Quarantine, Day 10

QT.Day 10: I’m now eating some strange food combos—delving into a questionable food hoard I should’ve tossed last year—if not the year before. PS: the chocolate seems fine. Bread, crackers, pasta, and even flour is sold out in most stores. We hereby declare the gluten-free era to be officially over. Stolen from Angela Morrison’s wall. I won’t mention the TP shortage. You know shit’s getting real when the TP and booze flies off the shelves. This is like shopping in pre-Glasnost USSR. 

QT Day—whatever. Eating increasingly strange food combos. Lunch has extended into dinner hour. Drinking is up by 41% across the board. Who knows what lurks in the dark recesses of the pantry. The Preppers must be having a field day, drinking up their liquor stash, and you know what comes next, the ammo... 

Today I decided to dress up and wear a sweater I was saving for good, and put on a bra in order to go shopping for food. Out of milk, and low on hot cereal, I ventured forth into the world today. No Red Mill cereal to be hard in the stores, no Goldfish or decent tea. But I found two 6-packs of Pellegrino grapefruit soda And some milk. Score! Shopping is a socially distanced contact sport. Cattle prods on my shopping list.

My shopping routine. I wear gloves and mask. I maintain at least 6 feet between myself and other shoppers. I use a credit card. I put my groceries back in the cart and wheel it to the car where I bag it. No bag, or bagger necessary. I wipe down my keys, credit card, gloves, turn them inside out, and I wipe my hands, and the inside of my car—especially the door handles, steering wheel, and seat belts—with an alcohol wipe. 

I rotate my masks as the virus cannot live long on porous surfaces. Also, the virus cannot live for long on porous surfaces—like masks. The dashboard is a good place to cook your masks and gloves as it easily reaches 130º on a sunny day. Even if its not sunny, the dashboard gets pretty warm. You can also give cloth masks a zap in the microwave. And I do wipe down my gloves. Q-tips are useful for touching keypads when you forget you gloves.Since I only have a few pair of gloves, I use a rotation system.

For the COVID-19 victory garden, focus on the brassica vegetable family first, and lettuces, so you’ll have food sooner. All leaves are edible. Then the solanaceae—tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant; and the cucurbit family—squashes (you can eat the flowers too). The root vegetables are long term, but you can eat the greens of beets, turnips, kohlrabi, and carrots (but not potatoes!)