Welcome back to SLEB after a 15-month hiatus. The Year of COVID changed eating habits. Restaurant closures meant people cooked more. Boxed specialty meals like Hello Fresh enjoyed a rush, then declined when people added up the cost of frequent indulgence. Baking became an activity on homebound weekends. Yeast, like toilet paper and pound puppies, was in short supply.
Now, some good news: salad bars at Lowes Foods have reopened, as have pizza and hot food bars at Harris Teeter and wing bars at Food Lion. Increased hand hygiene is recommended. Most stores provide sanitizing wipes.
The not-so-good news is that grocery prices are rising, a result of many virus-related
situations. A nickel here, a dime there adds up. One way of combating this is to purchase foods in their simplest form: minimally or unprocessed, no sauces, flavorings or fancy packaging. I’m not sure paper products will ever be the same. Have you noticed the unfamiliar brands with often disappointing quality? Even that is still rationed, in some stores.
I have two wonderful rescue kitties, and contribute to feeding homeless ones. Twenty-five pound bags of kibble and litter save dollars but lifting and dragging them into and out of the car are a chore. I discovered that online sites like Chewy.com offer not only good prices but free delivery on orders over a certain dollar value. Once the box is dropped at my door I can navigate one bag at a time to pantry storage. This helps when ordering canned food in favorite flavors, which may be limited at supermarket.
Frozen pizza sales soared during the pandemic, encouraging producers to try new varieties, some even more laughable than cauliflower: How about Digiorno’s “flakey” croissant crust? What next? Biscuit?
Here’s a good deal: Lowes Foods slashes outdated baked goods by 50 percent, puts them on a free-standing shelf in back of store near dairy cases. Watch for cinnamon buns (best I’ve found anywhere), lemon meringue pie, challah, muffins. Commercial baked goods are laced with preservatives, so a day over matters little, especially breads for toasting.
Despite some crazy April-May weather, including cold and hail, strawberries were delicious. End-of-season berries ripened and sweetened by the recent heat wave make the best jam. Just don’t put berries in muffins; strawberries, with a high water content, dissolve into muffin batter leaving big red wet spots, with seed specks.
Speaking of seeds: Scrape out cantaloupe seeds, mix with potting soil, place pot in the sun, water a little and in a week appears some lovely decorative greenery that lasts for a month.
How’s that for creative recycling?
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May 24, 2021 at 09:12PM
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Spend Less, Eat Better: Catching Up | Features | thepilot.com - Southern Pines Pilot
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