Peoples’ habits have gone through upheaval during the pandemic, and one that has changed significantly is grocery shopping. I talk about it on the latest episode of the CulinaryWoman podcast. After I finished recording, I had some more thoughts that I wanted to share with you.
Grocery Shopping Is No Longer Normal
Think back to life a year ago. What were your grocery shopping habits?
Some people were organized. They planned their menus, made a shopping list, filled up a cart, and made a massive trip out on the weekends.
Other people shopped as needed. I wrote about a study showing that the majority of home cooks didn’t think about dinner until about 4:30 pm. That often necessitated a trip to the store after work, or after the gym.
Still more, like me, kept an eye on what was in season. I got into the habit of shopping for a couple of days, incorporating ingredients in my fridge and pantry (a tactic I call “assembling”) and then heading out again.
But during the pandemic, everyone’s routine has gotten upset.
Panic buying and shortages
The first thing you probably noticed was when grocery shelves began to grow empty. We were lucky in Ann Arbor: it seemed like we had full supplies of toilet paper and cleaning supplies long after the rest of the country.
But suddenly, after Michigan issued a stay at home order, our shelves were bare.
As I said on the podcast, one of items that disappeared was Bounty paper towel. I like the kind that’s perforated with small sheets so you don’t have to use too much at one time.
I’ve only been able to find it on Amazon since March, and Amazon will only sell me a case for more than $100. That’s just silly. I can make do with another brand, even though it isn’t my preference.
Along with shortages of dry goods, we’ve also seen shortages of meat, due to the COVID outbreaks in meat packing plants, and other items like rice, soup and tortillas.
That means shopping has become a gamble: will they have it? Do I want to take the time and waste the gas on going to another store? What can I cook instead? Do I pick a different brand?
You might remember that management book, Who Moved My Cheese? that was popular in the late 1990s. It said that employees resisted change because they liked their routines.
Well, I like my Bounty, and my godmother likes Progresso soup (it got the highest rating from Consumer Reports) and we both like Fage Greek yogurt. The disappearance of those things early on was irritating.
Grocery shopping as anthropology
But for me personally, grocery shopping has always served a different purpose. I view groceries as a window into culture, whether it’s my own or a place where I visit.
I have been to grocery stores in every country that I have ever traveled. It’s often one of the first things I do, especially because I like to prepare at least one meal a day when I’m out of town.
Even if it’s just a yogurt and some muesli that I eat out of a coffee cup, the normalcy of going to the store makes a new location seem less strange.
I’ve browsed grocery stores in England, Scotland, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and many cities in the U.S. I love seeing what’s the same, and what’s different. I love watching shoppers — and talking to shoppers.
At a deli counter in Germany, I listened as a lady next to me asked for “100 grams of this cheese, please.” I discovered that was enough for a nice snack or a lunch with some dark bread that had to be eaten that day, because otherwise it would go stale.
In Japan, a shopper told me that pre-packaged sushi could only be on display for four hours, or it had to be discarded. That was why the inventories were so slim, she explained, and showed me where I could get chopsticks.
But those encounters are disappearing. People want to go in the store, buy their groceries, and leave. The salad bars and hot food bars are gone. Free samples are largely gone. It’s become like visiting the DMV: a necessary chore but no longer a relaxing one.
Smaller stores = comfort
I’ve never been a fan of supermarkets — what the French call “hypermarches.” I avoid Kroger and Meijer and even a Whole Foods can be too big for me.
I’m perfectly happy with a medium-sized grocery store. In Boston, we had Roche Brothers. In New Orleans, there’s Breaux Mart. In Chicago, we had Treasure Island until the chain closed down a couple of years ago.
In Ann Arbor, I generally shop at Busch’s or at The Produce Station, which specializes in fruits, vegetables, craft beer, and some prepared foods. It used to have the best salad bar anywhere until, well, you know.
The smaller stores are the comfort I need right now, and provide about all the complexity that I can handle. They’ve had their own problems getting the items that customers used to expect.
I wrote about Ann Arbor’s bagel shortage and how The Produce Station switched from locally made bagels, which it would have to wrap individually, to packages of H&H Bagels, which are shipped in from New York.
The other day, I went to Trader Joe, and I noticed that people were loading up their carts again, the way they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
Cases have spiked in Michigan. Last week, Washtenaw County imposed an emergency stay home order on University of Michigan students, to limit the spread of COVID.
I long for a return to my old shopping habits, where I could venture out when I had enough items on my list to warrant a trip, and be confident that I could find what I needed.
I don’t want to have to buy more than I need, simply because I won’t be sure I can get it next time. But until COVID dies down, my shopping habits, and those of countless other people, have undergone significant change.
How have your shopping habits changed? Feel free to comment.
J.M. Hirsch
Lots of people are drinking at home during this unsettling era, but they’re getting a little bored with their same old, same old. Shake Strain Done, from J.M. Hirsch, comes at just the right time to break up the tedium.
J.M. is the editorial director at Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, and he is a wonderful writer. I first discovered his work when I was running the awards contest for the Association of Food Journalists, which has now sadly disbanded.
As a regular reader of Milk Street magazine, I’ve enjoyed his stories from all over the world, so I was excited when a copy of Shake Strain Done arrived.
It’s different than your usual cocktail manual. It has recipes for the classics, but it also has new ways to interpret the classics, by adding different ingredients and spices that you probably already have. (Our friends at Epices de Cru will enjoy knowing this!)
One of the nice things about Shake Strain Done is that it groups recipes by flavor — warm, refreshing, sweet, sour, bitter, fruity, herbal, creamy, spicy, strong and smoky —not only by the type of liquor.
You don’t need anything fancy to make his drinks: as the title says, you simply shake (or stir), strain when required, and sip.
The link goes to the great Parnassus Books in Nashville.
It’s getting to be time to think about holiday gifts, and with delays in the mail, you might want to order early. And of course, you’ll want to test J.M.’s recipes.
What I’m writing
I’ve had a little time in between working on my Zingerman’s book and the newsletter to write a few other stories.
One of them is about squash. A number of people have confided to me that they’ve never actually cooked a squash. It isn’t hard, as I explain in this piece for The Takeout. And once you’ve mastered the skill of preparing butternut squash, you can use it in so many ways. Feel free to experiment with spices and sweeteners.
How do you sell artisanal ice cream when winter is looming? How about sweet potato ice cream pie? I took a look at Go Ice Cream, a little company operating from an alley window in Ypsilanti, Mich., in this story for Forbes.
You might be interested to know that the pandemic is allowing a number of businesses to expand, and to move. I’m always fascinated when long-time places decide it’s time for more space. As I wrote for the Ann Arbor Observer, that is happening to some lucky restaurant owners.
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