Easter

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Crab Update; Target Report; the Best Easter Candy

Typing that headline I had an image flash across my brain of myself, hovering over an aquarium, tending to a pet crab. That would be something.

Anyway, I continued to be crabby after I posted yesterday. At some point, I noticed that I had a canker sore on my upper gum line. And then I noticed another one on my upper lip right where it touches the bottom of my top tooth. And then as I was readying for bed, inspecting my face with all the critical attentiveness one musters for that act, I noticed that I have SEVERAL pimples. Hmm. Hmmmmmm. 

Aunt Flo no longer visits me each month (because of the birth control I take), so it can sometimes feel like I am delightfully exempt from her whims. But no. I still have hormonal ups and downs and APPARENTLY this is a down. Or an up. I’m not sure exactly what I’m saying but SOMETHING is amiss. 

Well. At least I can be (relatively) assured that the crabbiness will end. At some point. 

Today I went to Target. INSIDE of Target. I have been inside of Target once since last February. That was a Major Life Change, considering that I used to go about twice a month prior to the pandemic. My primary purpose was to buy Easter candy, which was extremely difficult to do via the curbside pickup option. But I also wanted to buy some birthday cards and a few other items – more stainless steel cleaning spray, more soap for Carla’s bathroom, some elastics for my hair (WHERE do they all GO?), some special mouthwash to address the stupid canker sores.

The last time I went to Target, also driven by Need of Holiday Candy, I found the whole experience to be very disquieting. This time it was much better! 

There was a staff member right inside the doors, wiping down the handles of the carts. That was nice, but they were using one of the wipes that used to be available to customers, and I don’t think I EVER saw any indication that those wipes were more than wet pieces of disposable cloth. Perhaps they are different now, who can say. I had remembered to bring my own Clorox wipe in with me, so I used it to re-wipe the handle. (I am aware that the chance of catching Covid from a surface is vanishingly small. And yet I was a germophobe long before this pandemic and my germophobia has, like my waistline, only amplified over the course of the past year.)

The $1 shelves were VERY picked over, as were the shelves that usher you into the store from the entryway. Usually they are stocked with chips or bags of candy or whatever; today they were mostly bare, except for a few dozen canisters of antibacterial wipes and a lone package of PopTarts.

The cleaning products aisles were, while not flush, adequately stocked. There were a few bare spots – none of my preferred wood polish, for instance – but they felt typical of pre-pandemic “needs restocking” levels, rather than “everyone is hoarding this item” levels. There was PLENTY of Clorox spray. And there was a whole new section of shelving filled with antibacterial wipes. (It seemed to me, going through the store, that anytime there were bare shelves, Target filled them with wipes. There were several end caps and mid-aisle shelves with wipes on them.) Including brand-name wipes, like Lysol and Clorox. Perhaps most amazing of all: I walked past them without putting a single canister of wipes in my cart. 

The soap section seemed well stocked. And the new-since-the-pandemic aisle of hand sanitizer was nearly full AND there was even some PURELL, which I haven’t seen in the wild in a year.  

An acquaintance who seems to Know Things said that the Suez Canal blockage might result in a toilet paper shortage, so I did get a package of toilet paper. Just a normal size one – not one of the 85-roll ones. 

As I was walking past the pharmacy, I overheard someone on the phone discussing the GoLytely shortage. (If you don’t know what GoLytely is, you will when you turn 50.) Of course I already knew about the GoLytely shortage – being married to a doctor FINALLY has some perks – but it was amusing to encounter it in real life. Also, I continue to find these random (and possibly totally unrelated to the pandemic) shortages FASCINATING.

Moving along to the grocery section: We did not need a lot of food items (I did just go to the grocery store), but I checked on pepperoni (none), Lunchables (only a handful, and of those, none that Carla would eat), frozen pancakes (YES! I grabbed two boxes), and taco seasoning (none of the canisters in my preferred brand, but plenty of packets). 

I DID find cinnamon bears. They tasted exactly the way I imagined/hoped/remembered they would. A very satisfying purchase.

The bag did not come ripped; I opened it IMMEDIATELY open arriving home, to quench my cinnamon bear thirst even before I photographed the bag for posterity.

I went a little wild in the gardening section. It’s been a long time since I tried to grow lettuce in my AeroGarden (it turns out that, despite my belief to the contrary and my best efforts, I am NOT a person who consumes enough basil and cilantro to make it worthwhile to grow ONLY those things), so I bought two varieties to try. I also saw some little mini tomatoes seeds and a package of sugar snap pea seeds; I have NO IDEA how I will grow them in my deer-infested yard, but I’m going to give it a go.

Then the Easter aisle. 

