Intended updates

There are many (many, many…) posts I’d planned on doing this year, but never managed to get done, and for lots of reasons. In several cases, I began rough drafts that never went anywhere—again, for lots of reasons. One of the ones that kept popping into my head was doing an Updates post. It turns out, the last time I did a post with multiple Updates was in July 2023, though I’ve done more specific posts with that tag/label—and it’s entirely possible I did one after that but forgot to tag it properly. In any case, here we are.

The ongoing peanut butter saga

Back in April, I published ”Kitchen experiments abound” about a variety of food items I’d been trying, but one of them was just buying the peanut butter I prefer in a large jar. That wasn’t a success.

The jar lasted much longer than the ordinary (small) jar I’d been buying, but it lasted a bit too long—months, I think. The problem was that by the end, the peanut butter at the bottom of the jar was too hard to spread, probably because I didn’t properly stir it when I opened it. At any rate, that wasn’t what I wanted, so I’ve gone back to the small jar I’d been using.

One day I was in a supermarket and saw the smaller jar was on special. The unit price per gram was lower than the unit price on the large jar (ordinarily, when neither is on special, the unit price for the large jar is lower, as I’d expect. I realised that if I buy a small jar when it’s on special, and before I need one, it’ll be a good compromise, giving me a somewhat lower cost, and helping me ensure I don’t run out. Hopefully, this is the end of my peanut butter saga.

Tabling a change

On May 23 of this year, I talked about needing a new cover for my patio table and chairs. In the end, I chose a third option: I took the old patio cover and put it on top of the one that was wearing out, and just taped over the holes. It’s functioned well ever since. In fact, in one way it’s been much better: Whenever the breezes were strong, the cover would billow and make a lot of noise, but when I put the old cover on top, that pretty much stopped—maybe it was the added weight? This isn’t a permanent solution, of course, but it at least gives me more time to figure out what I want to do without spending a single cent to buy that time.

Some unusual updates

In February 2019, I published a post called “A kitchen failure” in which I talked about unsuccessfully using a plant-based chicken substitute from a company called “Sunfed Meats”. I next tried their beef mince (hamburger) substitute in October 2022, and that was somewhat more successful. Finally, in November 2022, I tried their bacon substitute, which I thought was boring.

I mention that to underscore that I was both utterly surprised, and also not at all surprised, that in April of this year, it was announced that Sunfed Meats was closing down. According to RNZ:

Sunfed’s CEO, Shama Sukul Lee, said the "plant-based bubble" had burst. She also said Lee said Covid, staff shortages, supply chain disruptions, and skyrocketing costs had left the business "pretty battered and bruised" and in need of a cash injection, which they couldn’t obtain.

The second part is undoubtedly true, because it was for many companies in various industries, but the first part? There are more plant-based options now than ever, so if the bubble has really “burst”, it didn’t destroy the entire industry. When I first saw the news alert, my first thought was how unsurprised I was, based on my experience using their products. Still, I’d moved on not long after my final experience with their products and I not longer use meat substitutes, making meat-free meals instead.

It turns out, I also have an update about a meat-free meal without meat substitutes. Back in July 2018, I wrote about a lentil-based bolognaise recipe we’d tried, and I mentioned where I found the recipe, the BBC Series Eat Well For Less. At the end of November of this year, the co-presenter of the series, Gregg Wallace, was accused of "inappropriate behaviour" that allegedly rises to the legal definition of sexual harassment. That caught me by surprise.

Speaking of TV presenters, back March of 2018. I talked about a trick to make a bitter cup of coffee better, something I’d learned watching the BBC Two series, The Secrets of Your Food with presenter Dr. Michael Mosely. In June of this year, Dr. Mosley died while on a hike in Agia Marina, Symi, Greece. Following an inquest into his death, the coroner said that the cause of Dr. Mosley's death was "indeterminate" and "unascertainable", and that it "was most likely attributable either to heatstroke (accidental) or non-identified pathological cause". I still use the coffee trick I learned from him, but never the intermittent fasting he also advocated. Mostly, I was surprised by his unexpected death.

So, there was an update to several older posts that didn’t surprise me, and two updates to even older posts that did surprise me, and all of those updates happened this year. I can’t remember such major updates to old posts happening in the same year before.

• • •

There! I finally got around to to the updates I wanted to get done this year. The Update backlog is now clear for the new year.

Onward.