Grocery shopping day! The last time I went was before Inauguration Day, and I could see/feel a LARGE CHANGE in my attitude from one trip to the next. Last time I was thinking, “What if the government collapses, and the violence and the pandemic continue on year after year? Should I be stocking up on more flour/yeast/beans? What is the right amount of canned goods for an Armed Insurrection?” This time I was relaxed: “This won’t go on forever! The end is in sight! I do not need another flour, because I have plenty! Soon there will be cleaning supplies again, so I will not worry about it!”
And, like a dove-fetched fresh-picked olive branch showing that the flood waters were indeed receding, there were small cans of Lysol disinfecting spray! and ABUNDANT paper towels filling not only the shelves but part of the aisle floor! and BRANDED HAND SOAP!
We still appear to be experiencing the national Grape-Nuts shortage, but I feel that’s survivable.
They had some little Hickory Farms sausage/cheese holiday gift sets marked from $10 down to $3, and I stood there frozen and indecisive until I gave myself a little shake and said “IT’S A MATTER OF THREE DOLLARS, JUST BUY ONE.” Ditto for NEW! Pretzel Pop-Tarts. Yes, it’s obviously a big lifestyle decision, but let’s not stand here breathing the air for any longer than necessary.
I had a mask panic on Twitter the other day, and several people advised wearing TWO masks: the disposable non-surgical kind first (I have a box of those left over from my days as an in-home elder caregiver), with a cloth mask over it. I tried that today, and it worked well: I didn’t notice a difference in how well I could breathe, I only noticed I felt a little more humid/itchy around the edges of the mask. Well worth it.
There was a guy wearing his mask fully on his neck in this The Year of Our Lord 2021, 11 months into a pandemic. I considered making a faux-panicked remark (“Sir!! Your mask!! It’s slipped!!!”)—but my assessment was that anyone blatantly not wearing a mask in January 2021 knows what they’re doing and is hoping to pick a fight.
I CRAVE YOUR GROCERY NEWS.
My grocery delivery service has finally lifted its “50 unique items” limit, which it had put in place early in the pandemic, then lifted for months, then reinstated from mid-November through last week, presumably due to the holidays. It’s been some time since I got a day-of-delivery notice that one or many of my items were no longer available. In general the supply seems almost-normal: my preferred TP and paper towels have reliably been in stock for about three weeks now; the paltry cereal selection has expanded; they have yeast and all-purpose flour (gone from March until about November); brand-name cleaning supplies are sometimes available.
But what I really want to say is that I hope you intend to do a tasting of the Pretzel Pop Tarts (!!!) and review them IN DETAIL here.
I can vouch for the pretzel Pop Tarts. They are SO YUMMY, especially the brown sugar cinnamon ones.
I love the brown sugar cinnamon ones! But they are only good toasted, in a different way than regular pop tarts. But toasted, they are glorious.
I went to target for the first time since before Christmas on Saturday. And target had their bulk shopping area back which made me happy. And they had my preferred brand and quantities of paper towels and toilet paper. And the paper towel and toilet paper aisles were full. Last time paper towels were oddly low. AND THEY HAD LARGE TARGET BRAND LYSOL WIPES!!! And you could get two! (The day I see the 3 packs in stock will almost be as great as when I get the vaccine ;) ). Oddly they were very low on dishwasher soap. But it just seemed more normal in there.
It made me very happy. I had been thinking before I left to go shopping about how it had almost been a year and it was just so draining.
I absolutely linked the whole thing in my mind with the new administration. I know it isn’t. But it makes me happy.
GOOD CALL not talking to the anti masker.
I absolutely agree and tend to simply avoid these people myself while being fueled by righteous indignation to more quickly finish my grocery hunt. But there’s also a part of me that wishes I had the guts to cause a public scene. And I don’t mean calling someone out or getting into an argument as if it were up for debate. I mean full on pointing, screaming, crying “Oh my God, he’s not wearing a mask!” in horror, and carrying on as if I were witnessing in the aisles of Target someone willfully decapitating a kitten. I don’t even know that it would work in a public shaming sense, but I bet people would move away from the crazy screaming lady right quick!
