Snow? In Feb? In New England?

[TattooedMommie]

(disclaimer; I dont know if this belongs in this folder or not; Im amalgomizing two days worth of craptastic sucky customers...)
(BG: cashier at crappy small grocery store)

God damn us all! We are having a snowstorm. Here in New England. Yes, I am in the heart of New England. It is February,m the heart of winter. And it's snowing. Let the chaos ensue!

For two days straight, my IGA has had a steady stream of ignorant media-fed fucks, rushing to spend their dollars on useless crap, because we are having a snow storm. For two days straight, I have rung out 200+ customers a day, buying crap they totally do not need. With a freakin smile on my face that, I hope, said "Im getting so drunk Friday night!" (and here I am...lol)

*RAAAAAAAAAGGGGEEE*
that's better. Y'all here at cs.com may not realize how much just knowing this site's here does help in the midst of a rough shift.

Anyway. Yes. Feb. Snow. OMfG. We need to race to the store and buy ice cream...cuz it's on sale 2 for $5.00...let's all buy it NOW...and, wow, you sold out of <blah blah fudge chunk nuggets> before I got here?? "It's all YOUR FAULT, minimum wage cashier lady!!"

Im not even joking...over the last two days, I have questioned my existance. I was convinced that I had died and gone to hell. And hell was an eternity of these inbred fucks I had to deal with constantly. And by constantly I mean lines a dozen people deep, constant flow of suckitude.

One lady bought a dozen cans of tuna, making sure everyone around her heard her proclaim, muiltiple times, "I dont even LIKE tuna! But if we lose power, I will have SOMETHING to eat!"

Each order was a min of $20, my highest today was $324..not even kidding....90% of what I sold (aside from the freakin ice cream) was frozen dinners...dude, if power DOES go out (not unheard of), HOW do you expect to heat up your hot pockets? After that, we are talking about deli meats, and the mac n cheese, dear goddess, save me from the boxes of mac n cheese!!
I cant even seperate one person from the next at this point, enough to make a "Sucky" post..LOL...
Oh but the beer...and the wine...here in MA we are apparently drinking out the storm...LMAO
Anyone else in the New England area dealing with the crazy shoppers?
My biggest bitch today was this....the governor of MA declared a state of emergency as of 4 pm, and for the first time I know of, a traffic ban was in effect...spelled out on tv as: any "non-essential" vehicle on the road was subject to being pulled over and possibly fined $500. I was scheduled to work until 4, at which time I would need to drive 2 towns away to pick up my toddler, who spent the day with my mum, as her daycare was closed. My mum called and asked my supervisor if I could be let out a bit early to avoid said driving-ban, and my super (the one I like to lovingly refer to "The Bitch") went OFF on my very own mother, about how business is run and the scheduling is done ahead of time, blar-dee-blar..." So my lovely mum wrote a long-ass email to corporate, not tying herself to me as an employee at all, about how rude the super was on the phone when dealing with issues pertaining to a state-of-emergency.
I made it, without a pull-over or ticket, and yes, I am well on my way to drunk now.
Fuck snow, fuck crazy people. I love Twisted Tea :P

[Tama]

Personally, my house has a gas stove. We can at least cook veggies in a pot, but I'm not sure if the inside works that way.

And with this kind of cold at least there's no worries about food going bad, haha.

[TattooedMommie]

i have a great (albeit redneck) firepit in the backyard. Last time we lost power I cooked soup, sketti-os, burgers, even eggs, every day..over the open fire... the Walking-Mad kill-your-neighbor dash for ,uh, NON-essentials is what killed me today...taking part in the waste of dollars an hour...As a part of the "po' folk" in my community, seeing people blow hundreds of dollars on shit they didnt need (" I dont even like tuna!*bitch cackle*) just pissed me off; donate that 100 bucks of a food pantry!

[emax4]

IGA = Independent Grocers Association? We used to have one here that changed names over the years to more familiar stores (Foodland, Giant Eagle), but even before it was IGA it was Super Dollar.

Glad you made it home okay, but I don't think they'd make that big of a deal if you were driving. I watched the news and heard of the emergency (I'm near Pittsburgh), but they governor has no control over when stores open and close, so driving home shouldn't be held against you.

[TattooedMommie]

oh yes. Our -local name- IGA is a part of the Independant Grocers Association, created in 1926, and now has stores in "Over 40 Countries!" *smile* according to our constant PAs. Much of the time, I love this little town, but this storm seems to have awoken a demon of selfishness and self-importance.

