Jim and I made our way to Costco yesterday morning, the first big shopping trip since everything started shutting down. It was my first venture out for maybe two weeks. I had made the prediction that either the parking lot would be empty or that there would be a line out the door waiting for this magnificent place to open at 10:00, and, as usual, neither of my predictions was accurate. Instead, the whole experience was perfectly normal, with the exception of limits on certain items, the fact that a smiling woman was handing out packs of toilet paper, and that other items were missing entirely, notably chicken parts and regular pasta. (I was tickled to see quite a bit of gluten-free pasta on the shelves. Since this snarky comment is in parentheses, please feel free to ignore it.) The lines were no longer than usual; everyone was friendly and efficient, and we were in and out in under an hour. They had even opened early. I came home encouraged that the great engine of American capitalism is probably not going to grind to a halt any time soon, even as many are suffering from its slowing. We’re going to get through this, folks!
And on that note I would say that I’ve started feeling pretty detached from the whole economic/political storm that’s swirling out there. I can’t do a thing, directly anyway, to change what’s happening. So I’ve drastically cut down on my news intake, not out of some great self-discipline but because it’s just become wearying. I read the newsletters I get from The Bulwark and The Dispatch, and I can’t recommend those two outlets highly enough. I scan the headlines of some other publications, including my beloved Washington Post. (Just FYI: The Bulwark is fully donation-funded. The Dispatch has some sections that are accessible via subscription only; the very best thing on the site, though, is David French’s Sunday newsletter, and that’s free.) The WaPo (as those in the know call it) has a monthly limit on free articles for non-subscribers. We watch the PBS NewsHour most nights. All of the foregoing may still sound like a lot, but it’s nothing to compare with the obsessive online reading that I’ve been doing for the past four years. If I’d been gone for an hour or so I’d have to check in with my sources to see what had happened in my absence. Well, something had always happened, but who cared? As I wrote this I was reminded of Henry David Thoreau, he of Walden Pond fame, and what he had said about the news. With the magic of Google I was able to find the quotation in about 30 seconds:
“Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner,” he wrote, “but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinel. . . . After a night’s sleep the news has become as indispensable as the breakfast.” (quoted in an excellent article “What Would Thoreau Think of our 24-Hour News Cycle?“)
No smartphones, no cable news, no Twitter–but human nature was exactly the same.
Well, this is supposed to be a food blog of sorts, so let me link to two recipes I have in my files in the spirit of encouraging you to think in terms of making/preparing food instead of buying the pre-made stuff. First, the homemade croutons “recipe” which I’ve mentioned recently. I didn’t have any French bread on hand so I made my own, and the croutons came out pretty well. I think it was a tactical error not to just make the bread with white flour, as the croutons made with the whole-wheat version were pretty crunchy. But c’est la vie. I’m making my homemade granols today or tomorrow, since one item we got at Costco was old-fashioned oatmeal.
Secondly, I have a master recipe with variations for oil-and-vinegar dressing. If you have a reasonably well-stocked pantry you can probably make the main recipe or even one of the others. So much better than anything you can buy! I encourage you to try it.
And that’s it for today.