But the real revelation came when we had a few people over and I needed something snacky to serve with drinks besides my standby store-bought cheddar sticks.
I got out of there as fast as my titanium hip joint would take me and headed for my old standby, the anchor store at the far end of the mall.
What is more, to encourage investment in new conventional power stations, extra subsidies may be needed to reward standby capacity or stored power reserves.There is also the chance that the energy U-turn could prove illegal.
And what's your favourite store cupboard standby dish?
In a Chinese joint, ma po tofu (tofu and ground pork) is a good standby, because the ingredients store fairly well and don't vary that much in quality.
Tinned smoked mussels are a great store cupboard standby, not only for rice and pasta dishes, but also for a classy snack/canapé: drain and fry in a light tempura batter, and serve with lemon aïoli.
It has many restaurants, plus old standbys like the hardware store and municipal building.
A supply of methane from a sewer sludge digester is scrubbed of CO2 and used for continuous standby operation, with excess stored to enable 8 h operation of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
Catering to an appetite for novelty is a proliferation of wallet- and trend-friendly stores: standbys like J. Crew and Topshop, and a string of recent arrivals like AllSaints and Aritzia, a Canadian brand with an cavernous new outpost in lower Manhattan.
But by the eighties Gucci had gone into decline, having become a predictable standby of the duty-free store.
Nearly 30 years later, that standby of the Silver Palate store and cookbook is still on the card every time the neighbors come to visit.
