Coronavirus Good To The Last Bite

Monster cookies. I only had one and half cups of chocolate chips instead of two a recipe required. But I found the remnants of a bag of pecans and a tiny amount of coconut that had been sitting in the fridge for who knows how long and mixed them in. They were some of the most amazing cookies I have ever made.

  

This morning I read a New York Times article about how consumer's grocery habits had changed. Not only were consumers buying products in larger quantities, but they were also figuring out how to use all of their food down to the last drop.

I realized I fit right into that last category of change.

"Regrow your kitchen scraps," proclaimed the YouTube video I watched last week. They planted vegetable parts I would typically throw away, scallion ends, bell pepper seeds, and celery bottoms and showed how quick they grow. (The YouTube link is at the bottom of this post.) The simplest one was the green onions. You just cut off the bottoms - roots with 1-2 inches of its white stalk - plant them with the white tips above the dirt and in a week you will have new green onions. Just clip off the green ends and eat. Then a week later, that part you had cut off will have regrown into a new green stalk ready to cut and eat. Can I have an endless supply of green onions?

I have also been going through my cupboards and refrigerator finding obscure food that I haven't eaten because I didn't know what to do with them. The can of kidney beans became part of a turkey soup; the balsamic vinegar I bought months ago (hopefully not years ago) became balsamic chicken thighs, a new household favorite; and my claim to fame - the lentils that I turned into pie weights. I don't like lentils. I have no idea why they were there in the cupboard, but then I read that they make the perfect pie weights. And sure enough, they have worked great to blind bake 3 pie crusts so far.

My son just finished working on a merit badge for the Boy Scouts on sustainability which covered of all things, food waste.

"Are you going to eat that?" I asked my son who had one large untouched piece of rib roast on his plate. "No," he said. He had taken 2 large pieces and now one just sat there. I took his plate to the kitchen, into a baggie went the slice of meat, and then into the refrigerator.

When he complained that he didn't want to eat leftovers for lunch the next day, I said its because we are minimizing food waste as discussed in your merit badge book.

Surprisingly, he brightened and ate every single bite.

Take care and be safe.

Posts Tuesday and Saturday.

Regrow Your Kitchen Scraps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk2Z954prz4

Coronavirus Invincibility Masks?

What a difference a week makes.

A week ago, the CDC said the general public should not wear masks unless they were sick or caring for someone who had the coronavirus. Wearing a mask didn't prevent you from catching the coronavirus, but if you had it, wearing a mask would help you from spreading it to others. The danger of always wearing a mask  was that taking a mask on and off meant that you were touching your face, thereby increasing your chance of becoming infected.

Fast forward one week, now the CDC says people should wear a mask because it is helpful to prevent community transmission of covid-19. The CDC Director Robert Redfield said up to one in four people infected with the virus could be asymptomatic. In other words, you can have no symptoms but still be spreading the disease. Even a cut up t-shirt would be better than nothing. 

During my grocery store run a week ago, few people wore mask. No plastic shields separated checkers  from the customers and while they wore gloves, they did not wear masks. Everyone was very good about giving each other space. The store had fewer customers and they seemed calmer than the previous week when the stay-at-home order was instituted. It seemed that the initial panic had subsided.

Fast forward to yesterday. The majority of people at Ralphs wore masks. Plastic barriers were in place for the masked checkers. There were a lot more people in the grocery store and a I saw the fear creeping back into some people's eyes. But my biggest concern was the social/physical distance gap between people had
decreased. 

In the milk aisle I suddenly found myself ambushed by masked bandits. Four shopping carts driven by six people in masks surrounded me. I said an expletive, left my cart where it was, and waited a safe distance away until the group of strangers broke up. The ambush repeated itself in the bread aisle. 

Even our modern day superheroes, the grocery checker, she leaned forward to ask me a question even though I was not behind her plastic barrier because I was bagging my groceries.

Even scarier were the increased number of individuals in their 70s and 80s shopping in the store since the crisis began. They were wearing masks. Perhaps the masks gave them the confidence to go shopping, but remember a non-medical mask only helps you from spreading it, not getting it.

When I mentioned this to my mother as I dropped off her groceries, she said she had heard that that was the CDC's big worry when they recommended that people should wear masks. People might feel safer with masks and would violate the social distancing and stay-at-home rules.

Everyone, please remember these three rules: 1, stay-at-home unless you have to go out; 2, keep practicing social and physical distancing; and 3, a mask does not make you invincible to the coronavirus so remember rules 1 and 2 . Until this week, the CDC was saying that wearing a mask was more dangerous than not wearing one.

Be safe and be healthy.

Posts: Monday, Thursday, Saturday

The New Bell Ringers for Charity

I’m sure everyone out there has been asked by their local grocer to donate money to charity.

I don’t remember when it started. Perhaps it was a year ago when I began noticing the clear plastic cans taped to the check-out counters asking for donations. Then about three months ago I remember being asked by my cashier if I wanted to donate a $1 to charity or round off my purchase to the nearest dollar. And now, not only is the cashier asking me if I want to donate to charity, the touchtone screen where you sign or key in your pin asks you if you want to donate to charity.

So I wondered, are the grocery stores really doing this out of the goodness of their hearts?

When all that was involved was taping a plastic container to the counter, I figured the charity put it there, someone came in once a week to collect the donations and then the container was taped back to the counter for another week, so there was no cost on the grocery store’s part.

But when grocery store cashiers started asking for donations, I started to wonder. I mean, they have obviously had training to ask for donations. The stores definitely put pressure on the cashiers to ask for donations. If the cashiers don’t ask, the customer receives a free 2-Liter soda, and I’m sure the employee would be reprimanded if that happened. Even if a cashier didn’t ask for a donation, I’m not sure I’d be willing to bust them because they didn’t ask. I'd probably thank them.

And now with the inclusion of the message on the touch screen that some computer programmer somewhere had to write the code for, and another to separate the donations from the rest of a customer’s purchase and then someone else in accounting cutting checks to the charities for the donated money, there is obviously a significant cost to the grocery store.

Again I ask, are the stores really doing this out of the goodness of their hearts? Are they really not comped in some way? At a minimum they must be receiving a write-off and the CEO probably receives a nice dinner and certificate at the end of the year by the charity for doing such a wonderful job. I wonder if the charities kick in any money to help train the staff--money that was donated to the cause?

I remember working at a large bank that made a huge push every year for their employees to contribute to a major charity. Sure it was all “volunteer”, but when every employee is required to return a form whether a donation is included or not, with a record of what you donated last year and how much you should contribute this year based on your salary, and departments are recognized based on their level of participation, it all gets a little seedy. Especially, when the scandal broke out in the 90’s about how almost all of that charity's money went to the people who ran the charity and for administrative costs and almost none of the money went to the people in need.

So again I wonder what the grocery store gets out of this pro bono work? Perhaps nothing, just a sense of doing something for the community. But what a great deal for the charities if that’s the case. The charities don’t have to pay people to stand outside the grocery stores begging for money. The charities actually have people working for them inside the store that potential donors have to talk to (we can’t avoid them by walking out the other door otherwise we’d be arrested for shoplifting), who they don’t have to pay. Grocery store employees that can use the peer pressure of those standing in line behind the targeted customer, or their familiarity with the customer to make their customers’ feel like a heel when they tell the cashier that they won’t round that .90 up to a dollar to help needy children.

Perhaps the grocery store's are trying to make up for their heavy handed tactics during the grocery strike--but I doubt it. Nothing's for free.