A Time Traveler's Guide to Shortages

Of course this isn't the first time this planet has experienced plagues and shortages. But there's nothing that says you can't get good tips for the #QuarantineLife by repeating parts of that history.  At the time of this writing, there are a lot of shortages of stuff we've heretofore been taking for granted, and what has escaped y'all's notice is how fast-pace your "timeline" has become. Stuff that used to take time to do or get, you have heretofore gotten almost instantly by comparison. Y'all have been traveling to your own futures by skipping over the usual sequential events because somebody else has taken the time to do the prep work and all you had to do was just go fetch.

How about that. Go to the store, buy time, and just heat & eat.

All the talk about "flattening the curve" boils down to buying time.  So then--now that you're all stuck at home (except for the pros on the frontline, that is), a week feels like a year, doesn't it. Welcome to real time (sorry, Bill Maher).

Can't find butter at the grocery? Use suet. It tastes the same. Beef fat is beef fat is beef fat. Instead of draining your beef after cooking, render that suet from the pan. Oh right--that takes time.

Can't find baker's yeast at the grocery? If you have any yeast left at home, then use that to grow some more. It's a plant. You can grow your own and never run out of it again. Yeah, you got it--that takes time too. I've heard the people who complain about having to take the time to use starter, either fresh or sourdough, and demand that the grocery store deliver bread directly to the mouth. That's how much of a time traveler y'all have become and it takes this kind of fixed point in time to rein you in, make you sit down, and take a hard look at what you've become. You're taking your own time travel (skipping over steps in a sequence of events) for granted these days, just as you've been taking all the people who make your time travel possible for granted. The farmers, the produce cleaners, the active dry yeast makers, service people and you've been feeling entitled to such.

We've gotten past a previous Dark Ages, but that took a few centuries, didn't it. You're at the beginning of a Dark Ages now, but we're in a good position to skip over those steps in that particular sequence of events because we know what we're doing now.

Or do we? If we don't, we're about to repeat history.

This recipe was used during the Great Depression, for feeding kids in orphanages, and old folks in old folks' homes over the hill.

Dates back to the days before snow got jet fuel polluted

This is the WWII era that made "shit on a shingle" famous--before there were rice and pasta shortages like today.

I also have a shortage substitution thread pinned to my Twitter account you might want to check out.

More supply shortages have become manifest and so I pin this "make do" thread to my Profile & will add to it as I can manage. My first "make do" recommendation is to read the Foxfire series of books. They reveal how Appalachians have made do. #QuarantineLife #MakeDo

— Clara Listensprechen (@ClaraListenspre) April 9, 2020

==========================================================

Twitter's being a fiend about image uploading so I'm going to post a screenshot here and then post a link to it on Twitter.