When I return form Texas, I will look forward to shopping in smaller places again.
My favorite place to shop right now is Trader Joes, though again, I really don't like shopping during this pandemic. I do miss their cooking samples. When my kids were young they would get excited in being able to visiting the "snack lady".
PS.... Lovendures, still praying for rain in AZ for you! 99 days??!!? That 'shortage' seems like torture, and especially for the environs and the precious wildlife ....?
Our farmers markets here are open, and they are doing a great job - masks, distance, etc. The problem is that you have to wait on line for each block of the market, then on line again at each vendor. And only 1 person per household. So it's too much work for me and as much as I love my husband, he's not capable of adjusting whatever I give him on a list to whatever is available that day.
Luckily, our main meat provider/farmer, has a showroom outside of town. I place an order via email and go to pick it up at my convenience, I'm usually the only person there, and this way I just throw my pounds of meat and eggs into the car and drive right home.
I also see that a few of the local farmers are getting their produce into Lazy Acres, and they have lots of good organic choices in any case, so that's another reason I stick with them.
Had no idea people were seeing shortages but I keep getting the urge to stock up again, the frantic kind like we did in March. I am getting this urge to fill up my chest freezer again. Now I know why after reading this thread.
I was at one of our local Smart & Final discount supermarkets today. I was getting some stuff for my daughter's new apartment (pantry items - a housewarming gift!). It was before lunchtime.
Today I noticed some shelves were mostly bare for certain things that were there a few weeks ago:
- dishwashing liquid
- canned soup
- canned vegies
- canned fruit
- PB & Jelly
- rice
- flour
- tissues
- TP
- candles
- corn meal
- sponges
The most "abundant" aisles were: cereal, junk foods and sodas.
This new shortage will impact everyone in some way.
I am having difficulty linking the article to my phone but their is now an aluminum shortage and anything found in an aluminum can will soon be difficult to find. It seems that since people are staying home, kegs are not being used ( and soda fountain drinks) and those beverages are being drunk out of more cans. Companies are scrambling to get their aluminum , especially beer companies but all are impacted.
Hm... maybe it will spark a greater return to recyclable glass containers.
Not that aluminum is not recyclable, but mining it is not great.
@lovendures Where I'm at in Michigan (I'm sure it's the same elsewhere, but I just don't know) bottle returns are open but severely limited - like, I had to run into Walmart to pick up my mom's birthday present from the photo department and they had a worker at the door making sure people were masked, and another worker at the bottle return. Only two people were allowed in at a time and a sign said people were limited to 10 minutes and $25 maximum on returns.
I have probably $100 worth of diet coke cans in bags in my garage. And I don't anticipate being able to actually get them to the stores to return anytime soon. It's not worth waiting in line.
We were buying cream and half/half in glass bottles from a well known organic dairy. Stopped because the store won't take them back, and it's a $3 deposit per bottle.