Tag local

DIY Fast Food

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy Leave a comment
DIY Murg Tikka Masala

It’s probably not helping my diet, but I am trying to help my local businesses, by getting takeout. Or maybe I’m just putting that virtuous spin on it by way of excusing the bad behaviour! 😜

Every now & then though, I just don’t feel like another takeout meal. I feel like something home cooked. But I don’t feel like cooking it.

DIY homemade fast-food is the answer.

Between cans, jars, & leftovers, you can sometimes be serving dinner faster than you can find the car keys. Or call out for delivery. Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve noticed an increase in the pantry inventory of canned foods & sauces in jars. It was never a plan, it just evolved that way.

Take that Murg Tikka Masala, for example. It’s a quick concoction of some leftover chicken, frozen peas, a can of mushrooms, & some chopped onion & garlic. With a jar of tikka masala sauce thrown in at the end. A few sprigs of cilantro & a splash (okay, it was a cup or two!) of cream finished it off & it made for a mouth-watering, gustatory delight. Even the rice was that quick-cook type. Bring it to the boil, turn off the stove, & it’s ready to serve when everything else is done. The whole meal had little to no prep time, & very short cooking time. It’s all just too easy. These pandemic skills will be carried forward to when this whole covid thing is, hopefully, just a bad memory for us. Buy some cans & give it a try. And if you already have, send me your fast recipes!

I think that Murg Tikka Masala just means Chicken Pieces in Mixed spices, right? Convert any food name to Hindi & it sounds way more delicious & exotic to my western anglophone ears. I wonder if that works with Irish!?!

Fancy a plate of my special Píosaí Sicín Spíosrach? No? Maybe I’ll just stick to coddle & boxty for the Irish stuff then! 😜😁😂

PS … Make sure you make enough for more leftovers next day. That’s even faster fast food! Stay safe out there.

Be Selfish … Shop Local!

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy 1 Comment
Do you know how to shop your local businesses online?

We’re close to Christmas, in the middle of the pandemic, & it’s Black Friday shopping season. I had already bought all I could think of buying at my local stores so now, it’s time for a little online shopping. Woohoo!

I can’t deny it, I’m a fan of the big e-commerce sites. And I’m sure I’ll do some shopping with them too. However, do you see newly shuttered shops & “For Lease” signs in the local malls these days? Some lights are out & might not be coming back on. Those are our neighbours.

We can shop local for totally selfish reasons too. We’ll all want more choices in the post-pandemic world. If we don’t keep them in business, those choices disappear. Small business people are paying taxes too. And they buy other products that eventually circle back around to keeping those of us still in a job, in a job! So go ahead … be selfish & shop local! 😜

These days, many small business owners are trying to build an online presence. I’ve seen some interviewed on TV & most were able to get up & running, pretty quickly, with Shopify’s platform. That helps them get cheap shipping rates too. All necessary in the modern competitive landscape.

I assumed part of the benefit of using the Shopify platform is the sheer scale & size of that company. As a consumer, I figured it would be an easy online search to find all the local shops who were using Shopify.
Not so. I couldn’t find Shopify businesses & I couldn’t even find out how to find local Shopify sites to buy from. I was mystified. Small business owners need the benefits of Shopify’s size & power of aggregation. But where was that advantage? Surely there was a way to find which local businesses were offering their products through Shopify?

I went directly to Shopify’s site looking for the answer, but it wasn’t jumping off the page there either. I clicked on a support chat button. I’m not sure it was a support button for this kind of question but I got help from a great support person. (Thanks, Alycia!)

Of course, privacy rights prevent them from sharing who is using their platform (duh!) but, as it turns out, there’s an app for that! 🤪😁
I’m not kidding, there is an app called “Shop”, by Shopify, that does connect us to local businesses, & more. I downloaded it & had a quick look to see if it could hone in on local businesses & yes, it can.
You can even … wait for it … SHOP with it! 😂

I haven’t done any shopping yet, so this isn’t a review of the functionality of the app. I’m just sharing it, in case you might want to try it out, & support your local businesses too.
Or does everyone already know about this? And it’s just me that was in the dark!?!

I’m not in any way connected with Shopify, by the way, just sharing what I found out.

And did you know there are selfish reasons to add food to the food bank boxes at the supermarket exits too? I put a couple of bucks worth of non-perishable food in there & I felt like a million bucks. Where else can you get that kind of return!?! 😜

Take care out there all.

Shopify & Shop are registered Trade Marks of Shopify Inc.