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Hard to buy fresh chicken online the last five times I tried.  Last time received boneless and skinless chicken thighs via Costco.  We wanted bone in and skin on for grilling but that is ok.  This time, no fresh chicken available at all so tried to get chicken marinated in schwarma but that was no more.  Many neighbors are also finding eggs to be a problem.

I'm also finding it a no-go when I try to order bone-in, skin on chicken breasts in northern Virginia via Instacart (Wegmans, Giant). I can order bone in thighs and drumsticks, though. I'm wondering if companies are just deboning and skinning all the breasts?! In the dairy department, I've basically given up on finding mozzarella cheese, online, as well. 

That is interesting about cheese in northern VA.  We are mostly ok here with cheese.  I purchased gift packages of various cheeses before all this craziness from military exchange online and so glad I did.  

We have to go to work every day so on line grocery delivery doesn't make sense for us. Last run, my husband was able to find everything (WF Northern Va). We also have access to breakfast and lunch while working at the hospital.  We made it 2 1/2 weeks- we keep adding to a (somewhat aspirational) grocery list until one of us decides it is a necessity. I also have a dear friend who won't listen to reason and voluntarily shops at least 3 times a week to get out of the house. She will drop off perishables though I have stopped asking her as I don't want to enable her. I don't have Amazon Fresh (if that's what it's called) but ordered freeze dried coffee and a new frother on Amazon so I could make Dalgona coffee when my vacation started. A novelty for sure, I will make it to drown my sorrows as the week off was to prep for our daughter's now cancelled wedding. Fingers crossed things will be normal in late September. 

We have resigned ourselves to staying home for at least one year.  This year was a special year to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary but had to cancel all trips.  But we feel very, very  fortunate that beyond our minor inconveniences, we are still healthy and can enjoy our home life.  Instacart orders maybe getting easier to find shopper slots now.  Although no Japanese markets are hooked up with instacart, H-mart is and I was able to put in order for hard to find some Japanese items.  Lots of veggies.  H-mart is Korean but they carry many Japanese items too.

Barb, please stay safe.  Before retiring, my husband also worked at hospital and if he was still working, I would be worried big time.

Sorry about the destruction of the food deliveries, Rinshin.

I started my isolation on March 16. Since then I have depended on three ways of getting food: going shopping in person early in the morning (starting out at 7:30am at the very latest) with mask, gloves and granny cart, once in 7 to 11 days; ordering from a local restaurant that I want to return to when the crisis is over (that's expensive!); and asking the neighborhood mutual aid society to do some shopping for me, mostly for cold drinks and a few other sundries.

I had already stocked up on some things so I didn't have to buy any more of them, e.g. oats, jam and and canned tuna. Just before I went into isolation I bought some boneless chicken breasts which I poached and froze, and some ground round which I made into meatballs and froze.

For a while the supermarkets were out of flour, but the last time I was in Key Food they had put out a new supply of Heckers unbleached white flour in 2lb bags. I think I have enough. I'm not making yeast bread but I hope to make mini-muffins.

I had not had the use of my kitchen for 2 1/2 years, but just before the pandemic hit my stove came back on and the super fixed the kitchen sink. Just in time! As long as I have the ingredients I'm happily cleaning the rust off my culinary skills.

As for what I'm making, I'm on a nostalgia kick. The meatballs are from an old recipe from the 70's. Other recipes I'm cooking are from the days when I was new in my apartment, or from the time when I took home-cooked lunches to work, before I retired. And homemade applesauce - that's a standby with me.

I've also tried my hand at two new things: caramelized onions and roasted broccolini.

I've rediscovered the joys of a tuna melt and English-muffin pizza. Oh, I've had tuna melts in diners, but a homemade tuna melt is special - you can prepare it your way!

I went to the grocery yesterday, oddly enough, just for booze (Crown Regal apple-infused whiskey, great with sparkling cider).  Oh, and for some sort of socialization since I live on a ranch and have found myself talking to the animals, asking them questions, and answering said questions in a doggie-voice myself.  Anyway, as usual I bought more than I came for.  One item was a large unadorned cardboard box of chickens!  Nearly 45 pounds of whole fresh chickens, at 49 cents a pound.  I feed the Corgis chicken, I eat almost exclusively chickens as my protein, and I'm using animals who might have been killed and bulldozed due to lack of retail packaging.  I've got freezers,  I have lots of recipes, and I have an Instant Pot.  I can also pressure can meat, but time is of the essence, so it looks like chicken noddle soup in the short term.  Sorry for the chickens who I thank as I part and prepare each one, but promise I will be more grateful than would a tractor pushing their bodies into manure ponds.  

You must have a humongous amount of freezer space! 

We have had to be quite adaptable during lockdown.  Initially I planned three weeks worth of food and we had enough to keep us going for longer than that due to my hoarding tendencies and good fortune in having two freezers.  Then we started to venture out occasionally but only to a) a pub whose restaurant has shut and been turned into a shop b) a local farm shop c) to a local village shop d) to Click and Collect at the supermarket.  A lady who normally runs a market stall delivers boxes of fruit and vegetables on Saturday mornings - a godsend! A neighbour sells eggs from a table outside her house.  The local cidery delivers so my husband is happy.  We have had 4 takeaways during lockdown which are contactless collections from local pubs/fish and chip shops.  I haven't gone crazy with baking because of my waistline but have got some sourdough starter which is now like a 5th family member who needs constant feeding.  We are enjoying eating more local and trying to help small businesses.

When I first went into isolation in mid-March, I thought it would be a complete lockdown, for 2 or 3 weeks, with no possibility of replenishing the food supply. Boy was I wrong on both counts. The lockdown has been longer, and replenishing the food supply hasn't been that hard.

