I've discovered something quite amazing, in fact once the Covid 19 madness is over, it could become a lucrative business.

Let me explain.

My beloved wife Barb has been a doomsday prepper long before the term was invented. Our cupboards always have an embarrassment of non perishables.

As we are in lock down for the foreseeable future, we decided to do an audit of our food supplies and so we delved into the darkest recesses of the cupboards. It was a revelation. First of all we were encouraged to find more tins of chickpeas and lentils, than our local food store has on its shelves. So we won't starve and our bowel movements should be impeccable.

We also found three bottles of Lebanese rose water, sadly one of the bottles was way, way beyond it's use by date. This was put in a rubbish pile but not before I noted the price sticker, $9.20. Through gritted teeth we continued the audit. An hour later and our marriage was in tatters. The rubbish box was overflowing, (unlike our bank account). There were items in that box that had a best before date of October 2009.

We only moved into this house just over three years ago, which means we brought tins of botulism with us and restocked them in the larder!

Anyway back to the business opportunity. Once the audit was over, we surveyed the wasted money pile and considered what we would do with it. Food from after October 2009 was deemed safe for the chickens, the rest went into a bin bag. The most important food stuffs for this story are the molasses, syrup and treacle.

Don't ask me why, because I don't know, and neither does Barb, but we had four jars of molasses, a catering size tin of treacle?! And a still sealed tin of Tate & Lyle syrup. Barb had the temerity to ask me if feeding the chickens that much sugar was safe. Honestly I almost lost control. I can't quite remember but I think I spluttered something like, "For f***s sake, I don't care if the chickens get diabetes, we shouldn't eat this shit". Barb told me I was over reacting and we hadn't actually eaten any of it.

Off I stomped to give the chickens a sugar rush and I can report, the stupid birds went quite mad for it. Here's the amazing part. Two days later I collected the eggs and made an omelette. The flavour of melted cheese and onion was overpowered by a cloying sweetness. It was horrid. But on reflection we realised that if we used molasses, syrup and treacle infused eggs for baking cakes, we just might have a winner on our hands.

Sweet eggs from Honey Farm, Tutukaka. What do you think?