The Art of Grocery Shopping
I have done many things in my years on earth. One of the weirdest and most challenging is getting a complete grocery order now-a-days.
Being a regular on the Giant grocery pickup scene, I figured that nothing much would change for me. I’d make up my menu, check my recipes, and order what I needed. No worries, right?
However, the grocery gods are not cooperating with my plan. That and covid 19 has made an exceptional amount of Americans into absolute lunatics.
Most things I order at store are out of stock. I can’t wrap my mind around some of the items. Minute Rice has been my holy grail as of late. But we will think about that later on.
In order to actually get an order, I have had to erect a complicated, well considered plan of attack that would make any military bigwig proud. It all starts with the number of places that have curbside delivery in your area. Luckily, where I live it isn’t hard to find the service. It’s hard to get a time slot. So the plan begins to evolve.
I learned that to claim a reserved pick up time, I need to have stuff in the cart and pay for it. Most place will let you change your cart with some degree of ease up until the time that your order closes. So go ahead, grab the time slot and order thirty dollars worth of ice cream and candy. As you determine what you really need, you can remove the junk and add the meats and veggies…or not. Do this at three or four stores.
Once your order is closed, go ahead and grab your next spot. Now. The early morning hours (between 3 and 6…AM) are the best time slot grabbing times. Stores have dedicated personnel who stalk the internet at this ridiculous time of day with no other duty than to capriciously open random times for the groveling public to snap up. You gotta be there. Remember, this is war…or grocery shopping. Same thing.
Don’t forget to load that cart with strange and wonderful things…and pay for them(or you lose your spot quickly.). Now comes the fun part.
Say you ordered 7 kumquats from store A as part of your order. Store A failed to have them in stock and, since covid-19 renders stores incapable of restocking for some reason or providing reasonable substitutes, the just tell they are out of stock in an email of text…along with half of the rest of your order. What now? What now?
Simple. Have another time slot at the next store where you have commandeered at time slot. Fill in your missing products (7 kumquats)as you go. It is good to have these slots a day or so apart, so it may mean many sleep deprived mornings getting the primo time slots at the correct store. I have three revolving store time slot roulette spots. Not only does it enable me to actually get the complete ingredients for any given recipe, but it also keeps me mentally sharp juggling the addition and removal of products to keep the time slot AND get my needed products.
The system isn’t perfect. It falls short where random hoarding happens. It took forever, two states, and the help of a trusted friend to get a pack of toilet paper. But we are set for a bit on that score. The latest crisis is the omnipresent shortage of Minute Rice or Success rice. I don’t quite understand how this is in short supply, but I must deal with it. I am on my third round of store roulette hunting for lazy person rice. I now have my husband checking specialty stores. (Today he has a mission to a local butcher shop to try to find beef too. Someone mentioned a meat shortage and now the shelves empty faster than you can believe. And the pickers for the grocery pick up just seem to avoid providing beef altogether)
Even though I did manage to score some success rice on line. I can not rest until a box of minute rice resides in my closet. It will mark the beginning of the next shortage. And I will live to search another day.