As I said, I've been mostly on a nostalgia kick, and I found out I'm not alone in this. Here's what a dietitian said in The Conversation:

https://theconversation....-like-little-kids-137864

But for me it's not the sweets and salty crisps that I remember from childhood; it's just the stuff I fondly remember from earlier times.

One thing that's hardly budging from the supermarkets is 2qt containers of ice cream. It's not like people don't like ice cream, I'm sure; it's that 2qt containers are hogs of precious freezer space.

I have been to our nearby Smith's (Krogers) at least 6 times since the beginning of March.  None of those times did they have any yeast on the shelves, whether dry in packages or bottled.  I guess since everyone is "sheltering in place", the bread bakers have come out of the closet and starting firing up their ovens!  I did have enough to make a sourdough starter, though, so all is not lost.  Amazing the little things we take for granted, like being able to find yeast in the supermarket!

Nealfromshilton - thanks so much for the link but my post was from mid-March when supermarket stocks were very different.

Thanks Nealfromshilton for the post about BakeryBits.co.uk. I had used them several years ago but had forgotten about them so thanks for the reminder. I managed to buy dried yeast before the panic buying started in March but will be running out soon!

I've gone to at supermarket about once a week - occasionally I hit both of the supermarkets I usually shop at. Most of the time there are no 2lb bags of unbleached AP flour (i.e. almost a kilo) or just a few. But once a great big shipment of these bags came to the shelves. Now this is what inspires panic buying. What is in the stores now may not be in the stores next time.

(The brands I find, when the flour is there, are Heckers and King Arthur.)

One of these stores got a great big shipment of instant yeast the other week. I betcha a bagel it isn't there anymore.

(I don't bake with yeast or sourdough starter and I think I'm well fixed for baking powder and baking soda.)

Jane, what a nice idea! The situation has been dire and I am not making light of it. However in terms of cooking, I've really got my 'cooking MoJo' back! I'm in England too, and for a while couldn't get any grocery deliveries, and we were constrained by whatI had already, what the milkman could supply and what the lovely local popup outdoor greengrocers could get. Plus a few bits from our local garage (who have been great, helping the commmunity). So I've been in 'extreme conservation, improvisation and experimentation' mode! 

I have, for the first time, really looked at my 112 cookery books in detail, and found many delicious gems. We've had some wonderful, and mostly very healthy, meals; yes, often I've had to substitute some of the ingredients - but I've become really good at that! And I've experimented making from scratch silly things we couldn't get, like my husband's favourite (and very 'fifties' British) salad cream, custard, ice-cream, cookies, fruit curds, jams, weirdo but delicious chutneys when things look like they might spoil (can't waste!) - and I've even had a go at a 'NotNutella' and 'MockMarmite! OK, it's not the same, but it's good, we're now converted and I make batches often. I've discovered 101 uses for Greek yogurt (for a while, the only creamy thing I could get), and now I use it extensively. I've been grinding cereal grains, flakes and rice to make flour, and nuts and seeds to make nut butters and tahini (thank you, Thermomix!), making ice-cream, custard and cheese from scratch. And I know how to use aubergines now! I was very mindful of environment and waste before Covid-19, but now I truly don't waste a thing, and I'm proud of that. We are now lucky that the allotment is starting to produce goodies, so we've been able to donate rhubarb, berries, fruit, asparagus and salad stuff to neighbours as well. And a neighbour has chickens, so we have eggs! When we get butter, it goes in the freezer - as does just about anything else with a short life, including nuts.

The bad has been tempered by good in other ways. too. I had to go into lockdown a fortnight early (luckily, it turned out I hadn't been infected). During that time, we had to 'split the household' and my husband inherited the kitchen - so he had to become a cook too. Huge thanks to Rukhmini Iyer's 'Roasting tin' cookbook series! So easy, so good that I now have the whole collection. And I used to cook some things for a local market, including quiches, tarts, cakes and loads of scones. It's been so liberating just cooking for sheer pleasure - no notes to keep, no allergens to worry about, no use-by dates to adhere to, no strict production rules, no packaging... so much so, I don't think I plan to resume, even if the market does! I'm retirement age anyway and they won't miss me, as some wonderful small businesses have sprung up locally - another unexpecetedly good consequence of this awful virus. My scone recipes are now honed to utter perfection (well, for us, anyway!). And - a huge bonus - we've both managed to lose a few pounds in weight while eating so well and healthily!

Next up as a project - I'm going to volunteer to index some of my books! Don't know where to start, but I am sure the answer is somewhere in these virtual pages...

Take care, everyone, and stay well and safe.

Thanks TrudieA for that lovely update - I love reading everyone's stories on how they are surviving. I was just in the UK for 10 weeks looking after my parents who are in their 90s. I'm now back in the USA and have set them up with shoppers and ready meals.

I only had one of the Roasting Tin books but loved it so much I recently ordered the other three  - I can't wait for them to arrive.

Just a note of Thanks to Laura who posted a while back and mentioned a fish company that delivers. I just placed my third order. We've been loving the very high quality of the fish, and may never, even after Covid-19, return to buying in-store from a fish monger.  Great resource for fish lovers- especially salmon, cod, and halibut.

MHarriman

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"Finally, for those having a hard time buying high-quality fish locally, I highly recommend this company: Vital Choice. They are located in the Pacific Northwest and sell a lot of frozen Alaskan seafood. The fish are flash frozen on the boat. We've been buying from them for years and the quality is really high. We buy salmon, halibut, cod, and petrale sole. I confess, it is not cheap, but then what good seafood is cheap these days? If you buy a certain amount, shipping is free. "

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