Food in the time of a pandemic

[gulfporter]

On 3/22/2020 at 7:47 PM, DesertTinker said:

 Day two of lockdown, cleaned/organized the chest freezer (5.? Cu. Ft.) and the top freezer of the fridge/freeze combo. This is what ended up in the chest freezer. Chucked 4 things that were way past their “best by” date aka freezer burned beyond recognition. This was my final chest freezer result, plus a few things back into the top freezer that’ll be used this week. I don’t think we’ll starve.

 

I was super-organized in my career....this is the best I can do after 17 years retired.  

[Shelby]

8 minutes ago, gulfporter said:

 

I was super-organized in my career....this is the best I can do after 17 years retired.  

Still.  Way better than me.

 

 

[KennethT]

I have an excel spreadsheet with my freezer inventory.  It works great for seeing what's in there without opening the door and searching around - the only problem is when we forget to update it when we take something out!  One day, when I eventually retire, I might think about writing machine learning software with camera system that can identify what you take out of the freezer and automatically update the database/spreadsheet... then again, there's probably something like that already out there, or there will be by the time I get to that point so why reinvent the wheel.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

20 minutes ago, KennethT said:

I have an excel spreadsheet with my freezer inventory.  It works great for seeing what's in there without opening the door and searching around - the only problem is when we forget to update it when we take something out!  One day, when I eventually retire, I might think about writing machine learning software with camera system that can identify what you take out of the freezer and automatically update the database/spreadsheet... then again, there's probably something like that already out there, or there will be by the time I get to that point so why reinvent the wheel.

 

When I was in the camera business I had the idea for a product to put in the refrigerator to answer the age-old question whether the light is on or not.

 

Very thankful that my Amazon Prime Now/Whole Foods order came today.  Scallions were mistaken for red spring onions; and they were out of baby bok choy (for which they substituted bok choy).  Still very thankful.

 

And amazon came through with pickled onions and @feste's orgeat.  Not to mention laundry detergent.  Plus a package arrived from KAF with my backordered powdered milk!

 

[Porthos]

9 hours ago, Anna N said:

Just tried to place a grocery order. The earliest delivery is April 11. 

wow.

[Porthos]

3 hours ago, Darienne said:

But what about the peanuts and peanut butter???

 

2 hours ago, chromedome said:

Those are always on hand.

 

Staple in our home also. In fact I forgot that I bought more peanut butter a week ago (I buy a jar for the pantry when I open the jat that was in the pantry) and bought another jar 3 days ago. 🙄

[gulfporter]

No shortages of anything here.  I heard about a run on TP a few weeks ago at Walmart.  But the smaller tiendas, fruterias and carnicerias have everything and the produce and meat still looks great.  These are stores I can walk to and I am often the only gringa when I shop.  Mexicans live paycheck to paycheck, they cannot hoard or buy-ahead.  

 

We normally eat dinner out every night, so I have never had much of a pantry here of staples.  Our at-home meals are fresh-bought shrimp or fish with either a salad or a veg.  This past week I bought dry goods, canned goods, beans, pastas.

 

We normally keep very little in our freezer because the electricity can be iffy.  Though the past few years it is better and we usually only have outages with thunderstorms and usually just at the start of the rainy season (June).  We have more in the freezer now than we have ever had.  It is a bottom freezer of an average fridge.  And because of past outages, we keep a large bag of ice in it as our safety net; it takes up a good part of the freezer space.  

 

For now, every time I use a protein, I replace it when I shop the next day; the 'stash' in the pantry is not being touched.

 

I can get delivery from many eateries, but the delivery isn't great since these restaurants never offered delivery before.  The 3 meals we tried arrived a bit cold, a bit disheveled.  Plus certain foods simply do not 'carry' well.  Pizza and chicken al carbon deliveries have always been fast and I expect they still are, though their volume most likely has risen.  

 

Dominos (which I hate in the US but is pretty good here) is advertising this service...kinda cute.  Assume same sort of ad by Dominos in US??

 

 

 

[Anna N]

58 minutes ago, Porthos said:

wow.

I thought I would try another tactic and see if my daughter would do a pick up. There are no pick up slots available until April 8. 

[Steve R.]

Dinner by delivery from our local good N.Y. Red Sauce Italian place (Queen Restaurant).  I almost feel that I had a normal day.

[Shelby]

The sad face emoji seems so cartoon-ish but when I click it, I really am sad.

 

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

My long delayed Supermarket Italy order has shipped.  This is ten bags of flour, dried pasta, and San Marzano DOP tomatoes.  Not to mention Spanish berberechos and that bottle of HP sauce.

