Pandemic Life on the Prairie

My vegetable broth smells like Brussel sprouts broth.

And the broth is very dark, causing me to wonder if I’d washed all the scraps before storing them in the fridge. I try to remember Annie the Cook’s instructions on the local Rec Department’s Facebook Live broadcast a few weeks ago. She might have said to ditch the Brussel sprout leaves because they would subvert the broth, but I was too in love with putting the dear little outer leaves in a plastic bag in the fridge to make vegetable broth later. It was so Depression-y. I put onion scraps and the top of a red pepper in there, too, along with a worried stick of celery and other things I don’t remember.

I am compelled to be thrifty!

I say this after my fourth grocery delivery, the last one bringing two packages of Oreos (a clicking error) and Fritos, the gold standard for snack food, well, except for Dot’s Pretzels. My affection for Fritos goes back to my single mom days when I would drown every sorrow – no matter how large or small – in a six-pack of beer and a bag of Fritos. I ditched the angst but still love Fritos though I hardly ever buy them. They are too pedestrian for my married hummus and pita bread sophistication.

I say that having just finished the large bag of Ruffles that came in the order last week. It is a Pandemic luxury to have a sandwich with chips for lunch, certainly one of my favorite things. This week, though, having to deal with the tiny broken chips at the bottom of the bag, I considered putting them in my peanut butter and orange marmalade sandwich but that seemed something somebody who packed a lunch for the Friday night stock car races might do and I’ve been trying to work my way out of that crowd for a long time.

I say that as a person who is trying to get an avocado seed to spout. It’s taking forever. And then, because I saw on Facebook that a friend who’s a farmer was showing her kids how to sprout celery from putting the bottom of a bunch of celery in water, yeah, I did that, too. So I have a little crop area in my kitchen. It’s on the other side of the room from where I keep the Fritos.

It’s a challenge to find one’s footing in a Pandemic. I mean, who has practice at this? So I’m just going to keep bumbling around, strain the vegetable broth and put it in an old jar in the refrigerator where, a few weeks from now, we will puzzle over it and my husband will take a taste and say, “Ugh, it tastes like Brussels sprouts!” And we’ll toss it down the drain, open a beer, and dive for the Fritos.

By then, though, we might have an avocado or maybe some celery.