Heather Large: Nostalgia shopping takes the biscuit

Turning to a good cuppa in times of crisis to help make everything better must be part of our DNA. But with so many us working from home, the office coffee machine has become somewhat redundant as we boil up our own kettles during the day instead.

But it was our increased spending as a nation on coffee that made me really smile. It couldn’t be more true in our house.

We’re getting through a tin of our favourite coffee every week with both of us needing caffeine fixes at home during the working day – not a problem when it’s a half-price at Asda but it’s a more expensive habit when its not on offer.

And everyone comfort eating biscuits also explains why during the middle of lockdown I couldn’t find a single packet of digestive biscuits on the shelves of the supermarket in order to make a banoffee pie for my boyfriend’s birthday.

I was surprised that what is quite a basic biscuit had completely run out.

Now I could have gone down a less traditional route of a Nice biscuit base – they had plenty of those still for sale – but the recipe called for digestives and swaying from the required list of ingredients never tends to work out that well for me. So we had to wait. And it was four weeks before they had any in stock.

Now this was also a cheat’s banoffee pie so I wasn’t making caramel from scratch. I was going for a ready-made topping courtesy of Carnation Caramel but again it was in short supply and several visits before I could finally find some to put in the trolley.

Thankfully it was worth the wait, even if I do say so myself, and was an enjoyable – albeit very naughty – treat.

At the same time we were also looking to restock on custard powder. I know the lockdown favourite was banana bread but we’re eating our spotty bananas with custard. The only problem was we couldn’t get any.

And we couldn’t even find any packets of the instant varieties or tins of the ready-made kind in our local shops.

In the end my lovely Mum posted us some sachets and my partner’s mum also made a socially-distanced visit to drop off a spare tub of powder. We may have complained about our lack of custard a little bit!

Now I realise that in the middle of a global pandemic these are very trivial problems to have and while we are fortunate to have plenty of other food to eat, others aren’t so fortunate.

It was just fascinating to see what people were choosing to buy during this strange time to help them get through it. Baking was a big past-time at the start of lockdown with eggs and flour hard to come by for many shoppers because so many families were trying their hand at making cakes and breads at home.

A recent report by the Co-op has shown that many seventies favourites made a comeback during lockdown as many people turned to the comfort food of their past.

Supermarket figures show that sales of many nostalgic items boomed while restrictions were at their tightest.

Sales of packet trifle kits have risen by 738 per cent this year, compared with 2019, researchers have found.

Tinned pineapple slices were up 343 per cent and custard power was up 336 per cent – explains why we couldn’t find any – and tinned mandarins,were also up 334 per cent.

Packet jelly saw a rise of 342 per cent, canned ham was by 179 per cent, pickled onions by 166 per cent, canned corned beef by 90 per cent and powdered mash brand Smash saw sales jump by 59 per cent.

Dr Christy Fergusson, a food psychologist has explained this by saying that many people may had been longing for the food of their childhood because of being separated from family and friends. She also believed many would have been trying to recreate memories of happier times when they were all together.

Other experts believe shoppers were stocking up longer-life cupboard items to help increase the time between visits to the supermarket in a bid to avoid the lengthy queues.

I think also that so many of us were out of our usual routines that instead of buying all of the same things we always buy, we were reaching for food we hadn’t tasted for a while as well as trying out new recipes.

Lockdown has had impact on our daily lives in so many ways so it’s not surprising it affected the food and drink that we buy too.