It was, as expected, VERY picked through. The Easter section takes up two half-aisles (four shelves total), plus a table at one end, plus six end caps, plus a separate row of shelving against the far wall. The two shelves and end caps were nearly completely bare. The table at one end had some items – mainly Peeps and Cadbury eggs – the kind with the goo inside, not the kind with the crunchy candy shell. The aisle with plastic fillable eggs and baking items was picked over but not empty. The shelving on the far wall had a haphazard selection of Easter basket items — Pez dispensers and children’s TV character-themed items — that had been well rummaged.

I was able to get my husband his requests (Reese’s Pieces eggs and Cadbury eggs, the crunchy shell kind) and I was able to find suitable candy for filling eggs for the egg hunt (individually wrapped things like Cookies and Crème bunnies, marshmallow eggs, and some Starburst minis) and for filling baskets (movie-theatre-style boxes of Sour Patch Kids and Nerds Gummy Clusters, some Snickers and Twix eggs, a box of yellow Peeps). 

I made the mistake of picking up and then putting down again the only bag of Cadbury eggs I could find… and then when I went back to get it, another mom had snapped it up. (There were three of us, picking through the wreckage.) I found two mini bags of the Cadbury eggs, and then saw an endcap near the checkout with a whole shelf of the large bags, so I got one of those as well. 

There were ZERO Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs in the store. ZERO. There were some with marshmallow or white chocolate on them – I didn’t really pause long enough to find out the details beyond the fact that they weren’t the Real Deal. And there were a couple of bags of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. But NO EGGS. Luckily, I picked up two RPBEs (singles, not bags) at Walgreens the other day. But I am NOT SHARING THEM WITH MY FAMILY.

The main difference I found between Target-from-the-Before-Times and Target now was that the staff situation seemed to have improved dramatically. In the Before Times, it was very difficult to find a staff member at all, and if you spotted one, they were inevitably engaged in a heated and uninterruptible argument with the only other staff member in the store. But now I was approached not once but TWICE by staff people who asked me if I was finding everything okay. I mean, I don’t THINK I looked any more bewildered than usual, so I think they were just being proactively helpful. As I was walking to the checkout, one of the other moms from the Easter candy section called out, “I can’t find my cart!” and two staff people immediately descended upon her and one told her to wait there, she would get the cart for her. The checkout person was very nice and cheerful and non-invasive, AND she very carefully set aside my birthday cards so they wouldn’t get scrunched. It was a noticeable difference and one that I hope sticks around even in the After Times.

The checkout situation, despite the lovely staff person, has NOT improved, however. There were still only two checkouts open despite very long lines, made longer by carts full of Easter candy. I assume. That was the main contents of my cart, at least.

When I got home, I tested the cinnamon bears immediately after washing my hands. Then, later, I tested a Cookies and Crème bunny (delicious, especially the crunchy bits of cookie throughout) and a Hershey’s marshmallow egg (perplexing, with an odd spice taste that I couldn’t place – not cardamom, not anise, but… something). It amuses me, a bit, that I liked the Cookies and Crème Bunny as much as I did. Because I don’t really care for chocolate, the Easter Bunny always put something with white chocolate in my Easter basket. Very thoughtful of the Easter Bunny, really. But I do not care for white chocolate EITHER. It is possible that I like it less than actual chocolate.

In general, I’d say I gravitate more toward fruity candy. But my One True Candy – at least for the past few yearsdecade – has been the Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg. No other Reese’s Peanut Butter product can hold a candle to the OG RPBE. 

My husband has said, repeatedly, that Easter has the best candy options. His favorites, apparently, are Reese’s Pieces Eggs and Cadbury Mini Eggs. At some point, he must have liked Peeps because his mother always sends us more Peeps than a human should possibly own, let alone consume. (But that could be one of those misremembered Mom things; I would hazard to guess that my own mother would say I like white chocolate.)

Carla is easy. She likes anything sweet. 

Now I am interested in knowing about YOUR favorite Easter candy.

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Dinners This Week; You Will Be Very Surprised That Crab Sandwiches Are Not on the Meal Plan

Despite a) truly glorious, early spring weather, complete with sunshine and birdsong and blooming forsythia, and b) a brisk morning walk with a friend in said beautiful weather, I am cranky. For no substantial reason!

(I DO have to go to Target, and go inside no less, to procure some Easter candy. And I am dreading filling the plastic eggs with… whatever it is I normally fill them with. Candy? Maybe the Easter Bunny will upgrade to some dollar bills. The prospect of a Target trip is not super cheering.)

(Yesterday I had to make multiple phone calls, AND I deep cleaned the bathrooms, so perhaps I have some residual grouchiness from that?)

