Confined Cocktails... 15 months on

 As I write (Friday night), and drink this very acceptable El Presidente, it is the 18th of June 2021. Which makes it one year, three months and one day since the first posts in the Confined Kitchen.

Carefully posed cocktail to include the ever-popular Fairy Liquid of my kitchen pics

 

Which makes me pensive. So let's get the important stuff out the way: yes, of course Confined Cocktails Saturday at 7. Although the weather appears quite thoroughly broken, it's a garden update special if you have plants to boast about. 

(My only contact this week with the garden of my downstairs neighbours - which I can't even see because they have such a big extension, which is about to be enlarged, I'm not bitter no - was watching a drainage consultant siphon out a load of sludge so that my toilet flushes, and check the sewer pipes for rat damage. I'm not saying it wasn't necessary. I am saying it wasn't scenic. Please make gardens better for me.)

This was potentially going to be the last official Confined Cocktails, till the goalposts moved again and took us into July. Though so many of us enjoy an excuse for a Saturday drink and hello, I suspect we'll merely update the hashtag at some point and continue ad hoc even when we aren't Confined.

We really, really should be used to it all by now, but I am finding it a tad blindsiding that this has happened for So Long, as demonstrated by this calendar page ticking over. The end isn't in sight, though I do think we're approaching the end of the beginning (variants permitting). We will very likely make 500 days of the Confined Kitchen before it feels wildly inappropriate to keep the blog going. 

Who knew that you could get so used to things being strange, but still *find* them strange? 

And yet, things have changed. My disdain for lunch catering has now reached such a pitch that I have merely written TOAST across my meal planner this week at midday. I can't make a risotto without feeling like a cliche - thanks, you lot. I made the garlicky peas for the umpteenth time and realised Persiana feels like an old friend now, and I'd never cooked from it at the start of all this. (My latest is Yasmin Khan's Ripe Figs, which I've dogeared about 50% of the recipe pages in, always a good sign. But it's also interesting as a read; much recommended.) 

And also... routine experiences are no longer rotine. The sound of men currently watching football in company in a garden down my street is exceptionally loud and unfamiliar; I feel like there is a rule against it. But there isn't, now. The rules are only in my head, and instincts. #UnconfinedCocktails feel pretty likely. #UnconfinedMind? A work in progress.