into a nasty bullying tactic. But there is no evidence that anyone ever said it

This is where a poster mentioned bullying @Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady

In other words, posters laying down the law, and saying you can only go out once, and what is essential food is bullying in my book.

Right gotcha thanks

@Iremembertheelderlykoreanlady this was exactly the thing really. I think I've been head-down, trying to get through the days one-by fucking-endless one, and now it looks like there maybe some light at the end of the tunnel I'd like to make some sense of it all. I find I have questions, like : did we actually say that? Did I really do that? How much of my/our behaviour this year can I put down to extreme stress? How much was real?

This is where a poster mentioned bullying

The (mythical) 'cheese in coffee" trope is still being used to ridicule posters though isn't it? Along with other name calling like 'dementor', 'frother' etc

Infact there used to be whole threads dedicated to laughing at, and ridiculing posters as dementors. Childish and sarcastic type posts along the lines of 'I killed someone today when I went to buy choclate'. There were whole threads dedicated to this type of inane banter. Fair enough if it gets people through the day, whatever, but at its core is a gang mentality nastiness

I remember reading here that bread wasn't essential and you should be using Ryvita instead. The 'logic' was that you could buy it in bulk and it wouldn't go off like bread does, so you wouldn't have to go to the shop so often. Buying bread was selfish and reckless in the extreme.

I was also told off in very robust terms for going to the supermarket three times a week - we don't drive, I was avoiding public transport as CV so had to make several smaller trips because I couldn't physically carry a week's shopping in one go. I was repeatedly told to book an online slot, which was hilarious given that they were like hen's teeth at the time.

Someone defiantly told me in spring last year that buying bread and milk wasn’t essential because I remember saying that they were 2 of the ration foods in the war.
Also got a hammering for buying Easter eggs, sitting on a bench to give my child water on a walk, being out on a walk for 90 mins rather than 60, walking out my my local village, buying the kids an ice lolly from our local shop in the hot weather.
And yes, people were definately getting told they were killing someone by going to the supermarket for ‘non essentials’

Yes! @TheVampiresWife I remember the Ryvita! Pretty sure that's v v close to the threads I'm thinking of... maybe I'm not going mad after all. We had exactly the same with shopping, I don't drive, DH (who does) at work all the way through, tiny fridge, teen DD's eating vast amounts. I genuinely felt guilty if I had to shop more than twice a week.
God, things were bloody grim. I remember not knowing HOW scared to be? Obsessively watching covid documentaries, covid news, mumsnet.... And then just thinking one day 'I can' t carry this anymore' And stopping.

I "fondly" remember being told by posters, when Boris announced the first lockdown, that children of parents who lived separately would DEFINITELY now be required to stay with ONE parent for the duration of lockdown or we would be breaking the LAW. Of course DD was with her dad that evening and I had a sleepless night worrying that I wouldn't be allowed to see her for weeks.

I sometimes wonder if those posters ever think "Wow, I really got that one wrong, wonder if I upset anyone when I was talking out of my arse like that?"

@BarbaraofSeville

I do remember expressing concern on here about the sheer numbers of people passing through our farm at our busiest and most stressful time of year (lambing time) and feeling the fear that every person passing through our home was a potential risk to us

But how were they a risk to you?

Were you within 2 metres of them for more than a very fleeting amount of time that it takes to pass people?

Did any of them come up to you and touch you or cough in your face?

Did you touch any of the surfaces they touched and then touched your face without washing your hands? In a filthy farmyard?

It's always been known that the risk when outside is so low it's not worth worrying about, especially when you're not actually that close to other people.

It's very easy to say things like that now when we know more about the virus and transmission than we did at the time. The shielding guidance in England was not to leave your house at all, even into your garden and open a window to get fresh air.

I was terrified on any contact at all with people at one point, terrified at opening the gates over the railway line for me to get to the beach, touching things in shops or using a petrol pump. I'm still cautious but not to the point of being terrified.

I would say not wanting loads of people on your property during that time was pretty reasonable.

Those threads got very bad-tempered - I was on the cheese in coffee thread (it turned into a huge debate about bullet coffee, Mongolian salty tea, and all kinds), and lots of comments were deleted. So I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone except MN to “debunk” it at this late stage. I remember exactly which poster it was, it was the shielding one upset we were all putting her non-shielding supermarket worker DH at risk by buying things. Though I obviously can’t remember the exact phrasing she used.

Who remembers the “park benches are fine for me to do my tricep dips on, because that’s exercise, but not ok for disabled or elderly people to rest on, because that’s not exercise” bunfight?

