The End of the Cheerios

If you've read Thrift (and you should cause it's one of my best!), you know I come from a Depression-mentality household.  For all my life, I have known a well-stocked — well, let's be honest — OVERstocked pantry.  Be it a closet or a cabinet or both, I always have a significant supply of bottled, boxed, canned, or dry goods and am capable of feeding many, should the situation arise.  If twelve people unexpectedly appeared on my doorstep and I (or anyone else) couldn't feed them, it would be a black mark you could not escape.  

For the rest of your life it would be,

"Remember when so-and-so stopped over and she didn't have enough food?" 

This is how I was raised.

Ironically, I married in to a family where this was not the case.  It was the very opposite.   My introduction to my eventual mother-in-law was a dinner she hosted with five people and on the table was a bowl with five — only FIVE potatoes — and they weren't even big ones!  I don't know that I ever got over that shock.  It may have made me increase my stock of staples.



Today, in the time of Corona, I finished all the Cheerios.


I ALWAYS have Cheerios.  They're a basic.  

I buy the family size.

I mix them with one or two other cereals to dress them up.

And while three other cereal bags still remain (each less than 1/3 full) to be eaten, 

and I certainly don't eat cereal every week, 

AND I don't even have any milk, it points to the greater issue.  

My stock is diminishing.  I am seeing the back wall and space on my shelves for the first time.   
Maybe ever.

 

I know, I know.  This looks like a lot.  And I'm only one person.  And yes, it IS a lot and I am truly grateful for the abundance I'm so fortunate to have.





Still, day by day, it's shrinking.

        
I started to make cold sesame noodles — no peanut butter! 

And there's only angel hair pasta. [Yes, I see the box of penne rigate but that's really not an option for cold sesame noodles.]

             
Thought about whipping up some hummus — only one can of garbanzo beans!


Wanted to bake some peach-bourbon barbecued chicken thighs.  Not only was there no bourbon, there were NO preserves of ANY kind.


I just used one of the last two cans of tuna.  And they're not even the big ones.

GEEZ.

All I can say is...

My father 

is turning over 

in his grave.