Dried food

 What do you think about dried food?

Since we had Brexit and Covid as a double whammy in the UK, the news has been full of doom-mongering stories about food supply disruption, and not without foundation. We now have a shortage of lorry drivers and a shortage of fruit pickers. There is still plenty of food in the grocery stores, but it's true that supplies have become more sporadic, and staples — milk, fish, that sort of thing — often run out leaving an empty space for a while until new supplies come through. More of an inconvenience than a disaster.

It's made me think about store-cupboard food. In our garden we grow mostly fruit and herbs, and we eat wild food (and drink wild water) as well. I do firmly believe in the power of fresh food — an apple or a greengage picked straight from the tree, dandelion leaves and nasturtium flowers plucked straight from the garden for a lunchtime salad, mint leaves picked and made immediately into a cup of tea; that sort of thing. That's Ayurvedic food.

Surely, though, food that has been picked a while ago, travelled here and there in lorries, stored in plastic bags in the supermarket, then kept in my fridge for several days, is going to lose some nutrients. Dried food is probably just as good, possibly better.

Dried food also addresses some of the challenges of cooking for one. Sometimes Tony and I cook for each other, but what we want to eat (and the times we want to eat it) varies and differs, so most often we each cook our own. I practice a kind of slovenly variety of intermittent fasting, with a shorter eating window than Tony, so my supper time has come and gone long before he's ready to eat, anyway.

The thing about cooking for one is that it easily becomes any of a) expensive, b) wasteful, and c) boring — because you either have to keep eating the same thing until you've finished the pack/item, or eat more than you really wanted so it doesn't go off; and you have to buy more than you wanted in the first place.

Dried food seems to me to offer a way out of this dilemma.

As a (very) young woman I enjoyed cooking, but lost all delight in it by firstly cooking for monks in Devon whose idea of ingredients included huge blocks of rubbery processed cheese, loaves of sliced white bread and carrier bags of chicken livers; then secondly cooking for five children who were always hungry and never liked anything but sausages, baked beans, cheese, bread and processed food. One wearies of hearing how onions have the same texture as slugs, she doesn't like it with gravy, or she'll throw up if you make her eat this fish.

So food prep for me, in my 60s, cooking for one, endlessly combatting through nutrition the onset of all the usual health problems, is more a science than an art.

I have bought bags of dried rice, dried vegetables (various) and herbs, dried mushroom powder, bone broth concentrate, bouillon mix — and I just mix in some handfuls or a pinch or two from the different bags with spring water and cook it for a while in one pot, and bingo! There's lunch!

I buy dried seaweed in sheets, and use it to make little parcels — sort of rice-less sushi. I cut into fingers an avocado, some cucumber, part of a pepper and some smoked salmon, and roll up a piece of each inside a little sheet of seaweed. Finger food. I love it.

Meanwhile breakfast is some oats from the huge multipack box of same, mixed with oat milk (also from a big multipack box of cartons). I sprinkle a little coconut sugar on it — it's less sweet than regular sugar, and has fibre in it, and actually has a flavour.

Then supper can be fruit and nut butter (good fat there too), or maybe an egg and salad. Or I can soak some prunes or apricots and have them with coconut yogurt. 

It carries on being delicious and is always easy. It's a buffer against the vagaries of food supply issues, and doesn't take up shared space in the fridge and freezer because I can store it in boxes under my bed.

It's economical, and gives the farmer more leeway with produce — less is wasted all along the journey from the field to my stomach — the shelf life is long and the packaging is minimal.

You need some fats as well of course — I like olive oil. Occasional pancakes, or some fried (fresh) onions and seasonal zucchini or tomato or fresh mushrooms are a delicious addition.

It seems like a good solution to me — but what do you think?