End times

I'm not sure how I got it into my head that the Dominick's we planned to hit yesterday was immune from the closing frenzy at the other stores. Images of empty shelves and packed trolleys kept popping up on my FB feed Friday night but I thought they were all from the Foster & Sheridan store. I knew something was up when we got to the door and there were no trolleys or baskets anywhere in sight. I mean anywhere, as even a quick reconnaissance of the parking lot proved. So the Old Man started shopping while I lurked by the doors reading to pounce on departing shoppers. Fortunately, I got lucky before anyone got alarmed enough to alert security.

Produce and alcohol were not on sale, so we were doing fine until we began to look for dry ingredients. Then all we found was despoilation. Well, that's an exaggeration. It was curious to note what had sold out at 50% off and what hadn't. We needed cornmeal, sugar, and dried beans and there were none of any to be had--but there were box mixes (for cakes, muffins, masa--you name it) galore. Canned goods was one of the fullest remaining aisles. If you actually wanted a selection of varieties and brands, one of the few places you could find a nearly full array was in pickles. I was especially surprised to see ample supplies of canned seafood. Maybe you can't use clams or oysters, but who doesn't have a couple cans of tuna in the larder? (I wasn't interested myself until I saw lump crabmeat. No Old Bay left, however.)

Other discoveries: Apparently our cat isn't the only one indifferent to salmon. I found lots of Vitakitty snacks, but only in that flavour, which he'll only eat as if driven to it by necessity. As I was passing through the pet food aisle for the second or third time, an elderly lady asked for my help reaching some cans from a high shelf. "How many of those do you want?" I asked. "All of them." I scooped up several dozen and plunked them into her cart. By this point, we'd given up on making it more than two-thirds of the way through the list and monshu had secured position in a checkout line which snaked all the way back to the frozen foods section. While I kept making forays in search of items of interest, he amused himself by taking in the human drama.

At one point, I heard a manager make an announcement in order to try to put a stop to some of the queue-jumping, but in general people were calm and orderly. There was a certain amount of cheer at an unexpected Christmas bonanza. Even so, as I was standing there with the snow still coming down outside, I thought to myself, This is what the end of the world will look like. Not having lived in any disaster-prone areas, it was the closest to a hoarding situation I've been in. I was a bit curious for the employees' take on things but I limited myself to eavesdropping on their explanations to other customers. The official closing date for most stores is December 28th, but at this rate they'll be down to a skeleton crew by tomorrow. Several of the stores have found buyers, but I assume the new owners will be hiring from scratch and competition will be tough.

End Times II

Even before Saturday's closeout madness, I'd been bitten by the kitchen bug. Good CTA connexions meant that I arrived ridiculously early for a doctor's appointment in Lakeview on Thursday, and in a bid to kill time I marched myself up to Paulina Meat Market. They're still the only store in town to carry my preferred variety of Spätzle and we're both suckers for their smoked meat products, so I picked up a two-and-a-half pound butt and decided I'd figure out what to do with later. monshu had tasked me with putting out dinner that evening, but the doc kept me waiting for half-an-hour so I kept it simple: fried slices of the stuffed pork breast he'd made the Sunday before, a pear-spinach salad, and the Spätzle with Mom's pesto. (The last dish wasn't bad, but I don't think it's the best preparation either.)

It had also occurred to me that, if I wanted to do any holiday baking, this weekend is really my last chance. Unfortunately, between the trip to the grocery store turning into an event and the Old Man's decision to make choucroute garnie (we stopped by Holzkopf's earlier for sauerkraut and sausages), I wasn't able to get into the oven until after 7 p.m. I made a pumpkin bread recipe from Cooks Illustrated so it was a little fussy (as with the pie filling I made last year, the puree had to be cooked down on the stove prior to baking) but, in the end, worth it despite the toll on my back. I've still got half of the huge can of pumpkin rescued from Dominick's so I might as well make another batch for sharing and freezing.

My other project will be a soup like the one we've made before with the rest of the butt. For a change of pace, I'm swapping out the potatoes for cannellini and the cabbage for kale. Should be just the ticket for tonight along with some crusty bread. The leftovers from the choucroute will be the basis for another bigos now that last winter's supply is gone. And then I still have to make the croxetti alla salsa di noci I promised monshu months ago along with the crabcakes I just the notion of making. My days idle from work will not be wasted!

That's not my name

Today was a more productive day than I expected to have given the hour I stumbled in last night. Just goes to show what a wimp I am most weekends. Now we have a tree (even if it's leaning frozen out on the deck, not even pruned much less trimmed), four more loaves of pumpkin bread, and at least two more meals of a beany kind. The cannellini cooked in about forty-five minutes, so when our DVD of Flying swords of Dragon Gate (龍門飛甲) crapped out halfway through (thanks again, NefFlix!) it was already read. It was on the saltier side of what I like, but quite tasty and perfectly suited to a cold night.

The party was...interesting. I'd forgotten that the couple who invited me were part of the local gay square dance cult, so there were several familiar faces I was taken aback to see. Plus, given the incestuous nature of our little social circle, some surprising connexions. It turns out, for instance, that a couple I met through Game Night used to have a salon where the side bar at North End is now and someone I know vaguely through monshu's good friend and former coworker was a regular customer. I got introduced around to some interesting guys. Nowadays I'm finding that the stressful part of these interactions isn't so much the initial meeting, where I can usually muster charm enough to my satisfaction, but the social media followup. It's like an immediate performance evaluation. Was that guy really amused by my banter or was he just being polite? Send a Friend request (no one ever tracks me down and sends one to me) and find out! Well, the most simpatico guy I talked to whose name I could remember Friended me back, so all's well, right?

To lessen the burden of mingling, our hosts had printed out name tags for us to wear. But about halfway through the evening, I met someone who was wearing someone else's, so I began ripping them off the chests of everyone within reach and redistributing them. Later, I looked through the no shows and chose a new one, which is how Mr Simpatico came to greet me today with "Carlene!" Oh, and we had another sorry example of what passes for "bartending" in this milieu. "Old Fashioned" drew a blank look so I said, "Just make me a Manhattan". That got an even blanker look and a confession that "Most people just want one thing." He ended up making it "perfect" through sheer incompetence. But, hey, several guys found him pretty to look at and fun to touch, so who am I to be all judgy?