Corona Virus

That’s awful. Some people are such selfish barstewards

 

I think a lot of it is to do with baking with the kids as something to do, we await a baby boom in November and a huge increase in obese kids in june

 

Great British Bake Off has been back on the telly too, not that the public are like a herd of sheep or anything.

 

I don’t think that a lot of young mothers know how to bake nowadays when confectionery can be bought relatively cheaply in supermarkets

They just don’t have the time what with Facebook and other time consuming social media websites

I know a few do enjoy baking though

 

Same here Nikki, yeast and bread flour disappeared off the shelves as quickly as bog roll. The other half makes her own bread and has done for years, but surely not that many people have a bread maker at home so who are all these clowns buying it now?

 

I bought a bread maker years ago, used it for a while, then Wifey gave it away, said it was unnecessary gimmick! .
Ken.

 

I too bought a bread maker years ago but quickly gave it away. Hand made bread is tops for me.

 

In the process of remortgaging the house, valuation estimate is down 15 grand on the original estimate because they say no-one is buying at the moment.....WTF
Gonna cost me an extra £20 per month now

 

I like my bread maker. Chuck everything in and 2 hours later got a lovely bread. Also used to make it by hand.
I’m wondering if these idiot hoarders are maybe using the bags of flour as weights for exercise purposes.

 

Huge Potato issue caused by Covid-19 in the Netherlands

Potato growers are facing huge losses now restaurants and snack bars have closed their doors and compensation plans have not yet materialised, the NRC reports. The Netherlands is one of the main producers of potatoes for making fries. Now that the majority of restaurants, bars and fastfood outlets worldwide have closed their doors to contain coronavirus, growers are looking at a stock of 1.5 million tons of potatoes, two thirds of which cannot be sold. ‘We’re hoping for financial compensation,’ André Hoogendijk of agricultural trade organisation BO Akkerbouw told the paper. Talks with agriculture minister Carola Schouten are ongoing but have, as yet, not resulted in a firm commitment to a compensation package, Hoogendijk said. Schouten’s suggestion that the European Union could help out the potato sector will not have a great chance of success, he said, because the problem is mainly concentrated in the Netherlands. ‘Corona is impacting all sectors. Brussels is not going to regard this as a priority.’ The stagnating market is having a knock on effect on potato processing firms, such as Aviko, which produces some 15 million potato products in a normal week. Deep fried chips are being made until the company runs out of space to store them, Aviko sales manager Dick Zelhorst told the paper. ‘We want to honour our contracts with the growers but we won’t be able to process everything,’ he said. The question of how to get rid of a billion kilos of potatoes is not easily answered, growers said. Grower Arwin Bos told the paper he is under no illusion that he will be able to get rid of his stock which is worth in the region of €200,000. ‘I used Facebook to sell a load of potatoes meant to have been delivered to restaurants and which had already been washed and so were were perishable. But that only accounted for 1.5% of my stock’. Only a small amount is going to food banks, probably because they do not make a tasty boiled potato, Hoogendijk said. Other possibilities to process the potatoes include bio fermentation and use in the animal fodder and potato starch industries.

Read more at DutchNews.nl:

 

Quite possibly @BonnieCat been trying to buy some dumbbells and weight plates but there appears to be a national shortage of those too

 

I think the lots of small chips things, as you put call them DD, are pissing people off these days. Nothing like a pandemic to make small things seem like big things. We had another major appliance break today. One that has been working perfectly well for the last 11 years. Sigh.

 

Yeah, I do a bit of baking, ( dont watch that garbage) and your right I could probably buy twice as much cakes, as I bake, for the same money.

 

Ironically, we’ve had a very difficult time here in Arizona finding potatoes since all the crazy hoarding began a couple of weeks ago.

 

I am constantly seeing people in the supermarkets buying trolleys of one thing, I always put it down to Cafe, Chinese takeaway, chipshop, owners stocking up on stuff the supermarkets are selling cheaper than the wholesalers.
Perhaps it was for batter for his fish.

 

I bought yeast and bread flour when I ended up in the supermarket 2 weeks ago, just cos it was there then, I couldnt be sure there would be bread later. What with the panic buying feeding the shortages.

 

Strange, surely if all the fast food places are shut because folk are at home then they wil be cooking for themselves and needing more potatoes. So presumably it's a supply chain problem that needs some adjustment, particularly given the panic buying and hoarding!

 

I make my own occasionally but Ive never had a breadmaker. I did see a Soupmaker (eh?) it looked like a liquidiser with an heating element.

 

You guys need to place orders with the Dutch potato growers, I’m sure they’d be happy to sell them to the US. Over here in Europe and especially Netherlands and Belgium frits (or fries) are hugely popular. They have stalls/small shops selling just that with a big dollop of mayo in a cone of paper. There’s a particular small shop in Amsterdam which is famous and always has a big queue of people (or it did).
The frits company mentioned in the article Aviko make lovely frozen chips. Bought a bag this morning.

 

There’s an online shop here which sells all different types of bread making ingredients, however they are not taking any more orders due to current demand.
So I have to buy shop made bread.