(We ARE supposed to go from low-seventies to low-thirties in the next day or two, so there’s that. Plus, it is QUITE WINDY and you know my feelings about THAT.) (Grump grump grump.)

Well, crabby mood or not, we must eat. I skipped my Dinners This Week post last week because I just couldn’t BEAR to think about food or plan any meals or cook. My husband is very agreeable in times like these, so he put up with leftovers, scrounging around, and takeout for several nights. And then HE planned this week’s meals (except for tonight’s tacos, which were a Carla Request). By “planned” I mean that he suggested things for me to cook, but that is indeed helpful because planning the meals – thinking of things that we haven’t eaten too recently, that don’t take a million years to cook, that will make at least some use of food we have in the house already, that two-thirds of us will eat and not hate – can be just awful.

Armed with my husband’s meal plan, I went to the grocery store after my lovely, not-de-grouchifying-in-the-least walk. (I am sure my friend found me RULL PLEASANT.) I did not want to go to the grocery store. Yet I really needed to go to the grocery store. We had run out of half and half, people. HALF AND HALF. I have been putting MILK in my tea like an Agatha Christie character.

Probably it was good that I was able to go to the grocery store on a cranky day. Grocery shopping puts me on edge as it is, so I’m putting the crankiness to good use, at least. And then I could really glower at the frozen foods case where the pancakes are once again MISSING and sigh dramatically over the dearth of regular-old large eggs (I do not need extra large eggs or jumbo eggs or super jumbo eggs, thank you very much) and stare in a pointedly Very Patient Way at the woman who was ambling – AMBLING – in a zig-zag fashion down the aisle, making it next to impossible to pass her on either side. 

I did buy myself some flowers, which helps. 

And I bought ingredients to make cinnamon rolls, which I DO NOT NEED to make, but which sounds like a very festive Easter morning breakfast. Because if there’s one thing a home visited by the Easter Bunny needs, it’s more sugar. Well. If my husband talks me down from the cinnamon rolls, at least bread flour and cream cheese keep for a good long while.

I stood in front of the beef selection for a Very Long Time because my recipe calls for chuck roast and my choices were chuck EYE roast or chuck SHOULDER roast or some other things that had the word CHUCK in them but not the word ROAST. I wanted to CHUCK a ROAST right at my husband for choosing the recipe, I’ll tell you that much. Google did not help. I did not have the recipe on me, because it is in a PHYSICAL BOOK, not on a website, like it’s 1953. I see I am getting a little shouty. At least I did not shout at the beef selection. I finally asked the meat monger – a young woman, which pleased me – and she very decisively told me that the chuck EYE roast would be best for my stew purposes, so I went on my way. (I was very glad she’d said chuck EYE roast, because the recipe called for 3 to 3.5 pounds of chuck roast and not a single roast in the entire case was 3.5 pounds. They were all 2.25 to 2.75. But! I did find ONE ROAST that was just a squeak under 3 pounds and it was the chuck EYE roast.)

Carla and I – after much deliberation – are planning to make macarons this weekend, as our Easter baking project. They will be filled with lemon curd and buttercream as per this recipe (although I bought the lemon curd in a jar), but will have speckles per this recipe. I am very, very exhausted by even the prospect of Holiday Baking Projects. But perhaps by the weekend I will feel more chipper about the idea. Anyway, I had to buy a huge giant container of cream of tartar, even though we only need a pinch, because I had failed to check on our cream of tartar situation at home. Let me tell you, my face fell when I saw a little container of cream of tartar in the spice cupboard. Fortunately for all involved (me and the cream of tartar), it had expired in 2014. 

For some reason, I have had a craving for cinnamon gummy bears. I don’t think I have had a cinnamon bear for… thirty years? And I am fairly sure that I would eat a total of three of them and then be satisfied for another three decades. But the craving is strong. So of course I cannot find cinnamon bears anywhere. Grouse grouse grouse.

This isn’t so much a grocery store report as it is a catalog of things that irritated me whilst at the grocery store. 

Grocery availability has gotten so reliable (aside from pancakes) that I didn’t even LOOK for some of the things that I normally bought in duplicate just in case – was there any pepperoni? Who knows! My preferred taco seasoning in my preferred little jar is still out of stock, but I can buy it in the envelopes so it’s not a BIG deal. And the taco shell shelves seemed a little patchy, but I still only purchased a single box of taco shells. What did that meme say last year? “The earth is healing”? (Is “the earth” in this scenario me or the grocery store supply chain?) Now we just sit and wait for Suez-Canal-blockage-related shortages to start. 

