Eating Lockdown by Lora Mountjoy

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​Lora is grateful for her life. She dances for pleasure and writes for connection to herself and others.

Wednesday: the honeymoon phase. I feel my neck unclench and mind relax as I rediscover peace in having little to do but recalibrate. I do, however, have to buy supplies and my adult children have been on the phone, concerned about Coromandel’s hotspot status, making me promise not to go into the local Four Square. I had a dental appointment today in Whitianga and had let stocks ran low, depending on doing a big shop in the supermarket there. But it’s a do nothing day and all this is shoved aside.

Thursday I wake early and by six thirty am sitting up in bed with a coffee and my laptop, making an order for delivery from Countdown. It won’t arrive till Wednesday of next week, 3.30pm. There are only two things I need before then. One is butter for the sourdough loaf I made yesterday, the other is enough coffee.

Later, I contact my neighbour over the road. With her heart problem she doesn’t use much butter, but may have some in the freezer. I beg a small slice. Then, when in phone conversation with a friend in the next street I reveal my fears about the coffee situation, I am told not to worry. She recently ordered 2 kilos of coffee beans from Havana in Wellington. If I run out before Delivery Day, she can tide me through. Once again I send thanks to the universe for the fate which brought me to this friendly small town in my old age.

There is still some anxiety about fruit and veg, both a big part of my diet. The oranges are almost finished for the season and I often eat at least two a day, but I pick the rest and mentally ration them. There are greens in the garden, scant but enough, root vegetables in the cupboard and most of a bag of frozen edamame beans, bought one day on a whim. That night I make a stir fry with noodles and homemade sweet chili sauce. It is too late to take a photo when I decide that this will be a project, to create something from the random dry goods and the few cans in the cupboard and record it.
The next morning I find an unopened packet of black rice and cook it for breakfast Bali style with coconut cream from the freezer, a dash of maple syrup and feijoas from one of the small jars almost forgotten on a high shelf.   At night I recall a vegan recipe, made once for a gluten-free vegan, though I add some of my precious butter to the polenta this time and serve it for dinner with feijoa chutney. Tonight I intend to make black bean soup to share with my buddy in celebration of my negative test. By then I might just be ready to commit to writing the next part of my memoir, which has been simmering below the surface since the world shrunk and opened.

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