What are your lockdown "essentials", and what has lockdown taught you...?

It's a brave new world that we're living in... like something out of a 90's sci-fi movie!
Now that the Covid-19 lockdown and quarantine are the temporary "new normal", we have been forced to adjust and change the way in which we live and work daily.

As someone who has been self-employed for 15 years, I'm quite used to working from home, but it's a bit different when you can't go out to see clients and colleagues at all.

It's also very strange to be out at the shops and be unable to see who you are shopping next to, because their face is covered by a mask - you can't even see if someone is smiling or scowling... how very odd!

As I'm sure is the case for everyone, I have found certain daily "essentials" to be very useful in getting through this unique time.
Here are some of mine - feel free to chirp in the comments :)


My Bose Soundlink Colour:

Ah yes my old faithful - who can do without a bluetooth speaker nowadays?
It also doesn't hurt that Bose are all about really good sound - despite the small physical dimensions of the Soundlink Colour, it produces excellent sound quality to satisfy my need for beats through the day... and night if I choose to work late :)

...which brings me to my next essential...


Spotify:

Whether I'm in my car, working from home or just doing something around the house, I always have a soundtrack playing in the background :)
Once upon a time I used to keep all my music on an external hard drive, until one day when I discovered the genius of Spotify.
Until then it didn't make sense to me to pay a subscription fee for music, but when you think of the pros - almost any track that you can think of, available 24/7, across all genres, and not having to worry about ever dropping a hard drive and losing all your data - suddenly R59 per month is really a small price to pay.

Add Spotify Connect which allows you to control your music from multiple devices, and it's a no-brainer :)
If you are a music lover and aren't already part of the Spotify universe, best you head on over to www.spotify.com, sign up for free and take it for a test drive.


Coffee:

I'm a coffee snob. It's that simple - I really enjoy a decent cup of coffee, and can you blame me?
So one of the things which has really helped keep things "normal" during a decidedly abnormal time, is my Breville Barista Express.

I was fortunate enough to become the owner of this incredible machine last year, and I have spent the last few months practicing and perfecting how to use it, resulting in these, which really do taste as good as they look :)

Of course the "perfect cuppa" is the result of a combination of which beans you use, which milk you use and a hundred other factors, plus of course personal preference, but it certainly helps not having to rely on coffee shops for a really nice cup of coffee :)

Oh and it saves a ton of cash...!

A garden:

We simply don't realise the value of having a garden until we've been cooped up inside for a prolonged length of time.

To be able to simply walk barefoot on grass and breathe in the (relatively fresher) air, devoid of the normal amounts of pollution... it does something for the soul.

      

Of course the economic downside is a real mess, but I think it's incredible how this period of forced isolation has forced us to try and get by with less.

Less stuff, less noise, less hustle, less bustle, less human interaction.

All in the name of staying safe.

Hopefully we are all able to come out on the other side of this thing a little bit more sensible, and changed for the better.

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Milk maketh the coffee, methinks...

I love my coffee.

Nothing can quite match up to a fantastic tasting cappuccino. I just have a weakness for such things.

Now although I am a devotee of the drink, I can in no way claim to be any kind of barista or professional-coffee-making-type-human.

Even so, I certainly go out of my way to make a good cuppa whenever the opportunity arises.

I get a kick out of it when a guest comments on decent cup of coffee that I conjured up myself :)

That, and of course it's always damn good to make a great cuppa to enjoy on my own.

So what is it that makes a great-tasting cup of coffee? 

Obviously the coffee itself needs to be of a certain quality, and that even applies to instant coffee - I mean Ricoffy instant doesn't quite match up to say, Douwe Egberts or Jacobs instant. Pretty obvious.

There is, however one factor which I am sure coffee professionals know all about, but which a pleb like me had to find out about the hard way - by drinking dodgy tasting coffee.

That factor is the milk - obviously if you like your coffee black, then this is not going to affect you.

It is all too easy to fall back on a carton of long-life milk when your fresh milk supply is all out, however in my experience, this is one of the things that can trash an otherwise perfectly decent cuppa joe.

I have no clue what it is - perhaps some process that long-life milk goes through to alter the taste or some other factor, but it just adds an unpleasant aftertaste to any cup of coffee that I make with it, even if I use the best quality coffee that I can find.

Coffee bean (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you a coffee-lover?

Does long-life milk do it for you or does it wreck the experience?

For me, it's fresh milk all the way... :)

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