HazelStone

Thanks...for the record, I'm Catholic and it's my husband who's Jewish. He just doesn't plan. I have to re-memorize the Ma'oz Tsur every year.

It did depress me a bit when they started locking up baby formula, but that started years ago. A lot of that was crime rings/drug addicts stealing en masse, though. Others steal due to mental health issues; that can be a complicated subject. That tends to be clothes and makeup, though. And yeah, while I was "raised right," a lot of others weren't. On reddit, these discussion threads get a lot of whining "But you need moneeeeyyyyyy to set up backup food stores!!!" Lotta basement-dwellers on that platform, and I just think, "B*tch, please, drop your beer budget for a couple months and that can get you through a fair bit." I don't say that, though, because I don't want to be downvoted to hell. Some of it IS planning/choices, and it may be young adults paying NOW for bad choices during college, but it was still their choices. That said, the cost of living in the Baltimore/Washington area is absolutely insane. There were a lot of people here hanging on by the fingernails before this mess...some of which shouldn't have been; others had little choice. One hiccup, you get evicted, and where are your food stores then?

Er...what? How would that work, there's no gluten....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/10/pandemic-shoplifting-hunger/ I've been making donations to the state food bank, but time to dredge up a bigger donation, I think. I popped into Safeway today for Hanukkah candles and they have a much higher, tenser security presence now.

Been tested twice now; it's NOT fun. Set off my gag reflex and stung quite a bit. Skill of the nurse matters, too...first one took 3 tries.

Just better hope the New Madrid fault doesn't have a big one like last time...

What I described was in a regular grocery store. If you have a warehouse store membership you see far fewer items out of stock. Hand sanitizer and cleaning stuff is hard to come by, of course. The Asian grocers are mostly ok, too. They've put item limits on things like eggs or rice, though. Even if one piles up storage foods, getting your family to eat it is a different matter. This week I made up a nice batch of dal makhani one of the things I always get a bit of when we go to an Indian buffet nearby. And I did a good job if it, if I do say so myself. Served it up with some steamed brown rice... my husband politely ate some, shoved the last third of his bowl at me, and went to reheat some leftovers. The next night, he sous-vide-ed a ribeye for us. I will try doing up a rajma masala with dried beans, and I know he'll eat the chickpeas, too...the man is just spoiled. We can well afford meat, and lots, so why not? seems to be his attitude. He won't touch canned meats/fish, either. I could see this becoming the subject of much bitching/bickering if the normal trappings of civilization ever became harder to get.

Lentils, oddly enough. Red and black lentils (urad dal?) invariably gone. Sometimes brown, and always the green remain. You'll know sh*t's gotten real if the green lentils are gone. Normal, short grain rice gone; brown rice and fancier rice varieties (jasmine, etc.) sometimes remain. Pasta, forget it. Tortillas- touch and go (time to get out the ol' tortilla press). Yogurt- gone in a flash. Tried looking for steel cut oats and those were gone, too. And, of course, any sort of chicken.

Christos voskrese!

We'll be okay so long as US currency/bonds is seen as the prettiest horse in the glue factory. Other countries have fired up the printing press too, so we might not see as much of a decline given US' relative position to its neighbors. Those who want most to undercut the USD would be doing it on the power of oil and hey, guess what was just gutted as well? I mean, the next year or so will be no fun, but I don't think things will be pay-for-groceries-with-silver level. Though the grocery store yesterday reminded me of Polish immigrants' description of the Communist days...

Chore-Play?

If my husband ever leads seder some year... this is approximately his grasp of history and retention of Hebrew school...

Gaaahh, still trying to get the hang of the new forum. Moderate IT arcana going on the work machine, and on my own I'm cursing under my breath trying to get the quote to work... I live waaaaay too far east for the big kitties to roam. We've only recently gotten coyotes. I got to pet a cheetah once, and that's as big as I'll go. Anyway, my family taught me to prep, really. We lived way out in the country when I was little, and I was one of those weird kids who actually listened to their grandparents. Though even if you know how to make bread, the flour and yeast were gone quick. Pay no attention to that white bucket in the pantry closet.

It is funny how Fate turns, sometimes. I had a major injury that left me using a walker for a while. Y'know what I have a lot of left over from that time? HAND SANITIZER. Because I couldn't risk washing my hands and slipping/falling from a bit of soap residue... I consider myself lucky to be on the side of the equation where I'm delivering items for vulnerable friends rather than being among those stuck and scrambling for help.

Been away a while. Lots of crap over the last couple-few years. Some good stuff, too, and right as we were going to relax the purse strings a bit and go on a major trip... this happened. Right as I was trying to get the pantry re-sorted after the Drugstore Beetle Fiasco did in our stored pasta and we felt rather stupid for letting it snowball like that. I'd been following the current mess since December, thought it only a matter of time, and started re-stocking our current staples. Husband commented on it. I told him it doesn't hurt, and it was just in case. Started picking up extra things at the international market, or at Trader Joe's...waving aside my husband's comments. Late January the pandemic started being discussed at work. I'd mentioned that I studied a lot of logistics for my degree and learned that civilization really was 3 meals from anarchy, it was winter anyway, so why not pick up a few extra things? And I left it at that. And kept picking up a few extra things. And rebalanced some investments. Come March, all Hell breaks loose, the stores are gutted, there's a dude in a plague mask standing in front of Trader Joe's, there are purchase limits on what's left, my husband wasn't able to complete his shopping list. One of my coworkers frantically messaged me that if I didn't have food in the house, to take PTO and go get some while it was still there. I was able to say "Naaah I'm good." And later as my husband reached for one of his staples that I stocked up on, he stopped and realized something. Then said, "Okay, Sweetie, you were right." Awesome! Thanks for acknowledging. We love to hear that admission from our spouses. Victory, yeah? But I didn't want to be right on this. I'd rather take another neglected pile of preps, and another pest problem and just look stupid again rather than this. At the very least, some other poor sot got to grab that sack of rice or bit of pasta because I had already sorted my situation.