Scrounging at the Grocery Store

    Coming from a southern family, food is a big deal in our household. My Dad is a self-proclaimed "food enthusiast," and is always thinking about the next meal, as is most of my family. Every Sunday, my Mom likes to plan out the meals for the next week and is always making new recipes and trying new things. All these things, as well as having a fifteen year old brother who is constantly eating, are reasons that our pantry and fridge is always stocked full. However, the pandemic made us consider a new kind of normal, where we got used to opening the cabinets and finding half empty. 

    When Covid-19 was just starting to make its way across the country, shutting down everything in its path, my parents ran the our local grocery store to stock up on lots of food and drinks. Because the amount of time that the stores would be closed was not announced yet, they grabbed everything they thought we would need for the next few months. They had loaded up our biggest car and headed home. Once they got home was when the "fun" of putting everything away began and my brother hid in another room. While putting the food up, we quickly realized that we did not have enough room in the cabinet and pantry for everything that they had bought and thought that we would be eating on everything for a long time to come. Little did we know that what we thought was "too much" would only last two months before it was all gone. 

    As the piles of nonperishable food became smaller and smaller, my Mom tried to go to the grocery store and pick up a few things, but the selves were almost completely empty. This made it hard to my Mom to meal prep and make simple recipes like spaghetti because the ground beef was more expensive than ever. The fruits and vegetables were sold out and I won't even mention the toilet paper situation. The only things my Mom could find was unhealthy foods, like cereals and chips, so that is what we ate. Obviously, because of this our diet became much worse but with more free time, my sister and I tried to workout as much as possible to counteract all the bad things we were putting in our body. Once people started to calm down, including my parents, the grocery stores filled back up and everything got back to normal for our diets and meals.