Finally starting to see a real run on the grocery stores in Portland, at least if my local branches are an indication.
The bread aisle was almost completely cleaned out, but apparently people don’t much like whole wheat English muffins or burger buns, which is convenient because I do like whole wheat English muffins and burger buns.
Burger buns make sense as a leftover but I don’t understand English muffins. Compared to most bread items they keep well.
I mean, really, a run on premade bread is inherently farcical – it’s a terrible food item to stockpile, it doesn’t keep and by volume you’re mostly storing air.
But if I was going to, I’d hit the bagels first.
Bread keeps very well if you put it in the freezer. Just scrape off any significant collections of ice crystals before thawing, else it’ll get soggy.
The volume thing is a fair point, though: we do stockpile bread under normal circumstances, but one should probably cut it from the list if storage space is even *thinking* about becoming an issue.
this is true, but freezer space is typically the most premium space if you’re trying to build up a reserve, since most people have only a small freezer in their fridge (sidenote: if you want preservation over convenience, turning your fridge all the way to cold may convert part of it into a shitty freezer and will improve longevity in most of the rest of it).
anyway I was at the store and thinking about the toilet paper hypothesis – that it’s bulky and low margin, so stores stock as little as possible to not run out under normal conditions – and this totally applies to bread too. it’s cheap, it’s mostly air, and it expires faster than most stuff. so the tp hypothesis would explain why bread goes quickly too.
I was just thinking earlier today about how grateful I am for the eight people who are not here.
Once upon a time, long before I lived here, this house had a dozen inhabitants. They had *much* lower standards for the amount of indoor living space one person should have–by my own culture’s standards this house is not *ridiculously* roomy, though it could comfortably fit perhaps one or two more people–but nevertheless we have quite a bit of storage space, especially in a pinch.
For people with enough storage space and perhaps stability of housing (both of which, I am aware, are in all-too-short supply for many demographics), I continue to recommend supplementary freezers [link]. Very handy for stockpiling of all kinds. Do try to put them in areas where you can keep an eye on them, though: you don’t want it to go unnoticed if they break or get left open [link]. (I admit that our own freezer placement is not great, and we have occasionally lost food to this. Painful, but I expect it’s still worth it overall. Might also take it upon myself to do routine checks.)
(We also have a secondary mini-fridge, but we currently don’t keep it plugged in. Might come in handy for an intra-household quarantine, though!)
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#my parents may have run out of money but they still have a generation’s worth of accumulated physical capital #which I am very glad to have access to #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #food #covid19 #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
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