Living the Pantry Lifestyle - The Pandemic Shopping Lessons

It is so good to be back!  During my time away from the computer, I could only use my Amazon Fire tablet and my ancient (very ancient by technology standards) iPad.  All I can do on the old iPad without it shutting itself off is to tap away writing emails.  It takes awhile, which is why I was slow to respond.

Thank you to everyone who continued to enter your Amazon shopping by clicking on a link or the Widget on the sidebar.  The first thing I did to the blog when I returned was to switch the Widget to a standardized Amazon square widget that you can click on to enter your Amazon shopping. 

It cost neither of us anything but a little extra time and each small amount of credit adds up in a month.  I will concentrate on links within the body of a blog post for specific items.  This month, my credit paid for my granddaughter Faith's birthday gifts for her 4th of July birthday coming up (and laundry soap for me!).  I thank you.  (Thank you, Jayne!)

Now to ponder the pantry!

About a month into the pandemic, I realized my ideas about food shopping would be forever changed.  Not the pantry itself, mind you.  If anything, I realized the importance of a deep-as-possible pantry more than I ever have.  What changed was my grocery shopping habits for the pantry.

Wearing a mask is so annoying but necessary, as is keeping the hand sanitizer in the car refilled.  So I still try to get out only when necessary.  Some grocery stores are no longer disinfecting the carts but many employees still wear masks.  I see a lot more people without masks but as a high risk individual, it will remain a part of life for some time to come.

Like most Americans, I had never seen grocery store shelves so empty.  I know it has happened after natural disasters but not where I live.  A good friend wrote to me about her local stores after Katrina hit.  Although she lived in the desert of New Mexico, far away from Katrina, the trucks carrying food and supplies were rerouted into the Gulf area.  It took a long time for the local stores in her town to be fully restocked.

My thinking will now always differentiate between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic when it comes to the pantry.  Before the pandemic, I stocked up on food and essentials once a month and added to the basics as needed once a week after that as my budget permitted.  Especially items like fresh fruit and vegetables.  Shortages were rare and often weather related.

Now I still have a stock up day to purchase what is available but much of my shopping is accomplished on a week by week basis when items are in stock.  Limits on various items like meat and paper goods also require a little at a time shopping.  It took awhile to get used to the changes but it is the new normal.

Before the pandemic, I would have thought this a very inefficient way of shopping for groceries.  Since then, it has become necessary as we try to find needed (or just desired) purchases back in stock.  It has meant I have had to budget differently and to be even more efficient about keeping lists.

Some items are becoming more available like King Arthur AP flour and their bread flour.  I even saw bags of their organic whole wheat flour on the shelf the last time I was at Meijers.  Both the bread flour and whole wheat flour had been missing from the shelves since the beginning of the pandemic and the All Purpose flour was hard to find. 

However, some items are still surprisingly in short supply.  I never would have thought that dried pasta would be sold almost as fast as it arrived on the shelves.  I already had extra pasta put back but I have learned that it is one of those items to buy when it is available.

I am responsible for shopping Meijers and Aldi, my husband shops Kroger and Wal-mart, either one of us will stop by Sam's Club if we are in that part of town and actually need something.  But I will stop by Kroger when I am close by to see if an item only sold there is finally in stock, like my favorite orecchiette shaped pasta that is made in Italy especially for Kroger. I stopped in last week on the way to my doctor's clinic and was rewarded with two bags of the pasta.

There are no limits on meat at Meijers right now so I am back to making purchases when meat is at a reasonable price or hopefully on sale, as I've done since I can remember.  Whole chickens have not been on sale during the pandemic but they are back to being only $1.19 a pound.  I learned from watching cooking shows that you want to choose the largest whole chicken available because poultry bones only grow so big so larger chickens will have more available meat per pound.

The same reasoning applies to turkeys except I bought a turkey over twenty pounds only once.  Since I do not feed an army, I do not need to wrestle such a large bird on Thanksgiving morning.  However, I do purchase a larger turkey than needed and look forward to leftovers.

The last time I was at Meijers, I noticed that various kinds of canned meat are still in short supply.  That is probably due to processing plants being shut down for awhile or perhaps more people are stocking up on canned meats due to the shutdown of various processing plants.

I'm researching more again and there is still concern over the meat processing plants being epicenters of the virus. Not because animals cause the virus but because of the close proximity of the workers.  So I'm thinking it is not a bad idea to stock some cans of chicken or tuna... and as mentioned before, I was raised on Spam so I actually like it sliced thin and cooked until crispy. My husband would not eat it if he was starving.

I don't know if my shopping habits can ever return to the pre-pandemic ways.  If there is one thing we now know, it is that everything can change almost overnight.  While I live in an area where there are now only a few new cases each week, no one knows if there will be another round this Fall or sooner.  So I'm keeping my new found shopping skills for the moment.

I'll be back next week (God willing and the computer allows) to talk about how various cooking skills helped immensely during the shortages!