Stocked up on tins for the pandemic? They have a multitude of uses

You can play tin roulette, march on tin stilts, use tins to build muscles... the list is endless, says Christine Manby

Illustration by Tom Ford

When I was a child growing up in the 1970s, tinned food formed a significant part of our family diet. A tin of tomato soup, spaghetti hoops or baked beans (on toast, of course) for lunch. Spam – I quite liked spam – with mashed potatoes in the evening. Tinned fruit salad and evaporated milk for dessert. There was always one maraschino cherry in that fruit salad, which otherwise comprised non-specific pale yellow fruit. The pale yellow fruit was disappointing, but did anybody actually want to find that radioactive red thing in their bowl?

Then ready meals came along and of course something that had a “best before” date only days, rather than years, hence had to be fresher and better for you, right? The idea of eating things from tins started to seem old-fashioned and probably downright dangerous. Eating something from a dented tin could kill you: that’s one of the lessons I learned at my grandmother’s knee. (Food safety guidelines still suggest you avoid badly dented tins, by the way. Especially if they are dented along the seam, as a compromised seam may allow bacteria inside).

But as of last March, when a no-deal Brexit loomed (for the first time), I have had a guilty stash of tins in my kitchen cupboard again. Tomatoes mostly. Tomatoes on toast is my go-to comfort food. And right now it seems like having those tins to hand might finally prove to have been a wise move. Not only because there’ll be something to eat while we’re all confined to barracks.