The dark recesses of the lockdown larder

The recent worry over food shortages led me to take a good look at the food we have lurking in dark forgotten corners of our pantry. I love having a pantry, it makes me think that we’re living in the 1950s, the sunny Enid Blyton version and not the Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 version. Definitely not that one. Cast it from your mind. The only drawback I can see to having this cupboard, which is a happy combination of the useful and the nostalgic, is that things disappear into its depths and don’t emerge for decades. And when you do find them, they haven’t aged well.

I am staring at countless little bags of grainy-type things, all neatly closed with those handy plastic clips, which explains why we can never find one when we need it. They’re all partly used, so obviously they were an ingredient for something, but I have no idea what. Giant couscous? What did I do with that? I really don’t know, but the 1950s housewife in me decides that they’d make a great salad, so I boil them up, but now they just look like fish eggs. Not a very appetising basis for a salad. Then there’s a bag of orzo and I’m not entirely sure what that is, let alone why I would have bought it. It looks like a cross between pasta and rice, not a perfect pairing I wouldn’t have thought.

It only gets worse when I move onto the canned goods. There is a tin of jackfruit there and not only do I have no idea why I bought it or what I would do with it, I’m scared to look at the date because I think it might date back to the cold war. This brings me to the can of lychees (which I seem to recall came as a free gift with a Chinese takeaway meal), which I see is bulging at both ends. I guess, correctly, that this isn’t a good sign. They should have been eaten by July of 2010. But what should I do with them now? The responsible thing would be to put the lychees in the compost bin and recycle the tin, but I’m too scared to open it in case the mutant lychees explode from the can in a desperate bid for freedom and possibly world domination.

I turn with relief to the shelf of dust-covered alcohol. What is all this stuff and where did it come from? It obviously dates back to a time when we had the energy to make exotic cocktails and didn’t just slop some wine into any glass that was handy. In fact, I can see a very tall and glisteningly golden bottle of Galliano at the back and I suddenly remember how delicious a Harvey Wallbanger is. If I mix a splash of Galliano and a shot of that vodka lurking in the bottle next to it with some orange juice, I could relive my cocktail-drinking past. All that’s missing is a maraschino cherry, but I think I can see a little pot of them at the back. They’ve gone a funny colour, but I’m sure if I removed the mouldy ones from the top that the ones underneath would be fine. Santé!