I don't know about everyone, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused me to think about the food in my house and my use of the food items I already own. The whole "stocking up" notion, the infrequent trips to the store, the need to best organize how and when we eat the foods we buy, and making sure to use the foods we already own have me looking at what I waste and what I'm not using.
For example, when this stay home stuff all started, I ordered some frozen items from a meat supplier. As a result, I have easily 30 pieces of chicken in the freezer, frozen tuna, and some hamburger. This is on top of the things I had already stored in the freezer. Some of that chicken is for Taz, but some was ordered with the thought of me making my own meals.
I have cans of soup and broth, oatmeal, frozen vegetables, and all sorts of other things, much like I image most average kitchens in the U.S. Yet, when I go to the store, I'm often buying fresh chicken, cookies that I shouldn't be eating, or adding in another jar of pasta sauce just in case even though I have enough pasta sauce to give myself a tomato sauce bath. (that thought makes me gag by the way because something about washing pans with tomato sauce in them and the smell of wet tomato sauce embedding itself on my hands is really not ok with me. Why do I buy and force myself to eat pasta sauce when the idea of washing pans full of pasta sauce makes me gag? It's time to free myself from the tyranny of pasta sauce.)
Here's another interesting tidbit. I also get a general feeling of panic and dread when I have too much clutter in my house. Having full cabinets with things shoved in there without being able to segregate and properly order them makes me a little anxious like I'm suffocating under all my things. I have friends and family members that have so much stuff in their fridge and freezer that it makes me panic just to open the door and look around. How on earth do you even know what's in the back of that shelf because there's so much piled up? What's good? What's bad? My god, how do people live that way? I like everything in my fridge to have it's own space with several inches of clearance around it. Kind of like social distancing in the fridge. When I stock up at the store now and have to stack things and put some stuff at the back of the shelf, behind other things that are stacked, it's hard to take. I never claimed I was normal, folks.
I was cleaning and sanitizing all my groceries and seeing my shelves fill up again, when I thought, "I wonder how long I could really go with all the food I currently have in the house." I have two choices when faced with the food in my house and wanting to use it the best way possible: 1. Feed myself for the next month or 2. Hold a block party for 100 of my closest friends and neighbors. Since we are social distancing, I can't cook well enough to satisfy the taste buds of people that want food to taste good, and I hate hosting parties, that leaves me with feeding myself for a month on my existing stores of food.
Four weeks seemed like a manageable yet somewhat challenging amount of time. I'm pushing myself, but I won't be eating nothing but oatmeal and rice for two weeks. I'll still be able to have vegetables everyday, and fruit for at least part of the time. I won't be eating canned tuna each day, especially because I only have three cans of tuna.
I decided to make this next month into a game. I will eat what I have at my house for the next four week. I can go to the store once in those four weeks, and I have to spend $50 or less. I imagine that will be to stock up again on things like eggs and fresh produce. I can order food out 5 times in the four weeks. That's one meal out a week and an extra meal out to use whichever week I choose.
I'm hoping this month helps me think about conserving money, reducing waste, impulse control, making do with what I have, and also eating better. I didn't think to do this until after I had gone to the store yesterday, and I am sure some of my food choices would have been different if I had considered this before my shopping trip. I would definitely have purchased way more brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts (don't need) and probably another steak (also don't need but better than pop tarts), but that's part of the challenge.
So, you know where I'll be for the next four weeks. I'll be here, scratching my head and planning out how to best use my groceries. As I mentioned, I'm pretty heavy on chicken, so if you have any easy chicken recipes that don't call for lots of ingredients, drop me a line. My first meal will be steak and roasted root vegetables. Then, tomorrow, I'll cook a pot roast that will go well with the leftover vegetables.
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Friday, May 8, 2020
Letter to David Sedaris
Update: I started this blog post in November of 2019. It was going to be my long soliloquy on why I love David Sedaris's writing. I'm not sure what got in the way of this great and moving masterpiece of a blog post, but something interrupted me, like a bomb went off, and I walked out of the blog post with dinner on the table and the television on. Scientists would stumble on the blog months later saying, "Where'd she go? What happened at the reading? What else was she going to say? Why didn't she eat this perfectly good macaroni and cheese before she left?"
Like the breeze blowing dust down the road, so went my great ideas of how I was going to capture the spirit of seeing David Sedaris read and talk in person. It was going to be so insightful that it was going to go viral, and we were going to begin a long and interesting friendship and letter writing tradition that would be published posthumously, many, many, many decades from now, and people would look back and reread our letters and wonder at the serendipity that brought us together as friends. Ours would be a classic in the long history of letter writing classics. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have nothing on our letters.
What is it about people we know through their writing or singing or acting that makes us think we would become such good friends if only we had a reason to meet?
