The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

DryTheRain

Hey thank you everyone for the advice and reassurance, much appreciated   

Found an official guide at the county council website, and the local paper has helpful photos showing happy looking people at each stage, including several with carers. As a diabetic I’m used to injections but always get shaky and lightheaded after annual jabs, so relieved to know MC can come in with me.

 On the subject of sick day preps, just had a delivery of Bio&Me Gut-Loving Granola, (low sugar version) which contains 15 different high fibre/prebiotic wholefoods - basically half the recommended 30 plant foods a week in one hit. It’s a bit pricey at £4.59 (or £3.99 Waitrose) but looks like a great back up if you’re not well, when it’s important to have tasty nourishing food to hand  
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B089ZZ4DGD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

MrsCD

My dad is extremely clinically vulnerable, and when I took him to his GP's  to get his jab, his consultant at the hospital advised us to wear a mask and a visor as an extra layer of protection. I went through with him, they were very organized, and we came out through their one way system. Only took a few minutes. 

p00

Nargleblast said:

I found that the vaccination clinic was very well organised, people admitted one by one and kept well apart from each other. Exit was via a different route, with a desk to get your second appointment date before leaving. 

The one I went to 2 weeks ago was excellent. I booked first and second vaccination online.
Well organised with car parking Marshalls. Safe distance queue for about 15 minutes while getting logged in. 1 minute for injection. 15 minute in waiting area if you are driving.
If you where wearing a cloth mask they asked you to use one of their free medical grade disposable ones. Wheelchairs were available inside
Totally efficient. I had no side effects from this vaccine. 
p00 xx

euronorris

My niece got her pfizer one this morning, and my colleague (with a CEV young daughter) literally just had her vaccination as well. She said it was very well organised.

[Deleted User]

I haven't been to a food shop since back at the end of the summer and then only once to the co-op before numbers started rising again how are supplies on the shelves? I ask because we're getting deliveries mainly from Tesco and they seem to have reduced choice on lots of things when I put in an online order and quite a lot of items show as not available when we come to print out the list here usually the day before delivery so we have a list of what we expect and can make sure it all does arrive, also a great many of the fresh items have very short dates on them as in I ordered fish cakes that said 3+days and got a substitution which was still a cod fish cake but with a use by of the next day.  Luckily things like that freeze but I also ordered a couple of stir fry veg packs and they were also use by the next day which is throwing my weekly menu plans right out into the wilderness as I can't freeze things like that.  Are there shortages occasionally? and how are the use by dates on the in store fresh items these days?

Hollyberry

To add to the vaccination experiences here, I had mine at a big hub in a big city last Sunday.  I booked on Saturday via the NHS website and had the choice of pretty much any appointment time the next day.  

On arrival, there were marshals for parking and then a volunteer showed me to the GP who asked a couple of questions then sent me onward to a vaccination station.  Two people were there: a nurse who administered the jab and a second person (role unknown) who quizzed me about clotting factors.  I would say that less than 20% of the vaccination stations were in use.  As I had been driven there by my husband, they allowed me to go straight out rather than wait for 15 minutes. 

I would say that the whole experience was extremely well organised, with a clear one way system and good distancing measures.  Like many, I'm on the shielded patient list, so it made me feel very confident to have booked my follow-up in the same place.  As for side-effects?  Minor soreness on the injection site and a slight headache the next day, which may not have been vaccine-related.  
 

annieb64

Not noticed any shortages  in the shops here, Boazu. I go to Tesco , Aldi and M&S as they are our local shops. The use by dates seem ok too although I might have just been lucky

[Deleted User]

I wondered if perhaps being short stocked was the reason for the short dated use by dates but it's obviously just the picking system in the big distribution depots, I so miss being able to choose the 'one' I want and being able to make the choice to get the longest use by date available! Thanks Annie xxx.

Serendipitious

Haven't used Tesco online for years. I'd done a big Xmas order and included their cheese selection tray thinking that would see me through till beyond NY, it arrived on Dec 23 with a use by date of 26th. I didn't have time to complain, but fortunately when I got the individual cheese packets out of the outer carton, they were all dated separately and had dates which exceeded the date on the box. Mad.

No shortages here at Co-op or Lidl.

I was very pleased today to find the Co-op has a crisp packet recycling scheme, hidden away by a till, hope it's successful as it means less for landfill.

GreyQueen

I just don't understand this not-going-to-supermarkets for those who've not been told to shield. They're very well-organised in my experience and I shop a couple of times a week in one or another. My nearly-80 year old dear father shops at Sainsbugs, their indy butcher, collects the newspaper from the corner shop x 6 days a week, gets scripts from the pharmacy, buys fuel for his car, is attending a twice-weekly hospital clinic. Wears a mask, washes hands on return, it's no biggie. There are plenty of folk in their seventies and eighties out shopping, it's hardly dicing with death to nip in and out of a supermarket unless you're extremely medically vulnerable and have been told to shield. And, if one is master or mistress of one's own time, as many of the retired are, one can choose to shop when the places are almost empty. Heck, I have to work but still manage to be in the supermarkets on days and times when the customers can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I get into Tosspots, Aldee and Liddly regularly, and FarmeFoods occasionally. Plenty of fresh foods around, plenty of shelf-stable and freezer-foods. My observation of things like stir-fry mixes is two-fold; they're always short-dated (because chopped veggies don't keep) and that they're a costly and inefficient way of buying a few bits of veg. Unless one has an impediment to wielding a knife, an impediment shared by one's spouse (if one has a spouse) why on earth pay good money for these mixes? A sleeve of peppers will easily last two weeks + in the fridge, bean sprouts can be done at home, water chestnuts come in tins, sprouted onion tops - if you have them - easily do double-duty as spring onions. I can keep a punnet of mushrooms fresh for up to a week by poking a finger-hole into the clingfilm but otherwise leaving them covered, cauli, cabbage, spring greens, celery, radish etc etc easily go 1 week +.

Come on ladies, we're Old Style, cooking from scratch is one of the things we're really good at!