You can buy oatmeal, kidney beans and sugar in five-gallon buckets. White rice in 40-lb. bags. #10 cans of pears, apple slices, peaches (use the syrup as a tasty dessert for your kids). You can buy canned ham, canned chicken, canned tuna, canned pork. Vienna sausages are a nice snack to eat while listening to the public health bulletins. Canned turkey. Dinty Moore stew, for when the neighborhood sweeps don’t leave time to cook a “real dinner.” The neighbors like Spaghetti-Os, but we prefer Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli. We shout inventive recipes at each other through the air vents. You can buy peanut butter in whatever size you like. Thing big. Think in months, not days. Think in years. What was the last thing you did before it happened? Where were you? Sports drink mixes, for when you’re kicking around the rubber ball in the living room and trying to explain to your kids what “soccer” was. “Football,” “baseball.” Coffee beans, yes. We grind them by hand. You need to seek out new hobbies, living like this. Have you tried counting to a million yet? You can buy coconut oil in five-gallon buckets. We eat a lot of seeds now. We peck at things. We watch warily through our curtains, through the bars. Before it happened, we didn’t know what “powdered eggs” were. Don’t forget about salt. You don’t understand how important salt is going to be. “10 pounds iodized salt per person per year.” You need to think in years. You need to think in decades.
Sandy 