Our Asian supermarket (the one I mentioned above where I’ve never seen dried legumes, but haven’t looked either) has had an endcap full of hand sanitizer the last two times I went. They seem to have two brands - one is a 70% alcohol-based sanitizer, and the other seems to be a non-alcohol sanitizer. Asian Family Center on Aurora if anyone in the Seattle area is looking. (And, to be clear, I haven’t been in two weeks. This is not a fresh report.)
In exciting news, there was exactly one bag of dried chickpeas at Safeway when we did our shopping Saturday, so we now actually have some. I’m still perplexed why this particular item seems to be in such short supply. I know everyone is baking at home - are they all making hummus, too?
I found some on the counter at Ace. And I semi-accidentally dumped it out. :eek:
I have never used the stuff at all, but I have been carrying some for a quick dousing as soon as I get back in the car.
I have been using a a travel size shampoo bottle full of homemade stuff, Isopropanol, Aloe, Mint extract. And I am a bit paranoid because it just snaps closed, and doesn’t really see to do that very securely, although no noticed spills so far.
Anyway, so at the counter of Ace they had cute little spray bottles, one green, one orange of official stuff. It unfortunately wasn’t at my station, but one I had to walk by. I grabbed the green stuff quickly passing by, for some reason assuming it would be mint like mine.
When I got back in the car, I noticed it was actually herbal which didn’t seem that bad, so sprayed my hands with that this time; and Oh My God does this shit stink!!. Instant sneezing fit and headache from the most horrible perfume I can ever imagine went into a “health product”, absolutely unusable. Held my head out the door like a dog driving home.
I decided to switch my handmade stuff to the good bottle, and dumped the nasty crap into a measuring cup. Then filled the spray bottle. I looked at the stuff in the measuring cup, there is no way I will ever use it, and even if I wanted to give it away, I would be giving it in a baggie or something stupid, so I just poured it out. And made a new batch of my stuff for the shampoo bottle as a backup.
Target today for the first time since SAH. They had signs out front listing items that were in stock/not in stuck. Usual suspects not in stock, Lysol, clorox wipes etc. Pretty long list of things in stock such as eggs, milk, baby wipes.
I didn’t go to the grocery side, but a few things I did notice - board games and Legos had lots of bare spots on shelves. There were NO bikes. Zero. Most bike accessories were cleaned out as well.
Cooking implements were picked over with a lot of empty hooks as well. Like nobody had a spatula or whisk before this?
Toddler clothes were really picked over too, but that might just be due to it getting warmer.
A lot of people did not. As hard as it is for me to imagine, apparently some people really did not cook prior to lockdown. It shouldn’t be that hard for me to imagine, as when I met my husband he was eating out all three meals a day and only kept some beverages and snacks in his place.
So yes, a lot of new comers to cooking had to run out and buy tools.
I went to my local Target a couple of weeks ago and it was the same deal. There was a white board out front listing common items that they had and didn’t have. It was the first time I had seen anywhere with hand sanitizer in quite a while but I didn’t need any
[/quote]
I have been doing much more cooking at home and decided that it was time to replace my frying pan and sauce pan that were 1993 wedding presents. The no-stick has been gone for over a decade. The cooking area was nearly completely barren but I was able to find one of each of my items. So while I had those items, the pandemic was my impetus to replace them.
They are in short supply here, too - I got a grocery delivery today from a primarily Indian place, and even they were out of chickpeas! They weren’t out of chana dal, though, so I bought a 4 lb. bag of those. They aren’t what we would normally use for many whole chickpea recipes, but they should make perfectly fine hummus.
Went to Lowe’s and Kroger today and was at Lowe’s Sunday. About 20% mask usage at Lowe’s, better at Kroger. All grocery items at Kroger today were available, only things I noticed still out of stock were isopropyl alcohol and Lysol or quat* style disinfectants. I got two bottles of the hand sanitizer they had, a pump spray of Suave brand 65% alcohol and Slate brand 70% alcohol liquid. The spray was 10 oz. for 3.99 and the Slate was 8 oz. at 6.99 (!). I also found disinfectant grade Clorox bleach at both places and bought 2 gallons because all the bleach I had before this started was sub-disinfectant grade.
