Grocery report

My trip for groceries went better than expected; there were several guys restocking as I was there, a few hours before the new, earlier closing time.

Some items that had been cleaned out last week were at least partially restocked:  pasta, a pallet of large bags of rice, a pallet of paper towels, the large jars of peanut butter that we buy, 2-pound bags of shredded cheese.

One lady was buying a lot of bottled water, so apparently it was there for her to find.

Still very low:  bread, dried beans, flour.  There was still some of the more expensive brands of flour left, as well as--for some reason--unbleached flour. Unbleached flour works just like regular flour in recipes, they just skip the processing step that would make it look whiter. I don't notice any difference in it.

Toilet paper is now limited to one package per customer, but it was long gone before I got there, including the single rolls in the $1 section.

New shortages:  carrots were entirely gone, and either all the whole milk was sent to other stores, or they're sending it all to be processed into lower-fat milks and cream now. Normally, the store charges the same price for whole milk as for the other kinds; whole milk has 320 more calories per gallon than 2% does. The large packages of eggs that we were buying had also disappeared, although regular egg prices were not too bad. I had been buying a large package or two of eggs ahead even before the pandemic, in anticipation of the prices rising, as they were quite low relative to past years.

Whole grains such as wheat berries were also cleaned out; I did get some barley flour.

Since a lot of the nation's food supply is stuck in the restaurant and commercial supply lines, and a lot of these businesses are in economic jeopardy, we are planning to get take-out on our usual eating-out schedule for the time being.