Several posts have gone up this week which I suspect will not age well 🤣🤣

@Gingerkittykat, but that's your issue.

It's never been a reasonable concern that touching gates etc has been a real transmission risk, especially in a farmyard situation where you'd expect the farmers to be mindful of working in a dirty environment even without the COVID risk.

Gates in the countryside are generally covered in bird poo etc. Surely people aren't touching them and then touching their nose and mouth without washing them anyway? As long as you maintain normal hygiene, the risk of catching COVID is very very rare so not worth thinking about.

Funnily enough in Colombia they do actually in the rural areas put (fresh) cheese in coffee instead of milk 🤷🏻‍♀️. I know this because it has happened to me at my Colombian husband’s family farm. And they are one of the major homes of coffee. Have to say I wouldn’t personally recommend it on flavor/texture grounds though!

@Changechangychange

Those threads got very bad-tempered - I was on the cheese in coffee thread (it turned into a huge debate about bullet coffee, Mongolian salty tea, and all kinds), and lots of comments were deleted. So I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone except MN to “debunk” it at this late stage. I remember exactly which poster it was, it was the shielding one upset we were all putting her non-shielding supermarket worker DH at risk by buying things. Though I obviously can’t remember the exact phrasing she used.

Who remembers the “park benches are fine for me to do my tricep dips on, because that’s exercise, but not ok for disabled or elderly people to rest on, because that’s not exercise” bunfight?

Is this the park bench thread you mean? Even if it's not is certainly hasn't aged well

"The myth of 'we were told to put cheese in our coffee' has sometimes turned into a nasty bullying tactic. But there is no evidence that anyone ever said it" Well even if it wasn't in those exact words, there was an entire thread about bread and milk being non-essential items, which doesn't make these people look any LESS loopy.

"The (mythical) 'cheese in coffee" trope is still being used to ridicule posters though isn't it?" I reckon if it snaps some people out of utter po-faced hysteria a little bit of ridicule is probably worth it.

Who remembers the “park benches are fine for me to do my tricep dips on, because that’s exercise, but not ok for disabled or elderly people to rest on, because that’s not exercise” bunfight?

Yes. We were told that exercising on a bench was fine as it was ‘virtuous’, but eating crisps on a bench was bad as crisps aren’t ‘virtuous’. Virtuous being the exact word used.

@Findahouse21

I agree about the twisting comments - I commented on one thread last year that I thought bread and milk are odd essentials, given how quickly they go off and that you can't really make a substantial meal with either. Not odd for individuals but almost as a cultural thing that people feel they must have in at all times. It wasnvt a dig at anyone but more of a bit of a social query - is the milk a bit about being able to offer tea etc.

I was quickly shouted down as being miserable and not wanting people to shop when the intent was nothing of the sort

Scotch eggs have breadcrumbs on them and a minister deemed them to be a "substantial meal".

Seriously though, milk makes porridge (oats being one of those store cupboard stables) and beans on toast is my last resort meal for when I'm too ill to cook properly.

@Scrowy if scores of people were passing through your farm during lambing season there's usually much more to worry about than covid. Dog worrying, litter etc.

@savethegrannies

Several posts have gone up this week which I suspect will not age well 🤣🤣

Sorry, can you give an example of which kind of posts you mean?

[quote DdraigGoch]@Scrowy if scores of people were passing through your farm during lambing season there's usually much more to worry about than covid. Dog worrying, litter etc.[/quote]
Well yes that's the point I was trying to make, it's an incredibly busy and stressful time anyway without 100+ Per day people traipsing through touching everything you have to touch potentially carrying a virus that all you know about it is that it's killing 1000s of people in other countries and at that point in time it was unknown exactly how it was transmitted.

Our farmyard isn't dirty, we aren't dirty. I'm not sure why that would have any bearing on our covid risk anyway?

As it happens my own DP is immunocompromised and the average age of farmers in the UK is 59 so in a relatively high risk bracket. We couldn't just 'stay at home' away from people. We couldn't shield or be furloughed if we were at risk. We had lots and lots of people walking through us.

I get the point of this thread, but some people were really scared 12 months ago and people who are scared don't always act as rationally as they usually would otherwise and I think it's a bit mean to make fun of that.

If anyone can ever be arsed to trawl through it all, I reckon it would be really interesting to read through old posts from last sprinh, and it's good that we have a kinf of 'historical record' with people's exact words recorded and timestamped. I reckon all our memories of that time are probably unreliable given how stressed/scared/sad people were, and it's useful to be able to check them against something more objective. For that reason I hope MN doesn't get rid of the board after the pandemic is over.