I'm sure many of us remember the days when nearly all high streets had shops like grocers, greengrocers, butchers and fishmongers etc...

About a month ago i looked for a local fishmonger who did home deliveries now that restaurants etc are shut down figuring they must need somewhere to sell their produce, i found one and was very surpised at the quality that i got.

This spurred me to look at butchers, not sure where to look i figured i should start with the butcher who supplies my workplace....

Amazingly the pre-pandemic butcher that was trade only now has a retail home delivery service... i kind of went mad with my first order and ordered a full fillet of beef, brussels pate (1kg), and made a Beef Wellington... it cost circa £75 for the order but i only used half the beef and the pate i portioned into 6 portions and have 5 portions frozen.

OMG it was so good!!! I figured because i haven't been in a postition to spoil myself for so long why not spend money to spoil myself now.
(That said, yesterday i was wiped out after the effort of cooking it, but again, OMG it was so delicious!)

Even my wife who is normally never speechless enjoyed it, to the point i had to ask her if she liked it because she was so quiet... her reply was, shut up, this is delicious and i don't want to talk because it's so delicious!

I'm loving this pandemic for the quality of fish and beef available online, now, if only i could find a decent online greengrocer and bakery

Fwiw, the standard of packaging that i've come across so far is remarkable, foil lined boxes with frozen packs to keep the temp as close to frozen as frozen without actually being frozen and with next day delivery.

As for the rest of the other half of the beef fillet, i'm not sure what to do with that just yet...

I like that your wife was enjoying it so much that she didn't want conversation!

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Yup, normally she's only quiet when i've said the wrong thing so that she was silent with food was the ultimate compliment

LOL! What if what you fed her was the wrong thing???? It must have been either really good or really bad.

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If i'd fed her the wrong thing i'd have heard about it, indeed i'd still be hearing about it!
Fortunately i ate it too so know how good it was

I had my sister visit a couple of days ago, permissable because she lives alone now her partner passed earlier this year, she now lives alone and we are part of her support bubble. (his death was not covid retated and had been expected)

I'm sitting here wondering what to type, the food was amazing and my sister and wife can't stop ranting about how good it was... yet i've hit a brick wall trying to say anything.

This is quite probably the strangest i've ever felt during this pandemic... so much to say but no way to communicate and it isn't brian fog...

I'm only going to click 'Submit' for the sole reason that something is going on in my envirnment that is very odd.

Perhaps it's the shock of them both giving you such high praise about your food, especially after the past year you've gone through, it was too much for your brain to fully absorb.

Normal business will be resumed in due course.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Joan i'm glad you understood the humour i intended behind my last post, i wasn't sure if that would be understood here but ran with it anyway

My wife is used to my cooking and rarely comments on it, when she goes quiet during eating it can go one of two ways... either she loves it , or hates it, i never really know until i ask her, even then i sometimes still wonder! LOL

My sister on the other hand is not used to my cooking, until her partner passed away we've not really had any contact since we were teenagers, leading our own lives i guess and didn't need to rely on each other like we did when we were young?
Anyway, we are spending more time talking on the phone and in each others company now... so when i invited her to come up for dinner i wasn't sure what to make for her...

That takes me back to my first post in this post where i searched for a butcher that normally supplies the trade market...

I had ordered a 500g pack of pre-cooked pulled pork from the butcher, bear in mind that i have never cooked pulled pork before let alone had any idea what to do with it when it turned up (i've eaten it but had had no idea what to do with it now i had it!), anyways i decided i'd do something with the pulled pork but ask what i should do with it before i prepared it.

I'd already bought a bottle of BBQ sauce but wasn't sure whether to reheat the pork in the sauce or to pour the sauce over the reheated pork... i was firmly in the camp of pour the sauce on the reheated pork but both my wife and sister were firmly in the camp of reheating the pork in the sauce.

Long story short, i went to the kitchen and opened the container with the pork and tasted it... OMG it tasted so good, so good in fact that drowning it in a sauce that none of us had actually tried would've been criminal, so i took the pack through to them and asked them to try a bit of the pork before i did anything... all of a sudden they both agreed that i re-heat the pork and they add the sauce to their tastes.

It was probably one of the simplest dinners i've ever cooked, choice of sourdough baguettes or brioche rolls, pulled pork that was reheated in a pot with a little vegetable oil, sides were BBQ sauce, french fries, coldslaw... and they absolutely loved it!!

Then again it might have been the finishing touch that won them over, the cheap and nasty store bough trifle

Fwiw, i think but am not sure, the BBQ sauce might have originated in the US?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0003290ME/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_DRHY5A6DR9B8Y8E7N69F?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Personally the BBQ sauce was too sweet for my liking but when you're cooking for other people that doesn't matter...

What seems to matter is finding good quality produce at an affordable price, it really does make all the difference.