[Zapper]

Lemme guess...western Mass? Sounds like Western Mass.

[HiddenMica]

They tried to get my boy friend to get into his overnight job. I can't drive (driving ban) so he was going to walk. He started off and arrived home 20 minutes later after almost getting hit by three plows. Three! He's safe but the belly flops into the snow did his hands a bit rough and took some hot water to get back into normalcy. He called out. Only reason they are open? Some of the night shift crew never left. So far, it's midnight, we have about a foot out there and it's not looking to stop. I never went food shopping. lmao. If I really need to there is a 24 hour place I can walk my butt down to. They are always open and that will make me test my resolve on just how badly I want what ever I'm getting. Especially considering it's 4 miles from my home.

[Seshat]

"I don't even like tuna" lady makes me laugh.

Lady, there's plenty of canned, dehydrated, and otherwise preserved goods you can buy. If you don't like tuna, there's tinned beef, tinned porks of a number of varieties, other tinned fish, probably tinned lamb or mutton...
For other proteins, there's tinned beans, peas and other legumes, which can be mixed with soaked grains even if there's no way to cook.
Bring some fresh snow inside, or use tap water (if the water system works), soak the grains for as long as it takes for them to be edible, add tinned legumes, tinned vegetables, herbs and spices. Cold, but edible and nutritious meal. Could even be tasty, though I think it'd be better hot.

If you do have heating, you can make "damper" - a kind of crude bread. Flour, water, salt to taste, spices or other additives to taste, and if you have it, baking powder to make it rise. If you don't, it's still edible or even delicious. Mix ingredients together until it forms a thick dough, make roughly round lumps about the size of a small bread roll, apply heat. I've usually buried it in the coals of a campfire, but you could (gasp) use an oven (how cultured!). For even more culture, wrap it in foil before applying heat.
If it's not been wrapped and has been cooked in a campfire, you break it open and eat the interior, then throw the charcoal shell into the remaining fire as a natural kind of garbage disposal. If it's in foil, or was cooked in an oven, just treat it as a bread roll.

Camp food. Tell the kids it's an adventure, and 'the time we got stuck in a blizzard' is a fun memory later on.

[Chromatix]

A camping stove that runs on butane is a good source of hot meals and drinks in an emergency. There are plenty of foods out there designed to be made on such a thing - sometimes you need to add water, which is also easy to stock up on (often without even shopping).

But in the event of a power failure lasting more than an hour, frozen foods need to be eaten almost immediately or thrown away. Stocking up on them for an incoming storm is a pretty bad idea. Typically, outside temperatures even in snow are not cold enough to properly preserve frozen food - your freezer runs at -18°C for a reason.

Refrigerated foods will generally last better - the fridge mostly extends their life, rather than being necessary for anything. This is doubly true in a cool climate. Milk will keep remarkably well if kept sealed for as long as possible, and the bottle stuck in a pan of cold water (you can prepare this inside your fridge as a precaution). There is also UHT milk, which will keep when sealed almost indefinitely without refrigeration - it's worth stocking up on that just before winter, and reserving it for bad weather.

All of the above is, however, common sense - and is therefore incomprehensible to SCs. Sigh.

[ShinyGreenApple]

I can sympathize. I live in FL, and we deal with this mass hysteria every time there is a hurricane projected to hit. And again with people buying epic shittons of perishable goods, like steak and ice cream. Um, what the hell are you gonna do with that when the power goes out and it's 85+ degrees in your house?

As long as we have plenty of water and juices, there's usually plenty to eat already in the cupboard anyways and we're scrambling to finish the perishables before they go rotten. I really don't think filling up the entire household with salty snacks and caffeinated drinks is a good idea.

[sirwired]

In the interest of cross-cultural education...

"I don't even like tuna" lady makes me laugh.

Lady, there's plenty of canned, dehydrated, and otherwise preserved goods you can buy. If you don't like tuna, there's tinned beef, tinned porks of a number of varieties, other tinned fish, probably tinned lamb or mutton...
For other proteins, there's tinned beans, peas and other legumes, which can be mixed with soaked grains even if there's no way to cook.

You have very different canned goods in Australia; I'm pretty sure you'd probably have to mail order tinned (a.k.a. canned) lamb or mutton here in the US. Canned seafood here would be the ubiquitous tuna, but also salmon. (Crab, shrimp and clams are also available, but expensive.) For meats, primarily pork (in the form of SPAM and "Danish Hams"), but chicken is also widely available. Canned beef exists, but for whatever reason is not popular. (Which is odd, given that beef is probably the most common meat in the US.) Because of the extensive meat-production and distribution industry in the US, most (90+%) meats are sold fresh, unless in pre-prepared frozen goods. I know that I, personally, wouldn't know what to do with most canned meats. (And since the wife doesn't like Tuna, all that gets used for is when I have a hankering for Tuna salad.)