Dinners for the Week of March 30-April 5

  • Tacos
  • Mulligatawny Soup – This was my lone suggestion for the week, simply because we have mire poix pre-cut in the freezer AND because I picked up another loaf of sourdough bread at the grocery store. Sour toast will pair very nicely with some Mulligatawny.
  • Slow Cooker Balsamic Pork Tenderloin – I got my husband some feta and he already has some sundried tomatoes. I will make rice and caramelize some onions to serve with the pork. Easy peasy.
  • Guinness Stew with Side Salad – I bought some Guinness for St. Patrick’s Day, because I had never tried it before. Turns out I do not care for it. But my husband pointed out we could use it for stew, and indeed we will. I found a recipe in The Best International Recipe cookbook, from the editor’s of Cook’s Illustrated (which is different from America’s Test Kitchen in some way but I do not understand what it is). Why is it “recipe” instead of “recipes”? Just to tug my toehairs, I guess. Also, holy Slovenian sausage, this cookbook is PRICEY. I sure as sugar did not pay $66 for this cookbook and neither should you. 

What are you eating and/or baking this week? Or, if you feel like joining me in a Celebration of Crabbiness, what is getting all up in your grump today?

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Good Things

Considering that we are now officially out of eggs – not that we typically eat  eggs, apart from using them in baking, but it’s still making me feel panicky – and considering that Carla came downstairs before my husband and I woke up and made A Glitter Project (i.e. there was glitter all over the counter, the barstools, and the ENTIRE kitchen floor), and considering the ongoing stress of Absolutely Everything Else, I figure it is time for another post about the Good Things.

Easter Bunny Cupcakes

Carla and I did a baking project this week, and I think they turned out to be very charming. Carla very specifically wanted chocolate cake with white frosting and they had to look like bunnies, so we used this recipe for the cake and this recipe for the frosting/bunnies. I only made a half portion of the cake batter, but even so, it barely made seven cupcakes (the full recipe supposedly makes 24). Seven cupcakes is a good amount of cupcakes for our family of three. I have not yet tasted them because it turns out that my quarantine cravings do not include chocolate bunny cupcakes; I’m still on the crunchy-veggies-with-ranch bandwagon and also am enjoying the hell out of tortilla chips dipped in melted American cheese and hot sauce.

Bike Riding Achievement

This week, Carla allowed her father to remove the training wheels from her bike and now… she can just… ride a bike. It is one of those Childhood Milestones that feels so triumphant and important – like learning how to walk, almost – and I know these milestones will be fewer and farther between. It was wonderful, that day, to watch her figure it out all on her own, at her own pace. And then the next day, when we returned to a nearby school parking lot to practice, to see her do it again and crow with jubilation, “I can really ride a bike!” as though the previous day’s achievement might have evaporated with the morning’s unexpected snowfall. It’s given us new purpose for “Exercise Time,” too, which I dutifully plot on Carla’s daily school schedule and then sometimes “forget.” Now, Carla is eager to get outside to ride in great sweeping circles around the empty parking lot, singing Descendants songs under her breath. We have also visited a local nature preserve to walk/ride bikes along the paths… although I find it oftentimes more nerve-wracking than pleasant because there are So Many People doing the same.

Signs of Spring

We’ve been seeing little glimpses of spring for a couple of weeks now, but this week, it arrived in full force. The blooming magnolia trees along our street, the “popcorn” trees with their fluffy white blossoms, the daffodils that seem to be absolutely everywhere – it’s such a cheering and welcome sight. There are some yellow-flowering bushes along our regular walking path that I just love; I think they are forsythia and so the final joyous stanza of C.D. Wright’s “Two Hearts in a Forest” springs to mind every time I pass them.

ForsythiaCD Wright

 

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I don’t know if finding and naming the Good Things is doing anything. For instance, I have been watching John Krasinski’s “Some Good News” show every week and my reaction has been… confusing. I mean, John Krasinski is adorable and charming and the things he shares and the surprises he arranges are SO lovely. But I mainly feel terribly sad when I watch. It’s kind of the same with forcing myself to find/write about my own Good Things. It feels like so very little, and, therefore, heartbreaking in its smallness. These tiny rays of sunshine are up against such a vast expanse of darkness.

However, there’s also HOPE in the good things… and it’s useful to remind oneself that not EVERYTHING is tragic and awful. And it’s good practice for the brain, I think, to prod it into looking through the wreckage for things worth saving. I don’t know. I’m keeping up with it, just like I’m forcing our whole family, at the end of each day, to list a thing — big or small — that we were grateful for. But I certainly don’t think that these Good Things compensate for the bad ones. And I think it’s 100 percent okay if YOU can’t — or don’t want to — find any good things in your day right now.

Anyway, I still feel compelled to find the good things. To record them. To share them. Maybe it’s just useful to remember that there are good things. That there will be good things again.