In these times of logistical difficulties acquiring foodstuffs, compromises need to be made with regards meals/ingredients one craves. On occasion doing without a desired product altogether, or settle for smaller portions. Mindful of this situation, this morning saw me undertake a food thriftiness technique I’d not utilised since my youth.

This simple not a compromise on my part. However, I’d like think it was a behavioural display highlighting, at the very least, I’ve adopted a sensible approach to avoiding food waste during the global COVID-19 crisis,

Occurring over breakfast, after badly burning my morning toast ordinarily I’d head to the waste bin to toss the charred bread to an unsavoury grave. Today, though, before taking that approach, I took at look at myself in the mirror, telling the man looking back at me “No, Gary…. These are times we need to preserve food stocks wherever possible….. Oh, and incidentally, why are you making toast in the bathroom you idiot?!!” 

My self admonishment didn’t negate against me going to the aforementioned waste bin. However, upon arriving aside the garbage holder, I resisted disposing of my burnt breakfast. Instead using the table knife, picked up on the short sojourn to the bin, GJ Strachan scraped off the singed bits. Consequently, returning the toast to a state of edibility ready for marmite application.

Upon conclusion of said breakfast’s preparation, I sat at the kitchen table with my once cremated bread, emitting a glow of satisfaction at my food waste avoidance actions. My act raising notions I shouldn’t eat the thing as I’d felt the twinge of bonding during the earlier episode. Mercifully, though, common sense prevailed when yours truly proceeded to trough the basic meal without further thought.

As alluded to above, if memory serves me correct the last time I scraped badly burned toast was during childhood. As the result of my mum’s disdain of food waste, my siblings and me weren’t permitted to bin burnt toast.

During our fledgling years, If she’d spotted our breakfasts singed, followed by the sight of us heading towards the toaster with two new pieces of bread, we’d have been subject to a terse “Scrape the toast!…. Don’t waste it!….. I’m not made of bleeding money!”

Footnote – In our teen years the adage “I’m not made of bleeding money!” became superseded by the brisker admonishment of “My arse isn’t studded in diamonds!!”

The only time she allowed the acquisition of a replacement breakfast due to a cremated original was when my younger brother Ian poured his cornflakes into the toaster. The motive of this hair-brained experiment was to see what toasted cereal tasted like.

Obviously, our kid never got to eat the finished meal, as when he emptied the toaster of its corn sourced bounty the contents were burnt to cinders. After a short debate with our unamused mum, our Ian rightly pointed out if he scraped every cornflake then he’d be late for school.

Mater, unable to effectively refute her middle offspring’s logic, cracked him around the ear and allowed him a fresh bowl of cereal, on the condition he didn’t put the bloody flakes in the toaster again!

To close, I attach a whimsy coronavirus episode, as relayed to me this morning.

Yesterday, an acquaintance informed me that over the weekend he’d asked his wife if she’d go upstairs to adorn her nurses outfit. After she queried “Why, do you want to be intimate?!“, he apparently responded “No, it’s NHS employees-only hour at the supermarket, and we’ve run out of milk!”