What surprising thing have you been stocking up on (that isn’t toilet paper)?

[petra]

What do you have more of than you ever expected to want?

Comments

[petra]

We have five cans of condensed milk, the sweetened kind. Apparently we are turning into Shadwell in our isolation.

[scytale]

I giggled. Do you have thoughts on how to use it?

I sort of ended up in this situation with evaporated milk for a bit (but then used it as creamer).

[petra]

We will put it in tea and coffee and tea and coffee and tea, and it will be delicious.

[scytale]

That does indeed sound delicious! :D

[rhi]

Hell, my first thought is proper key lime pie?

[petra]

We'd have to be able to get proper key limes for that, which seems improbable in the current situation, but it would be a good use of the resource.

[rhi]

Mmm. Good point. I don't suppose your local grocery carries this? https://keylimejuice.com/ (I know Walmart and Amazon do.) It works well.

Good luck to all of us during this!

[minoanmiss]

DULCE DE LECHE TIME

[petra]

My SO has been drinking a lot of Thai tea, and that's where it's mostly been going. We also had a can of dulce de leche that we used to make salted caramel macaroons.

[scytale]

My first thought was actually cats, but that's not all that surprising, and I only have two, and I want more..

The real answer..

The jingly cat toy balls with bells in them. I kept buying them over the years because they kept disappearing... and as part of shelter-in-place cleaning, I found a bunch of them under the couch and under the oven. So now I have something like ten balls for two cats.

Also, I have five surfaces that can plausibly be used as tables and desks in my tiny studio apartment. It's actually been pretty helpful for being able to move around.

[petra]

You're allowed to want more kitties. I have just the one and she is a lot of cat, but if you want more, you want more.

Jingly cat balls go away so easily. We have a bunch of them from when we had a cat who found them charming. Most of the time ours chases the little plastic circle-with-a-pull-tab from milk cartons these days.

Yay for a surfeit of surfaces!

[scytale]

If it weren't for lack of space (and not wanting to make the feline geopolitical situation more tense), I might totally adopt or foster another.

And ooh, I've never tried those plastic circles with a pull tab before! Next time I get milk...

Mine really like wine corks; I don't drink but I used to collect them from friends.

[petra]

I can see how in a small space, having feline détente would be key to domestic happiness.

The little plastic pull-tabs skitter very nicely across tile, we've found. There is indubitably a full-on civilization of them behind the refrigerator.

My household doesn't drink wine either, so we don't know whether the cat would enjoy wine corks. It's nice of your friends to contribute to your animals' amusement.

[dine]

despite not having grocery delivery for several weeks at the beginning of the shutdown, I now have a stuffed pantry and freezer. I think I have over 24 bagels, because I kept ordering them, not paying attention to what was accumulating in the freezer. I finally went through and organized things so I could see what's there - and it's a lot

the same with clam chowder. I like it for an easy, comforting meal, and while I had a couple cans at the start, ate them up. when I could order again, they kept substituting other forms - same company, and they may be tasty, but I wanted to have the 'right' stuff at hand - so now I have like nine (or more) cans, as well as six of the 'wrong' versions. I think I'll donate those. there's a 'food & goods' box (like a Little Free Library) not far away, and I think I'll maybe take those to share - as well as some cans of tuna, which were substituted for the pouches I prefer. I've now got lots of those again, so clearing a few things out to share with others seems like a good idea

[petra]

Wow, that is a wealth of bagels and clam chowder. Accumulating plenty of comfort food makes sense to me, as does passing it on when you have more than enough and it will go to help people who need it.

[minoanmiss]

Not any one thing, I just... keep buying stuff. I need to forget my credit card number!

Things I have recently bought include: tea; exotic spices; freeze dried fruit; gourmet crackers; a mask; shoes; shipping supplies; stamps. Only two of those were remotely necessary.

[petra]

The economy is really glad you keep stimulating it, but I know what you mean about buying Too Much Stuff. I hope your useful items turn out to be more use than you currently think they will.

[sorchasilver]

Perfume oils. I only have one right now, but four more are en route. I had a sudden desire for an orange blossom fragrance, found one online, it arrived and was delightful and suddenly I had ordered several more from the same company.

[petra]

That sounds like a pleasant escape from being in the same environment all the time!

[daegaer]

Toothpaste! Both regular minty flavours and the surprisingly golden gel coconut+ginger oil (which is very pleasant tasting - Colgate's). Apparently I was stockpiling for the dental apocalypse.

[petra]

Coconut + ginger oil sounds fascinating. My preferred toothpaste is clove + cinnamon.

[daegaer]

Clove+cinnamon sounds good! If you come across the coconut+ginger oil, I can recommend it. It's a mild tasting gel and (not really relevant, but . . .) an extremely pretty colour!

[mific]

Containers of Metamucil! It's not as obsessively health conscious as it sounds, being partly from disorganisation and partly as it's a key ingredient in my keto bread rolls. :)
Also a towering heap of empty paper grocery delivery sacks, thrown in a corner for the cooties to wear off, and lazily left there. Today's plan: organise them into compressed wodges and put in the recycling!

[petra]

Psyllium husk, it does a body good!

[hannah]

Fancy single varietal honey.

[petra]

I hope you're enjoying the variety.