is there any more pie?

I turned on the local radio station this morning to hear two pieces of unwelcome news.  First, the governor announced that self-isolation and the virus were going to last for months and not weeks.

Months????

I refuse to believe this.  I really do.  I am ready to get in my car and drive to Idaho and the lake RIGHT NOW.  Banjo Man has pointed out that motel rooms might not be safe.  Well, hell, isn’t that what our four tubes of Chlorox wipes are for???  Huh???

Yesterday I watched two episodes of “Extreme RV” during my afternoon rest.  Gas will be cheap this summer.  Why not travel in our own virus-proof motorized shell?

The second piece of news I didn’t need to hear before I’d even had my coffee was that our local grocery store chain, Stop & Shop, had opened at 6 am this morning to accommodate the shopping needs of the elderly (over 60), but the stores ended up being packed with shoppers.  Unfortunately there was still no chicken, no hamburger, no paper products, etc.

Just a note:  it’s very weird–shocking, even– to be considered “elderly”.   Nonetheless, Stop & Shop wanted to give its elderly customers an hour and a half every morning in which to shop without worrying about all those germ-carrying college kids back from spring break raiding the ice cream aisle and breathing.

So, according to our governor (one of the least liked governors in America, according to the polls, and I agree wholeheartedly), this pandemic and its consequences could last months.  And the grocery stores shelves were not stocked.  So when would they be?

(Son Ben in Texas had reported the same thing at his local Walmart.  He’d snagged the last two cans of mixed fruit yesterday; the meat and chicken counters were empty.)

Banjo Man joined me upstairs when I make my coffee.  He always checks on me because the one morning he didn’t (a few days after my surgery) I passed out on the living room couch.

The poor man will never forget it.

Anyway, this morning he listened to my ranting about future months of isolation, how and if we will be able to buy food a month from now, should we be rationing what we have stored in the freezer, should we get a gun and hope that a wild turkey strolls across the driveway (as they are wont to do) and if our society goes hungry for a few thousand years will we be making bat soup just like those crazy Chinese people who started this mess in the first place???!!!

I’ll admit it.  This self-isolation along with membership in the “high risk” population in a world of killer germs has me freaked.

Harley Chick and I talked about it yesterday.  She and Hot Rod Russ were working on using up everything they had in their freezer, as were we.  But she had friends who were buying freezers and loading them with chicken and burger and all sorts of things (when they could find it).   So were we doing the right thing by eating up all of our stored food?

Banjo Man suggested–in a quiet, calm way so as not to set me off again–that we inventory our food and see exactly what we have on hand.  After that he would visit some grocery stores (as long as they were fairly empty) and see what he could scrounge for food.

So we did exactly that.  And it turns out we have enough food to last for at least 6 weeks.  The freezers are stocked with everything we could possibly want.  A few gaps–mozzarella cheese, rice, white beans, bread and fig jam–can be dealt with if we get the chance.

So I am calm.  And now we, the high-risk elderly people, are not going anywhere again today.  In fact, I’m defrosting chicken breasts for a Cajun recipe tonight.  It will probably last for 3 days, but that’s okay.

I just ordered fig jam on Amazon.  It’s an essential ingredient for my beloved toasted cheese sandwiches.

By the way, my Olive Garden potato and sausage soup was MAGNIFICENT.  I used chourico sausage (browned first), chicken broth, diced potatoes, chopped onions, some chopped spinach and even some chopped broccoli.  Plus a cup of heavy cream (I grabbed the last carton at Cumberland Farm Monday) at the end.

This is also great in gumbo.

I might be elderly, but I can still cook.