Food packaging

Back at the beginning of lock-down, when panic buying of yeast had emptied the shelves of the stuff, I bought some commercial grade yeast from Italy, as noticed at reference 1.

Tomorrow, I plan to start to use the stuff, and being a little concerned that the packet seemed rock solid, I thought I had better take a look today. Was it like the sugar of old and one had to smash it up with a hammer before one could use it? With an oriental sugar hammer once having figured as a murder weapon on ITV3, in an episode of 'Poirot', but not being something we have handy in the kitchen drawer.

Opened up the packet, first piercing the wrapper with a point of a knife, to find that the rock solidity was the product of inflation. Pierce the wrapper - some kind of shiny plastic composite - out came the air and what one had left was yeast granules, very much like those I usually buy from Allinson's via Waitrose. Perhaps a little finer. We shall see how we get on tomorrow.

Ready supply in an Allinson's tub, held over for the purpose, balance in one of those plastic boxes with a blue plastic seal running around the inside of the fold of the lid. Hopefully it will do well enough in there, in the dark and cool of the cupboard under the stairs, for the next twenty five batches or so. That is to say half a year or so.

PS: I had at first thought 'Midsomer Murders' and I could picture in my mind's eye Barnaby Mark.II gleefully finding the thing. Then I had doubts and turned to 'Poirot', with Bing's first hit on the search term poirot+sugar+hammer being reference 2. Clever things these search engines.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/batch-556.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_McGinty%27s_Dead.