LOL now you’ve given me ideas!!
I must thank you for the privilege of living vicariously through your grocery store reports! My husband is our family’s Designated Shopper, and I rely on Target drive-up for household-type items (and my preferred snacks) not found at the grocery store. I went to Trader Joe’s about a month ago, and it was exhilarating and scary and a little sad. I was feeling brave, and happy to be out and about, but also I WAS OUT AND ABOUT AMONG PEOPLE. And Trader Joe’s is the kind of place where I like to linger and browse a bit, and of course, those are forbidden luxuries in Pandemic Times. Alas, they did not have my favorite chicken tikka masala, but I was so thrilled to have our favorite chicken nuggets, and some orange chicken, and I might have been tossing random items in the tiny cart like a madwoman. The good news? I saw exactly ONE nose; everyone else was properly masked.
I did grocery pick up last week and it was a disaster. I had 27 substitutions suggested (including Pepsi for Coke, Smart Water for Gatorade, breakfast sausage for Italian sausage, etc). To the point where I actually needed to go into another store. I do not know why my local Kroger was so wiped out this week. But the other store I went to was not wiped out. I’m blaming the store specifically, not the pandemic or anything.
I do not confront people about masks, because I live in Arizona, and those people like to walk around with their guns. I’d prefer to not get shot.
I always carefully consider things like this when I see people without masks and then I wonder “how did this ever become something to worry about in this country?”
This week, we hit a milestone of the grocery store having everything on our list! Including the grape flavored sparkling waters, the cookie butter, and the specific brand of broccoli that we like. A milestone!
A specific brand of broccoli? Isn’t a head of broccoli just a head of broccoli? 🥦 (unless you mean ‘type’ e.g. tenderstem vs ‘normal’?).
Probably something like BirdsEye vs. Green Giant or something like that. I prefer the Pictsweet brand, but none of the stores have the baby broccoli florets anymore, so I’m stuck with store brand. They aren’t quite as good (more stem pieces), but do the trick.
Frozen broccoli?
Ah, this makes sense – I didn’t really think about this as I only ever buy petit pois from the frozen section. I did try frozen broccoli once many years ago as it seemed like a sensible back-up to have on hand, but it was incredibly watery and tasteless so I had put it out of my mind!
This is why some of us feel strongly about brand! I had to switch frozen broccoli brands for awhile during the pandemic, and actually threw out two bags (even in a pandemic, where Wasting Food feels extra terrible) because it was so bad compared to what I usually buy.
what is cookie butter???
I don’t know what it says about me, (maybe nothing other than I don’t speak to enough people in person these days and an argument is better than nothing? 🤷🏻♀️) but I use almost that exact phrasing to challenge people in supermarkets and come close to relishing it each time…
Agreed on the relish. I am ALSO spoiling for a fight (still; it seems to be a lingering effect of the Last Four Years) and am more than happy to politely say, “You need to wear your mask properly, we are still in a pandemic.” And then I turn my back and walk away and ignore their sputtering because I don’t want their nasty COVID breath on me.
It feels AWESOME, and I don’t care if they get ragey because I live in a place where masks have been required in all public spaces since April so we all know they’re required, so we all know you’re just being a JERK, SIR.
Sally, how have people reacted? Do you get an argument, or do they just sheepishly pull theirs masks up when you call them out on it?
Ha, yes! Both of these things happen – and everything in between!
You get the occasional person who has genuinely forgotten to pull it up as they have gone from one shop to another with a breathing break outside and look horrified with themselves once it has been pointed out to them – they are usually quite grateful for being reminded. Other people, not so much. Depending on the day, and always without getting myself worked up, I quite enjoy the person who wants to stand there and ‘talk’ about the science crossed with conspiracies! The occasional person who argues that they have a mask and are abiding by the ‘no mask, no entry’ rule whilst it is under their chin is entertaining!
