A spin off from Asuka’s thread about things you bought during early shortages that you didn’t like, how about things you bought that you DO like?
Alkaline water. Bought when I couldn’t find gallons of drinking water to make coffee, and he loves the coffee it makes. I don’t drink coffee, but I’ll take his word for it.
Kleenex Hand Towels. Substituted for the paper towel I couldn’t get. Very handy in the bathroom to clean up messes or clean my hands when they have lotion or whatever on them.
Cheap toilet paper. Well, not the REALLY cheap, but I was buying Charmin. We have septic. The Angel Soft not as expensive breaks down more easily.
Canned onion soup. So many uses. Nasty as a soup, but great as the liquid in my insta-pot, and a pretty good gravy add. The onions are cooked to death and in a sauce or gravy, they basically dissolve, and since he’s not an onion fan, this works.
Corned beef. The meat dept was cleaned out except for marked down, two pound slabs of post-St. Pat’s Day corned beef. Bought five and pulled the last one out of the freezer a month ago. I’m ready for more if I can find it before next March.
Aldi, at least in my area, started selling a canned corned beef from Brazil. It was great! The best canned corned beef I can remember having, much less fat than others, less salty in flavor, actually tastes more “beefy”.
Should have bought more of that, and more black beans. Need to go back to Aldi, but the last two weeks they’ve been little zoos.
The old standby Kraft Mac 'n Cheese. My Wife bought about 5 boxes. We have our sort of additional pantry of stacked canned and boxed COVID just in case stuff in our utility room. I kept eyeing that Mac 'n Cheese all summer and finally broke down and cooked up a box last night. I bet I haven’t had it in 15 years.
Bidet. Mrs. Lines bought one early on (although we had plenty of TP due to our Costco buying habits). While I can take it or leave it, it has reduced the household toilet paper consumption by 60-70%. It pays for itself.
Otherwise, dried garbanzo beans / chickpeas. I mostly use them for making homemade jalapeno/lime/cilantro hummus, but had previously been using canned varieties as it was just right for the size servings I’d been making. Buying dried let me customize the size of the serving, even if I had to plan ahead a bit more to allow for hydration.
I wanted to use chickpea flour for a recipe, but couldn’t find any. Instead I ground up some chickpeas in my food processor, then finished with mortar/pestle. Worked great!
I didn’t lay in much–I already had run into a great sale on liquid hand soap months earlier so I was all set with that but my daughter works at Trader Joe’s and she introduced me to the little spray bottles of hand sanitizer they sell. They’re just purse sized and smell like grapefruit, love the stuff. I did lay in a few bottles of that and it’s come in very handy. Aside from that, I did stock in some canned juice and various types of soup in case I came down with the 'rona and needed some easy food for sickies and I also bought a good thermometer and a pulse ox meter, that’s just sensible to have regardless but especially if you’re sick and wondering if you ought to go to the hospital. Pulse ox under 90 means “get your butt to the emergency room, dumbass!”