We know how it ends now, folks. Half-baked blog, no long correspondence with El Señor Sedaris, no unwieldy amounts of social media traffic to deal with when the blog hit the airwaves and spreads across the globe. All you're left with is the fleeting feeling I had after seeing his really good reading in Tucson in November. If you haven't read any of his books, I highly recommend them. If you have a chance to see him read in your town, I suggest you go. It's a really great way to spend an evening.
I had two books signed from him after the reading, and we talked a bit about personal tragedies we both experienced. Thinking back, it was such a fleeting talk but also weirdly personal and jarring. On a hilarious note, I told him I was giving one of the signed books to my brother for Christmas. My brother always gives really thoughtful gifts, and I always get him something really useful like awesome socks. So, I told him I had to up my game. David wrote in the book, "You Deserved Better" to my brother. David's right, and David deserved better from my blog. Here's what I wrote back in November. Forgive the schmaltz. or don't.
FROM NOVEMBER 2019
Dear David,
I went with a few friends to see you read in Tucson in November. This must be the fourth or fifth time I've seen you over the years, and I never get tired of it. When I tell people I'm going to hear a guy read stories, a lot of people are skeptical. "Wait. So you've probably read the stories, and now you're going to hear some guy read them out loud?" If only they knew...that's almost exactly what it is, but it's also pretty darn amazing.
I love your writing because it's funny but it also makes you think and cry and wonder how in the hell you were able to write such a balancing act of a story. I've had stories where I laugh so hard my stomach hurts and tears stream down my face, and then this profound, emotionally difficult part comes along, and I am still crying from laughter but now also crying from sadness. Because I am so emotionally mature, I have many moments where I say, "Damn, dude. That's some real shit right there. Did you see him drop that real shit?" See. Emotional maturity.
In the everyday and the mundane and the millions of instances of small life tragedies, we are changed. We develop workarounds to deal. We become. I like how you shine a light on our neuroses and problems and pitfalls and our grace and lack of grace. Somehow in the parade of the best and the worst of people, there's still this love. I like how you steep us in the situations of your stories and show how we deal with the happenings of life around us.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? WE WILL NEVER KNOW? Fin.
Like the breeze blowing dust down the road, so went my great ideas of how I was going to capture the spirit of seeing David Sedaris read and talk in person. It was going to be so insightful that it was going to go viral, and we were going to begin a long and interesting friendship and letter writing tradition that would be published posthumously, many, many, many decades from now, and people would look back and reread our letters and wonder at the serendipity that brought us together as friends. Ours would be a classic in the long history of letter writing classics. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have nothing on our letters.
What is it about people we know through their writing or singing or acting that makes us think we would become such good friends if only we had a reason to meet?
We know how it ends now, folks. Half-baked blog, no long correspondence with El Señor Sedaris, no unwieldy amounts of social media traffic to deal with when the blog hit the airwaves and spreads across the globe. All you're left with is the fleeting feeling I had after seeing his really good reading in Tucson in November. If you haven't read any of his books, I highly recommend them. If you have a chance to see him read in your town, I suggest you go. It's a really great way to spend an evening.
I had two books signed from him after the reading, and we talked a bit about personal tragedies we both experienced. Thinking back, it was such a fleeting talk but also weirdly personal and jarring. On a hilarious note, I told him I was giving one of the signed books to my brother for Christmas. My brother always gives really thoughtful gifts, and I always get him something really useful like awesome socks. So, I told him I had to up my game. David wrote in the book, "You Deserved Better" to my brother. David's right, and David deserved better from my blog. Here's what I wrote back in November. Forgive the schmaltz. or don't.
FROM NOVEMBER 2019
Dear David,
I went with a few friends to see you read in Tucson in November. This must be the fourth or fifth time I've seen you over the years, and I never get tired of it. When I tell people I'm going to hear a guy read stories, a lot of people are skeptical. "Wait. So you've probably read the stories, and now you're going to hear some guy read them out loud?" If only they knew...that's almost exactly what it is, but it's also pretty darn amazing.
I love your writing because it's funny but it also makes you think and cry and wonder how in the hell you were able to write such a balancing act of a story. I've had stories where I laugh so hard my stomach hurts and tears stream down my face, and then this profound, emotionally difficult part comes along, and I am still crying from laughter but now also crying from sadness. Because I am so emotionally mature, I have many moments where I say, "Damn, dude. That's some real shit right there. Did you see him drop that real shit?" See. Emotional maturity.
In the everyday and the mundane and the millions of instances of small life tragedies, we are changed. We develop workarounds to deal. We become. I like how you shine a light on our neuroses and problems and pitfalls and our grace and lack of grace. Somehow in the parade of the best and the worst of people, there's still this love. I like how you steep us in the situations of your stories and show how we deal with the happenings of life around us.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? WE WILL NEVER KNOW? Fin.
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