Can we talk about distilled water? We use this in our Keurig coffee maker. We tried going without and switching back to tap water at the start of the pandemic, and we promptly ruined a Keurig that had been working well for 5+ years. And yes, we tried ALL the online advice about how to clean, unclog and maintain Keurigs – I’ve had more vinegar tinged coffee than I care to discuss. We drink copious amounts of coffee in our house. (We buy and use compostable k-cups in case you are gasping in horror about the single-use plastic waste.) Anyhow, we used to buy 4 to 5 gallons a week of distilled water a week, and we can not find it anywhere right now. We live in a large city and have many grocery stores within a few miles, plus Target, etc.. but we cannot find it most of the time. All the other water varieties seem to be plentiful – spring water, purified water, etc… but no distilled. Anyone else experiencing this or know why it’s occurring? I know that people using CPAP machines use distilled water, but surely the number of people using those machines hasn’t risen dramatically? It must be a supply issue?
Our local grocery stores run through phases where the distilled water runs out. Personally, I use a whole bunch of distilled water in the wintertime because I run humidifiers in the winter pretty much nonstop, but not in the summer. So maybe you just live around a lot of people who are humidifier-happy like me in the wintertime!
Our coop has a local brand of distilled water, and though it is considerably more expensive, they always seem to have it in stock. (whereas Kroger will run out of distilled water fairly regularly). Maybe try a coop if you have one?
Oooh, yes! Thank you! I bet you are right that humidifier usage is a big piece of it – we live in an arid climate, so it makes sense that people would be doing this even more in winter. Thanks also for the coop suggestion – we have had some luck at the “natural” grocery stores, so your suggestion is promising as well.
I wonder if distillers are making hand sanitizer instead? Maybe it’s the same equipment – I know local distilleries (like, the fun kind with booze) have started doing that.
Or maybe hospitals use distilled water for ventilators as well as CPAPs :(
Not a direct link to distilled water, but what the heck. Hopefully the Swistle community will indulge me. My home is on well water, actually a hand dug well that my Granddad and (guessing here) his brothers dug in the early 1900’s. I do have a whole house filter, and a water softener, but challenges remain. For example, ice made from tap water, with or without going through the softener would always have the white who knows which mineral that would float out into ones drink. Ugh! Being the delicate flower that I am, I learned that if I boil the water before using it to freeze ice, the residue is no longer present. Perhaps this would work in your application? Of course it seems tedious, but I developed a habit using my electric kettle and a pitcher in the fridge. As soon as I pour out my precious cold water I simply boil more. Whenever I boil water for anything, I boil a full kettle’s worth and then dump the remainder into the pitcher.
That being said, I am retired and have no life to speak of, so what works for me may sound horrendous to you. Sorry! Couldn’t help myself. Carry on!
Thank you, Sue! This was super helpful, in fact. The problem with our tap water and the Keurig is a high mineral content, and I don’t know if boiling takes care of that, BUT when googling for an answer to that question, I ran across a suggestion of using a Brita water filter pitcher to make mineral-free water for the Keurig and EUREKA, I realized I could do that instead of endlessly searching for distilled water around town. Also, fewer plastic jugs to recycle. I think my brain was so stuck on solving the “find distilled water” problem that it never occurred to me to think about solutions instead of using distilled water!
Filtered water still has a bit of mineral content in it vs. distilled water, so if something absolutely NEEDS distilled water, then it is good to stick to distilled water, but YES! Filtering water takes care of a lot of the mineral content and it might work just fine for the Keurig!
That is less horrendous than making your own distilled water, though? Which you also can do: you boil water in a pot, with an empty metal container raised from the bottom of the pot in the middle, with the pot lid upside down and, optionally, full of ice. The steam rises, hits the pot lid, forms droplets which run down towards the center of the pot lid, drip into your container, repeat.
(but boiling water does not generally reduce mineral content; it can change the structures, I think, which is probably why it works for you, but it concentrates rather than reducing the amount of actual minerals in the water. Do not sub boiled water for distilled water in gizmos that require distilled water.)