For grains; other than rolled and steel-cut oats, none are in common use in unground form. (My store carries a few others, but it's a really nice grocery store; your typical US store would not carry them, except for maybe barley.)

But in the event of a power failure lasting more than an hour, frozen foods need to be eaten almost immediately or thrown away. Stocking up on them for an incoming storm is a pretty bad idea. Typically, outside temperatures even in snow are not cold enough to properly preserve frozen food - your freezer runs at -18°C for a reason.

There is also UHT milk, which will keep when sealed almost indefinitely without refrigeration - it's worth stocking up on that just before winter, and reserving it for bad weather.

Freezers here in the US anyway will stay reasonably cold for at least a day or so, even in relatively warm climates due to the insulation of the freezer cabinet, as long as you open the door as little as possible, if at all. In colder climates, I could see frozen goods not thawing for days, even if they aren't at temperatures suitable for long-term storage. (But yes, given that most are designed to be heated in the microwave or oven, it's still quite stupid to stock up on frozen foods.)

UHT milk can be found here if you look hard (many stores do not carry it), but it is quite rare vs. Europe (I think my local grocery has about 12 shelf-inches (30cm) of the stuff, if that. The UHT Soy and Almond milk takes up much more space.) Virtually all cow's milk is sold fresh. I know I've never purchased UHT milk. If I needed "Emergency milk" I'd buy a box of powdered.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I always remember the bad snow of '87; my parents had a gas camping stove and were able to cook bacon and eggs, make toast and boil a kettle. No-one stocked up on anything cuz the blizzard came out of nowhere and as we were living in a tiny village, we were trapped there for two weeks.

And no-one died. XXD

[Sapphire Silk]

If you're going to cook with butane, it's safest NOT to cook inside the house. You need ventilation. A patio would work, the garage might be OK.

I keep my propane grill out and use it year round.

Here's hoping you folks up North stay safe and warm.

[TheSnakeLady]

Freezers here in the US anyway will stay reasonably cold for at least a day or so, even in relatively warm climates due to the insulation of the freezer cabinet, as long as you open the door as little as possible, if at all. In colder climates, I could see frozen goods not thawing for days, even if they aren't at temperatures suitable for long-term storage. (But yes, given that most are designed to be heated in the microwave or oven, it's still quite stupid to stock up on frozen foods.)

That and if your power goes out due to a blizzard, there is a conveniently available natural means of preserving your chilled/frozen food. Heating is still a problem, though.

[Seshat]

In the interest of cross-cultural education...

You have very different canned goods in Australia;
I know that I, personally, wouldn't know what to do with most canned meats.

For grains; other than rolled and steel-cut oats, none are in common use in unground form. (My store carries a few others, but it's a really nice grocery store; your typical US store would not carry them, except for maybe barley.)

Vast snippages.

Wow. I would consider that a severe paucity of necessary and/or sensible groceries, especially in an area which is prone to bad weather. Being unable to get five kinds of dehydrated grains and seven of legumes at my local grocery store - not to mention the specialty deli which handles dried stuff, nuts, etc - would confuse me.

How do you guys make nutritous and tasty soups without a selection of pulses and grains to soak and put in them?

... never mind.

Anyway: for tinned meat, it's pre-cooked. To serve cold, drain any liquid, then use in sandwiches or salads as per normal. To serve in a casserole or stew, drain liquid and reserve to potentially use as stock. Put the meat in late in the cooking process, because unlike using raw meat, you don't actually have to cook the meat. Taste the soup, and gradually add reserved liquid until the flavour suits your palate.
For the tinned meats which keep a specific shape, such as spam, you can 'carve' them as if they were a roast.

Note that all tinned meats will taste differently from meat cooked from raw.

Edit to add:
I could easily - with a bit of thought for balanced nutrition - buy all the necessary food for several months of off-the-grid camping at my local grocery store, and provide a varied diet. Without using tinned goods; just with dried and other 'lightweight' preserved goods. This does presuppose a suitable water supply; either a reliable creek and a water filtration system, or access to town water.

So yeah, I guess I was making assumptions about what types of foodstuffs are readily available in the USA.
It does make some things easier to understand.