Let me start this post with a disclaimer: the “i” key on my keyboard is not working well right now so there may be a few ridiculous typos in this post.
I am sorry it’s been so long since my last post. A lot has happened. I have been to a wedding, a funeral, a ski trip, Leah and I bought a house, COVID-19 has become a global pandemic which has upended the lives of most Americans.
There’s so much to talk about that I am not even going to try to do it all in this post. I will slowly catch up on everything through posts over the next week. It is hard not to start with COVID-19 though. There are so many questions and unknowns that it’s hard to know where to start. So, I will start with the most ridiculous one: toilet paper.
Leah and I are legitimately running out. We have 2 rolls left and are now both working from home full time for the foreseeable future. I make fun of Leah all the time for how much she uses so my guess is we will be good until the end of the week. For some reason, people have decided that if they are quarantined for 2-3 weeks, they will need a years supply of toilet paper. This is batshit crazy. It has now made it next to impossible for us to buy some and has led to a serious question about how to manage this in a plastic free life.
Normally, we buy the individually wrapped rolls of Scott’s which come wrapped in paper and that’s it. Almost every other toilet paper sold comes wrapped in plastic. If we are out and our only option is to buy plastic wrapped toilet paper, do we do it? For Leah’s sake, the answer will be yes. The long term answer to this is probably just to get a bidet to attach to the toilet. My brother’s girlfriend has one and swears by it.
As we looked at empty aisles in the grocery store as we attempted to stock up on food, we were at a loss for what to buy. We immediately got our usual, lots of fresh fruits and veggies. These are all perishable though. As we walked through the rest of the grocery store however, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy anything packaged in plastic. It literally defeated our entire reason for going. I told Leah that if we wanted any non-perishables, she was going to have to be the one to pick them out and put them in the cart. I think this entire endeavor has made her acutely aware of how much plastic is used and I could tell she felt really badly. She ended up only buying one frozen pizza.
Some of the fresh fruits and veggies we will be making meals with and freezing but there is still a large gap in our preparedness. We are just going to have to get creative in our cooking.
The other thing that I was surprised was totally gone was eggs. It makes sense as they tend to last a pretty long time but I think I really just wasn’t ready for what we walked into. We only have 5 eggs left so I may be learning to make pasta dough with just flour and water.
Look forward to some potentially ridiculous recipes in the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I hope everyone stays safe and healthy.