You can also buy water distillers. Peace Corps lent distillers to volunteers so we could make our own drinking water. We’d let it run through the night and could refill our water bottles in the morning. (I’m still mad at myself that it never occurred to me to use the distiller to make brandy out of the amazing Bulgarian wine :) )
I remain transfixed by any and all reports of grocery store trips. This line is feeding my soul today: “We still appear to be experiencing the national Grape-Nuts shortage, but I feel that’s survivable.”
I almost always go to one particular grocery store because they’re awesome with meat/produce/enforcing masking and social distancing. What they are not awesome at, however, is cleaning supplies, trash bags, shampoo, that kind of stuff so I decided to try the other, bigger grocery store that I like much less and have been avoiding. Long story short: I got the stuff I needed there and everyone I saw in the shopping area was masking correctly etc and I thought maybe I could reconsider my stance on the bigger store. Then on the way out, I passed the lottery ticket machine wherein every one of the people standing in line to buy tickets either had their mask below their nose or was wearing only a face shield and no mask. Looks like I’m going back to ordering stuff on line that I can’t get a the good grocery store…
“You can gamble your own income, sir, but not other people’s lives!” <–a sassy retort I would never say in public but would be thinking VERY LOUD in my head in the shower hours later when I thought of it
(I love Swistle readers. And yes, exactly, on two counts!)
This is amazing and what I will be thinking from now on!
The only exciting grocery store report I have to share is that on my last pickup trip, I’d apparently okayed a substitution to swap unshelled edamame for the shelled edamame I’d ordered without realizing it.
Flash forward to Saturday night, when spouse is opening a package and literally did not even know what he was looking at (the pods). I had to explain to him that he’d have to steam the pods instead of just dumping a bunch of the shelled beans into boiling water.
I am learning at my particular store where I do grocery pickup, if you request one or two items for which you will not accept substitutions, the pickers look harder. I finally got my box of flavored, instant cream of wheat! YMMV
We have been pretty fortunate where I am in terms of item availability. Paper towels are still iffy – they always have some, but maybe not the brand you want (my husband turns up his nose at non-Brawny). There are still occasionally weird shortages on things like nonstick pan spray (I guess because of aluminum?), and more obscure flavors of soda (I MISS YOU FRESCA). We have been able to get some sort of bleachy all-purpose cleaner for months now, but again, not necessarily one’s preferred brand. Of course, I exclusively do grocery pickup (and did even pre-pandemic – after a day of teaching I crave as little human contact as possible), so it’s possible/likely that sometimes things are in stock but just not listed on the website.
I saw a woman at the garden center wearing her mask on her chin yesterday. Why even bother? Fortunately, we were outside and I was able to stay pretty far away. But, like, why??
Some people find their masks uncomfortable, so they pull them down when outside in a low-risk/naturally-social-distanced situation and pull them up for going indoors or approaching people?
We can maybe hope that the Chin Lady was in this category…
Some People need to get over themselves or get out of public spaces. :harumph:
On my last trip there seemed to be some laundry detergent missing, they tried to hide it by filling the shelves with storage bins. Another time, there was no store brand cane sugar cola in cans to be had, only in bottles, which I have discovered are much less carbonated. I guess this is because of the aluminum shortage, but there was plenty of store brand soda in cans in other flavors, so whuh?
We have Valentine’s Day and then a birthday coming up, with a grocery order in between the two (we’re on a once every three weeks schedule, since there are only two of us in the house), so basically I decided to order the components for Two Special Meals and we’d go with whichever one we got all the components for on Valentine’s Day and then have a shot at the other with the next grocery order.
What I did not anticipate: them missing components from *both* – however, one of them is really, really easy to substitute, so that’s actually totally fine and that will be the first of the two special meals, and *also* the component that went missing from the other meal is a really common one that is almost never out of stock (why it was out of stock this time? no clue) instead of one of the two crossing-my-fingers components that have flickered in and out of stock – both of *those* arrived and are now safely tucked into the freezer, hooray!
