Grocery Store Report; Dinners This Week

We got about a foot of snow overnight, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, I didn’t take a ruler outside with me because that would be weird. For me. No disrespect to your ruler. I love snow, so I don’t mind too terribly much. Carla – off from school today AND tomorrow – LOVES the snow, so she has made snow angels, tried to make snowballs (the snow is currently too dry for packing), helped our neighbor shovel her driveway, and eaten a large bowl of snow. She went sledding with friends. She has enjoyed cocoa with a jumbo marshmallow in it.

Before all the snow fun, Carla and I ventured out to the grocery store this morning, and I am not exaggerating when I say that we were the ONLY CUSTOMERS in the building when we arrived. Toward the end of our visit, there were maybe 5 to 10 more customers going up and down the aisles as well, but for awhile it was just us. Very eerie. 

The produce section has been making me feel a little watchful lately. First, the store has moved some things around and re-arranged some of the display cases… which I am SURE is because they do this periodically and NOT to disguise the fact that there is less produce than before. 

It seems like the outages are rolling though. A few weeks ago: NO POTATOES or red onions. Then last week and this week, both of those things are back in stock, but Spanish onions were missing from the shelves. Today, there were no white onions, no Spanish onions, and no sweet onions – at least, not in the normal/large size. There were a handful of red onions, and plenty of the smallish yellow onions in a bag, so I bought a bag of the smallish onions. The onions were all arranged so that it looked like only the sweet onions were out of stock. But NO. There is usually a big selection of THREE ADDITIONAL ONION VARIETIES in that section that are simply missing. 

There were very few bananas. 

There were no blueberries. 

Jalapenos were abundant today, as were bell peppers of most colors. Wait a second – I wasn’t looking for green bell peppers today, but now I realize that there weren’t ANY green bell peppers. 

The lettuce area was a little thin, both in the bagged/boxed lettuce area and the heads-of-fresh lettuce area. But not barren. There was still lettuce if you needed lettuce. 

I didn’t notice any major issues throughout the rest of the store. Everything we buy seemed to be either well-stocked, or not completely empty. Like… the milk we buy had two containers in the 2%, and more containers of whole milk and skim milk. The specific type of pretzels my husband eats was out of stock, but other types of pretzels were abundant… and had been arranged so as to fill in the gap that my husband’s preferred pretzels would have occupied. 

Last week, the waffles/pancakes freezer had pretty much zero waffles or pancakes; I am accustomed to the lack of pancakes, but not the lack of waffles. There were no French toast sticks, either. Instead, the entire freezer case was FILLED with hashbrowns and breakfast potatoes. Today, waffles were back, French toast (but not French toast sticks) was back, and one variety of pancakes was available. And there were very few hashbrowns. 

The chicken nugget/chicken tender area was not full by any means, but there were several bags of each. 

I totally forgot to look at pasta today. Last week, the egg noodles aisle was almost completely wiped out. (I changed one of our meals to chicken paprikas, which requires egg noodles.) I had to buy a brand of noodles that I am unfamiliar with (and won’t be buying again). 

The beans/taco shells/Asian/Mexican food aisle seemed just fine; last week, the soft taco shell section had been very depleted. 

Lunchables were available. We already have Hormel pepperoni at home, so I didn’t even look to see if it was in stock. 

Last week, I also went into my local Trader Joe’s. (They have fresh English peas that my kid loves.) I was prepared to be shocked by the experience; I’d been reading that Trader Joe’ses all over the country have been having trouble keeping things in stock. I expected empty shelves and harried workers.

It looked… the same. Produce was abundant. I had no trouble finding the things I wanted. I didn’t see a single empty shelf. 

When I checked out, I asked the two cheery, friendly people who were checking me out about it. “I heard that Trader Joe’s is having so many supply chain issues,” I said. “But this one seems like everything is fine!”

The smiles dropped from both their faces. They said very grimly that it has been ROUGH. That they are out of a lot of things, but have been rearranging things so it doesn’t look like it. They said that one day, a truck just never showed up, and they had nothing… and then the next day, two trucks showed up at once and they were jam-packed with things. One of the checkers said that weird things are delaying the supply chain. She mentioned that there was a problem sourcing glass jars for a while. And then sometimes there will be a certain lid that they can’t get, which means the product can’t be packaged or shipped or put on the shelves. The change in their demeanor was enough to demonstrate how tough this must be. 

It is all making me feel a little tiny bit edgy. Like… it’s clear there are issues. But they don’t seem to be widespread, and they don’t seem to last too long, and – as Swistle pointed out – there is still PLENTY of food. So much food. No one is going hungry. So while remain very interested in the grocery store stuff, I am not quite to the point of adding an extra XYZ item to my cart every time I’m in the store.

On to the actual meals. 

We only made two of the meals I planned for last week, so I am (rather reluctantly) putting the ones we didn’t eat back on the list. 

Dinners for the Week of January 17-January 23

• Roasted Garlic Balsamic Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Balsamic Brussels Sprouts: This sounds unappealing to me today. But we do have all those Brussels sprouts in the fridge. I don’t want to waste them. Maybe I will find a different protein. 
• Spicy Fish Taco Bowls: This doesn’t sound particularly appealing this week, but I have a mango to use up. The fish is frozen, so maybe I will make a pork tenderloin with mango salsa instead.

• Air Fryer Parmesan Chicken with Broccoli and Hasselback Sweet Potatoes: I didn’t make this last week because there were ZERO sweet potatoes at the grocery store. Today, there were plenty, so I snagged a couple. 
• Chicken Tortilla Soup: This is my favorite soup, but it requires a LOT of work and I am not sure I’m up to it. So. We’ll see. All the ingredients (except the cilantro) will keep if I decide not to make this.
• Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma: I have some green beans leftover from last week that we can eat with this. This is honestly the only meal on the list that sounds remotely appetizing.
• Chickpea Bowls: I like to add green and red bell peppers to these bowls, but I feel like red peppers start to taste odd in the winter. Like… they develop the bell pepper equivalent of B.O. I don’t know what it is, or why it affects only the red ones, but it makes me a little reluctant to cook with them. The only reason I even have this on the list is because I have to find a way to use up the red peppers!

Tell me all your meal plans for this week, and what’s going on with your grocery situation.