 

[Tri2Cook]

24 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I thought I would try another tactic and see if my daughter would do a pick up. There are no pick up slots available until April 8. 

Stories like this are what made me finally concede a little bit to the situation. I don't want to be caught with my pants down... especially with younger daughter still at home. So I did an inventory to see where I'm at. It was as I expected, food choices would get boring fast but we wouldn't go without something to eat for easily 3 - 4 weeks. I built on that a little bit by stocking up more on basics (flour, sugars, yeast, etc.) and upping the freezer content. I'm ignoring fun and fancy to save the space for high mileage. Mostly have flat, easily stacked 1 lb packages of ground beef and ground pork in the freezer right now. I already had 10 lbs. of Nathan's beef franks I ordered through a supplier at work in there as well as a few lbs of homemade breakfast sausage. The dogs were in preparation for warmer weather and grilling which still works because I already filled both tanks for my grill. That's about as far as I'm going to go right now, although I may add a few meat options that would be good in the smoker since the weather is starting to warm up. I don't expect the local store to shut down any time soon, the main reason I did this is because my son-in-law works at said local store and he told me they're having trouble getting some things in from their suppliers. But hearing about wait times to even be able to get groceries is definitely an added incentive to be a little less casual about it.

[Anna N]

22 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Stories like this are what made me finally concede a little bit to the situation.

I have been thinking a lot about the situation and this is pure conjecture on my part so please take it with a grain of salt. Someone pointed out to me that 1 million people just returned to Canada from March break. Likely they returned to empty fridges so that would’ve added to the already overburdened system of food ordering and delivery. People who never grocery shop because they ate out just about all their meals are now faced with trying to stock food.
 

 At first my assumption was that The grocery delivery service that I use simply did not have enough trucks to service all the orders. But then of course I thought about their pickers.  They have to have pickers. Then of course they have to something to pick from so they need supplies. But if they are going to arrange orders to be picked up they need storage space to hold those orders at the appropriate temperature given that there will be some frozen stuff in there etc. etc. etc.
 

This is a system that has just been bowled over. I admit to being angry at first but the more I think about it the more I realize it’s beyond human planning to be able to respond to what is happening in terms of grocery delivery. It really wasn’t that popular a month ago as far as I can determine. Now suddenly everybody wants their groceries delivered or wants pick up. Simply can’t be done. I don’t think it’s cause for panic by any means but it certainly means for me at least that someone else is going to have to get my groceries. A month ago I could’ve simply put in an order and it would’ve been delivered the next day or the day after at the time of my choosing.
 

But I’m sure there are people who don’t have anyone who will do the grocery shopping and they are the ones to be concerned about. How will they get their groceries?
 

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Great post, Anna.   

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

My long delayed Supermarket Italy order has shipped.  This is ten bags of flour, dried pasta, and San Marzano DOP tomatoes.  Not to mention Spanish berberechos and that bottle of HP sauce.

 

 

I have visions of you having flour here there and everywhere.🙂

[chromedome]

I was at Superstore this evening, and every available staffer - including the resident Registered Dietician - was filling orders for pickup.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

13 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

I have visions of you having flour here there and everywhere.🙂

 

Not in the bathroom yet.

 

[KennethT]

Who needs a mattress when you have 10 bags of flour?

[haresfur]

5 hours ago, KennethT said:

I have an excel spreadsheet with my freezer inventory.  It works great for seeing what's in there without opening the door and searching around - the only problem is when we forget to update it when we take something out!  One day, when I eventually retire, I might think about writing machine learning software with camera system that can identify what you take out of the freezer and automatically update the database/spreadsheet... then again, there's probably something like that already out there, or there will be by the time I get to that point so why reinvent the wheel.

 

RFID tags and an Arduino reader?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 minutes ago, KennethT said:

Who needs a mattress when you have 10 bags of flour?

 

No, if it gets down to it I'll be sleeping on the 30 pounds of beans.

 

[heidih]

15 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

No, if it gets down to it I'll be sleeping on the 30 pounds of beans.

 

 

No no no -people pay for the bean mattress - a massage thing

[rotuts]

get some rice

 

any rice

 

goes well w he beans I think

 

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Surplus beans are never a problem.     They really last forever.   Just take longer to cook.   Just consider them Blue Chip Stocks.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

5 hours ago, KennethT said:

I have an excel spreadsheet with my... inventory. .... the only problem is when we forget to update it when we take something out! 

 

The universal inventory lament.  

 

A parallel of GIGO.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

13 minutes ago, rotuts said:

get some rice

 

any rice

 

goes well w he beans I think

 

 

 

I neglected to mention rice?  You might not want to know.  Basmati for tonight.