In Oddly Still AWOL items, Soy Sauce ramen (formerly known as Oriental flavor) is still not available for delivery to us, and there is a perpetual shortage/absence of pork-flavor ramen; it had been out of stock for two prior deliveries, and there were only two packages in stock this time. (we add nubbins of frozen microplaned ginger to it, and it is good that way)
I also just checked, not because we eat grape-nuts but because I was curious, and our store also does not have them in stock. (Grape-Nuts Flakes: yes. The regular kind: no.)
I’ve given up on checking for disinfectant wipes, partly because they have never been in stock and partly because we just don’t need them very much (two people, hermitting at home, no children or pets or sources of contagion) and other people do. Do we use them under normal circumstances? Yes! Is it fine for us to sub other things for the rare “no we *really* need some disinfecting because raw chicken landed directly on the counter accidentally” purposes? Yeah. So if they do come back into stock, we can leave them for people who do need the portable solution.
Okay, also, tomato paste. WHY were the 6oz cans of tomato paste out of stock?
I’ve been seeing the soy sauce ramen listed as Shoyu instead.
It never stops being fascinating to me that things like wipes etc. are hard to get/unavailable when I can pretty much walk into any store (grocery, drug store, Target, etc.) and there are shelves and shelves of them. And not just store-brand but Clorox, Lysol etc. brands. I’m not taking this for granted (or bragging) but it just befuddles me.
Grape Nuts! just want to know why?! I don’t even eat them myself but I’ve been doing my mother’s grocery shopping for the last couple months while she’s been ill and every store has just an empty hole where the Grape Nuts should be.
Did anyone else notice that we are in a WORLD-WIDE coconut shortage? Try finding shredded coconut for baking….
I don’t know if this will help in your area, but where I am I can get shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened) on Target.com.
Is anyone else having trouble finding bagged, pre-popped popcorn? This started before Christmas here and I can’t figure it out. Cleaning and paper products are in stock but not necessarily your preferred brand. I cannot find ground pork but no other meat issues. OJ was hard to find around Christmas but this seems to be improving. Tonic water and soft tortillas are spotty.
I couldn’t find bagged, popped Sweet ‘n Salty Kettlecorn in any brand for about a month last fall, but fortunately it’s returned.
It appears that there actually is a Grape Nuts shortage? Someone on Reddit reached out to Post and the response was simply that they are experiencing a product shortage but are not discontinuing. I find this truly fascinating but I also fell down the “where is the bucatini” hole a few weeks ago so maybe it’s the ongoing pandemic messing with my brain.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cereal/comments/krstlg/grape_nuts_shortage/
Swistle readers doing the hard hitting research. Love it.
Thank you for this! 😂
I do not do walmart pickup anymopre because substitutions drive me bonkers. I took my husband to see what a target pick up order was like and his mind was blown. “You don’t have to go in?” Dude, I don’t even have to roll down the window. The Target elves deserve $15 an hour and then some. Groceries have been ok here– I can find branded paper towels almost every week although we are still limited to ONE type of each paper product purchase. I have reserves of toilet paper and paper towels now. There is a persistent and annoying chocolate milk shortage. Soda is hit and miss. We long for the fancy flavors that manufacturers have stopped making right now. Diet cherry dr pepper, anyone? But clearly first world problems.
I’ve been easing back into shopping (in person) at my regular big nice fancy grocery store (Wegmans) because grocery shopping is/was one of my favorite chores. And things had been ok, but recently I’ve noticed that while everyone is masked, people aren’t even attempting to stay 6 feet apart anymore. It’s enraging and annoying because there is plenty of room when I go. And the Instacart shoppers just plow through everybody. I don’t want to be too hard on them, but honestly they shop in different way than people shopping for themselves and I actually wish they did Instacart shopping overnight and left the open store hours for the other customers.
Anyway. I’m shopping more at our local coop grocery store and am back to doing large stock up trips less frequently at the big grocery store.
I actually just came here to comment on the Grape Nuts shortage! I read an article on CNN that there is, in fact, a nationwide shortage (cereal sales have been up significantly during the pandemic; not sure why it’s just Grape Nuts that seems to be affected), but they expect supplies to return to normal within the next couple months. So, there’s that. 😀