I remembered to check the pet food aisle while shopping earlier this week. There did seem to be a definite cat food shortage, but different flavors of each brand were affected. The dog food section was very well stocked, aside from a few flavors of Cesar’s.
Cream cheese and cream cheese spreads were wiped out; I’m not sure if that would have been related to the holidays or not. Honest Tea was completely missing from the cold section and in very low supply on the shelf. Also, my mom is again reporting that Evian water is out of stock at multiple stores.
I went shopping yesterday (Jewel/Osco in Chicago) and just from the items on my list there was nearly no orange juice or Gatorade (those shelves nearly empty!) but an absolute sh*t-ton of salmon.
No apparent shortage of toilet paper, so fickle fate wasn’t precisely making December 2021 feel like March 2020. Just different enough to be even more disconcerting.
Not personally seeing this, but I personally heard about it on the news this morning. Seems McDonald’s in Japan is suffering a French-fry shortage. They usually get them from Vancouver, but Covid and I think it was a fire have closed down much of that port’s operations. Some sort of potato airlift is being planned from the mainland US. As it is now, the Japanese are limited only to the small size of fries, which I’ve heard is only half the size of the small in America’s McDoanald’s. No Super Size Me available now.
That’d require trimming the fat, then rendering it if you wanted to really do it right. Plus then you need to cook the pork - which may or may not be in the plan.
I like the bacon drippings option: adds loads of flavor, and you also get BACON.
Depending on the recipe the lard’s wanted for, I was thinking just of cooking the pork, removing the fat from other drippings after they’re cold, and using that; which is pretty similar to what you’re recommending doing with bacon, if I understand you right. I agree that that wouldn’t work for all purposes, but then neither will bacon drippings.
A lot of the flavor difference would be extra salt from the bacon.
Using pork drippings is something I haven’t tried, thank you for the suggestion. Bacon grease is good cause bacon improves everything, but it’s just not the taste I’m going for. I’m doing this for entertainment purposes, you don’t really save any money making refried beans from scratch.
I once tried rendering beef fat to make suet. What a stinky mess, the only time my kitchen was worse was the one time I roasted a goose. And the time I put a whole block of Velveeta cheese in the micro-wave, but that was different. I knew rendering beef or roasting a goose could be messy, I had no idea I could blow the door off the microwave when the block of cheese exploded.
I went grocery shopping today and there was a severe lack of Hillshire Farm lunch meat. They were on sale, but this is the first time the shelves were so empty.
Also, the meat/seafood shop only had one person working; I had gotten there at about 9:30 and he was busy trying to get the shelves loaded, and asked me to come back in about 20-25 minutes. So I did the rest of my shopping and then went back to get my seafood.
Jasmine rice cups have been gone from most stores again over the past 8ish weeks. I scored two packs at Shaws Monday, though. I could’ve bought more because they had several, but that’s not fair to other shoppers.
I like a Cheyenne little cigar once or twice a week at the end of the day. I usually smoke the grape flavored but shortly before Thanksgiving they became hard to find. Slowly the other flavors started to disappear until just Menthol remained. Now those too have disappeared. I did luck into 2 packs of Crisscross brand regulars on Monday that will hopefully last me into February.
Instacart Shoppers. They only give you a 3 Day window of availabilty-meaning anytime over 3 days you might make it to the top of the list.
We got hit pretty hard here in Northern Virginia with a snow storm that blocked I-95 for 36 hours and closed schools for a week. So that and a surge in cases of the new covid-19 that makes a shortage of people willing to shop and drive. I hear that store shelves are empty too but can’t prove it since I did not dig out my car and will have to wait until Mr. sunbeam finishes melting the snow.
Our old cat was just diagnosed with kidney failure and our vet recommended we find as many sources of prescription food as possible because they sometimes run out.
Late last night on our way home we stopped for food at a Rutters. They had no coffee. I’ve never seen a gas station run out of joe.
Even worse they were completely out of all sizes of their famous peanut butter chocolate milk.
Interestingly, I had trouble finding the jasmine rice cups from the start of the pandemic until about a month ago - now all my local stores have them.
Frankly, while I’ve seen a lot of shortages and usually I have to accept a substitute for at least one item every time I shop - the shortages haven’t been any worse in 2021 than they were in the last half of 2020.
And none of them - except the damn rice cups - were particularly persistent - if I couldn’t find an item on one trip it would be there the next time I shopped that store.
Yeah, the rice cups came back here a few months ago, but now they’re gone again. Rice is one of the things that is supposed to be easy to make yourself, but I’m consistently terrible at it, even with a rice cooker, so…
I’ve tried to convince myself that basmati instead is okay because it’s been in stock more often, but I just don’t like it. #FirstWorldProblems But that’s okay, they often haven’t had it the past 3ish weeks either.
I haven’t seen any canned cranberry sauce with whole cranberries for weeks now. There’s acres of the jellied stuff, but none at all of the kind I want in any of the stores here.
Can you find frozen cranberries? Cranberry sauce is pretty easy to make and you can do fancy stuff like making a nice thick jelly mixed with cranberry jam with two pots. Orange slices and or crushed cinnamon sticks added after everything is cooked adds extra flavor and color.
For a little kick do what I do and add a couple of shots of orange liquor and half a cup of vodka after it is cooked. Booze makes everything more fun. Stick with the basic recipe if you are using it to feed children or for cooking other things.
