When I first decided to guard myself against the potential shortages of the post-Brexit apocalypse, I took stock of my provisions - and noticed that there were almost none.
What stores I had were the result of my culinary hobbies and eccentricities. I have six gallons of home made elderberry wine, a consequence of me making more wine than I drink. Ditto for jams and pickled fruit, and chutneys. I like to make such things much more than I enjoy to consume them, so they pile up.
But aside from that I had no stores. When I was down to my last toilet roll I bought another pack (of 4). When a toothpaste tube had almost been squeezed dry I rushed to the shops for reinforcements. As for food, I almost only use fresh ingredients, and go shopping several times a week.
The freezer is full of hard to get ingredients, like organic suet for making steamed puddings, and left over cooked foods and cakes. Also, as a result of my recently acquired addiction, of frozen cherries (they leave the freezer very quickly, though, so I am not sure that counts as storage).
I have some large glass jars in the kitchen for flour and oatmeal and such like, and these, too, I would top up when they ran dry.
So this new Brexit situation required not only that I create some storage space, but also that I changed my eating habits. Because I can't store fresh food.
Living on croissants, fresh berries, steak, and salads, is not an eating style that can be sustained from tins and desiccated pulses, with the odd smoked sausage thrown in.
Now you may think that I should do what anyone else I know who is prepping does - continue with my normal life, and if there are indeed shortages after Brexit, figure out what to do with my provisions. However, hopefully there will be no shortages, and my accumulated stash can be donated to the nearest foodbank.
That is not the way I do things! Instead I have started to train myself already in the new ways. It is hard going, and I slip often, but nevertheless a new way of life is being created.
This evening, for example, I have dipped into my dried peas jar and irrigated a cup full of them, to soak overnight, and be boiled up with the usual odd and ends, as well as a piece of smoked bacon I sourced in a Polish delicatessen. I am unsure how many meals that will provide, it is all part of the learning process.
Unlike the younger generation I actually know how to lead that sort of culinary life - it is pretty much what we did at home when I was young. Lentil stew, pea stew, white bean stew, all properly herbified and elevated with a bit of sausage or bacon was served often in my childhood. Indeed, I often cooked this myself.
I remember, once when I was about ten, I was on a longish visit with relatives. They needed to go away for a morning, and I was put in charge of making the bean stew. Unfortunately for all concerned, in my parents' house the beans were bought in a tin, and just heated and mixed with the other ingredients - I had never encountered dried ones. But my aunt gave me dried beans - and neither of us realised that they needed to be soaked overnight. I cooked and cooked and cooked those beans, but they continued to be rock hard even after four hours. I was not asked to cook again in that household! I am still not sure whether this was my or her fault .....
Anyway, since then I have learned a lot. For example, pulses from a recent harvest need no or just an hour long soaking. But the older pulses get, the longer they need to soak. And it is wise to cook the pulses first, and add other ingredients later, so as not to overcook the latter.
Breakfast is another meal that needs to change. No more bacon and eggs! The bacon will have to be reserved for soups, and the eggs (powdered!) are for cakes and pancakes. Although I have a quantity of pumpernickel bread and Scandinavian crisp bread, these have to be used sparingly, if only because my store of butter is limited (a mere 24 tins). So I have started to revive the habit of our ancestors, and gone in a big way for porridge-type grain slops.
They are easy to make. Just put a quantity of grain groats into a thermos flask, add a few nuts or raisins if you have them, perhaps a pinch of salt or sugar, a bit of fat or milk powder if available, and pour hot water over the lot. Close thermos, shake a little, and leave. A few hours later there is your food, all ready and cooked.
We are led to believe that in the olden days people ate their grains mainly in the form of bread, especially before the potato got an inning in Europe. Personally I am sceptical. The amount of work and fuel required to turn groats into flour, to prepare the dough, and then to bake the bread, is vastly greater than to just toss the groats into a pot and leave it near the fire (put it into a sort of Wonderbag!) and go to bed (or work the fields).
I think for most of our ancestors' lives bread was a luxury food, mainly consumed by the nobility and city folk. Your average peasant would have stuck to one pot cooking, tossing into it whatever food was available.
Despite of all that I have written above, I do not plan to live quite as simply as our ancestors during the Bexit apocalypse. For starters, I have way too many pots to be content with that! I also have laid down luxuries unaffordable to medieval peasants, like tea and sugar and Katzenpfoetchen. Then there are my six kilos of mint fondant, which I can eat as well as trade.
Besides, I do believe that there will be some few little things available from shops or law-disabiding neighbours, like the occasional jar of Miracle Whip, or the odd bit of venison (hopefully not someone's pet).
I hope that this new eating style will reduce my carbon footprint, and will cure me of the decadent habits I had fallen into these last few decades. Cakes on weekdays, coffee made from real coffee-beans every morning, unlimited supplies of tea, three meals a day, blueberries and water melons in winter, and a bag (or two) of frozen cherries every day - deep down I always knew I would eventually have to abandon this sybaritic lifestyle.
From now on cake and real coffee will be strictly for Sundays. On other days I shall have to contend myself with bread and butter (with luck!), porridge, thick lentil stews, and chicory coffee. This degenerate life has to have an end. We have become enfeebled and uncompetitive by dissolute living, brought on by the absence of a cleansing national crisis. But it is not too late. As soon as I have eaten all my cherries I will turn over a new leaf and become a better DB.
Brexit shmexit, I plan to prosper regardless!
PS I am not cutting down on tea - virtue has its limits!
