Made it to Carrefour today! And made a promise with our regular driver, Ibrahim, to go every week. That way we get some time out of the house, and Ibrahim makes a bit of cash.

Of course, if we eat everything we bought today in just one week, we’ll be in big (emphasis on the BIG) trouble.

If not for the panic bubbling within, this would have been a thoroughly enjoyable and comical trip. What a joy to load up on stuff (and nonsense)!

The lines outside were long but oddly well-spaced. I’d say about half of us were wearing those useless masks. (Did it seem weird to anyone else that the guvmint said masks would not be helpful? The linked article helped me understand.)

Necessary evil

I have hated this Carrefour since we arrived, for:

• being a madhouse with rude people wielding shopping carts,
• having billions of the same items but little actual variety (like twelve different brands of yogurt that all have only the same three flavors), and
• not having items I really wanted, like things I know what to cook with.

But it’s a necessary evil: it has kitchen supplies like coffee makers, tupperware and salt and pepper shakers; batteries and light bulbs; printer paper; and scattershot, unreliable chocolate offerings.

Today, however, everything they had seemed like manna from heaven. The aisles were fairly stocked but there was a tight limit on shoppers. We all tried to keep a meter distance between us, in a delicate and paranoid choreography. Here’s a similar example:

A big shout out to the people working there. It must be nerve-wracking for them, and their families, to have to head out into what is arguably the most congested vector zone in the country, now that airports and events and restaurants are all closed. While I bet they’re also glad to have work right now, it’s awful to have to put them in the line of fire.

Now I have to cook

Ramon focused on getting canned goods and staples, like dry pasta and beans in cans. I, on the other hand, looked for things that would spice up our life in confinement – orange curry paste, peanut butter, olives packed with spices. Also gummy candy. And wine.

What will I make with these things, you ask? Time will tell. I’m afraid of letting it sit in the cabinet gathering dust, so I’ll poke around online and get some recipes. I’ve never been a “poking around online to get some recipes” type of person before, but a lot of this is unprecedented, so, why not?