Kilt in the Kitchen & COVID-19 Coronavirus Part I

OK. I get it that the coronavirus presents a threat the likes of which we’ve never seen before and people need to prepare for it. I understand that. In my professional job, I’ve spent the last four days doing nothing by coronavirus planning and when I’m not doing it professionally, I’ve been doing it in my personal life.

But there’s prudent planning and then there is frantic overreaction. What on earth is going through someone’s mind when they grab up all the tomatoes they can carry in preparation for a world wide pandemic.

Laying in stockpiles of rice I can understand. Frozen foods, maybe. Prepared soups, beans, lentils, OK.  All of those make sense if you believe that you need a stockpile of food in the event of a crisis, but lettuce?

Lettuce lasts for 3 days, maybe. Why would someone need to stockpile lettuce? Or tomatoes? Tomatoes can last for 4-5 days in the right conditions but not a lot longer. Why, in the face or an emergency, are there absolutely no tomatoes in my local grocery store. Eggs. There were no eggs. These weren’t the only things.

I dropped into my local grocery store like I always do on the way home from work. I needed lettuce, low-sodium soy sauce, green beans, and a bottle of wine. There was no lettuce and no green beans. And as I wandered through the store, I also saw that there were no tomatoes, no potatoes, no onions, no green beans, no bell peppers, no leeks, no radishes, no garlic (hoarding garlic? really?), no sausages, no frozen fish, no packaged beans, no rice, no lentils, no olive oil, no vegetable oil, no balsamic vinegar, no pasta, no tomato sauce, no pesto, no canned tuna, no anchovies, no baby food,  no canned soup, no boxes of soup, no soup mixes, no frozen pizzas, no frozen bread, and no eggs.

I live in Philadelphia, one of the biggest cities in the U.S. but one that hasn’t yet been significantly affected by the virus. One case had been reported in Philadelphia by yesterday evening, and about 20 or join the surrounding suburbs. So the virus has appeared here but it is still in its nascent stages. There’s no doubt that it will get worse, but it’s not as if we knew yesterday that the world as we know it was ending today. In fact, we’re still here today and we’ll all be here tomorrow.

I don’t understand this panic buying in grocery stores. The weatherman tells us in January that there will be blizzard in two days and the lines at the grocery cash registers with people buying 24-packs of toilet paper and cases of bottled water are interminable.

As there were no green beans or lettuce, and I could go a couple of days without low-sodium soy sauce, and I could get a bottle of wine somewhere else, I decided to abandon ship. Today, in Philadelphia’s famous Italian Market I got most of what I needed (couldn’t find celery root).

Preparation is one thing, panic is another. I think it is probably a good thing to have something ready to go if I get sick and can’t cook for myself.  I picked up some cured fish and sausages, and some lentils. Most important though, I picked up the ingredients for a couple of big batches of soup that I can freeze. I write about those tomorrow.

But I’m still without lettuce and I’m utterly bewildered by the need to buy eggs, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar in the face of a crisis.