One thing I’m noticing is that if there is a couple and one is wearing a mask, it’s ALWAYS the woman. At Lowe’s especially, it was as if the whole pandemic thing never happened other than, as I said, about 20% mask usage.
Here in northern Calvert County, I haven’t noticed anyone not wearing a mask in a store anytime in the past few weeks. That includes Wal-Mart, the local Ace Hardware (good luck getting in w/o mask, and you’d get thrown out on your ear if you didn’t wear it in the store), a few different chain groceries, and our local non-chain grocery.
Haven’t hit any big-box stores since early March; don’t need 'em for anything, thank goodness.
The local grocery stores are all pretty much 100% mask-required and both the Targets and the fancyish grocery store I do the bulk of my food shopping are limiting customer loads.
Toilet paper supply is slowly returning to normal but as per RTFirefly with an eclectic mix of brands, including multiple Spanish-language versions. Paper towels oddly are trailing - findable, but not consistently.
Overall I’d say the grocery stores are back at maybe 85% of normal, up from maybe 70% ~two weeks ago. Packaged bread which had been scarce has mostly returned, meat counters have re-opened albeit with reduced variety. Canned goods are slowly returning, though again still a little anemic as to variety. Produce has pretty much consistently remained robust, except for a few prepared items. Deli counters have re-opened.
I’m a little curious to see how long before everything returns to 100% of pre-pandemic( if it ever does exactly, there might be some small but permanent shifts in the supply lines ). Back to normal in a month or slow crawl to full normality over the year? No doubt any potential second wave is going to impact that as well, perhaps minus as much panic-buying as the first go around.
Just got back from Albertson’s. They seem totally incapable of supplying anything made of paper, while the other stores in town have copious quantities. Meats and produce were fully-stocked (crappy produce, but that is usual.) If they didn’t carry stuff we like frozen and in the meat case, this little pandemic would remove them from the store rotation forever.
BJ’s this morning, bu wasn’t paying attention to masks – didn’t consciously see any maskless people, anyway. Three at WalMart yesterday.
Some brand-name TP and off-brand PT (paper towels) at WalMart; plenty of both at BJ’s. The latter have increased their beef/pork/chicken limits from two to three of each.
That was another thing: Albertsons has a full page of things you are only allowed one of, ranging from ramen to TP to Kleenex. Not like they have any of that stuff, mind you. But it’s restricted. Drive 3 blocks to Staters (their primary competition) and not only are they fully stocked, but there are no restrictions on anything.
My hunting this week has been rewarding. Two 8oz pump bottles of hand sanitizer at Winco Monday on the way home, 2tub (75ct each) package of disinfectant wipes at Walgreens yesterday at lunch (happened to be in that aisle when the nice young lady put several packs on the shelf, I took my allowed one and gave one tub to a coworker whose hunting luck has been worse than mine), and four 12.5oz cans of Lysol at Raley’s (two at lunch, then stopped on the way home and they still had almost as much as they had at lunch, so I got another two). I think/hope that my squirrel-on-the-hunt urge has been appeased now that I do have some stock on hand. I did also get an online order of 4 18oz bottles of professional-grade hand sanitizer from Sally Beauty Supply during the week.
I’m still very much hoping life will soon return to at least a level of normal where finding such routine supplies isn’t such a huge triumph.
Earlier in this thread I mentioned ordering two gallons of quat type disinfectant from an industrial supply place. Similar (or same) active ingredients as Lysol concentrate. That shipment disappeared en route, been in contact and hopefully, they will be re-shipping.
Yes, that did cross my mind. The original shipment disappeared en route and I received the re-shipment yesterday. The replacement came in a plain box and I wondered if the original shipment came in a box that indicated what was in it.
Compared it to my nearly empty bottle of Lysol concentrate. The active ingredients are precisely the same but in the Lysol the percentage of active ingredients is 1.1856 and in this new stuff it’s 3.3. It’s meant to be diluted so should last the rest of my life! I take my own disinfectant to work to clean my workspace and equipment as the company’s only offering is bleach water and I’m not confident who’s mixing it or whether they are using disinfectant grade bleach.
I used to be one of the least germophobic people around and now I’m getting kind of OCD.
