Hand sanitizer, toilet paper, bleach…. I was lucky enough to have these items already in the house when shelter-in-place hit and people started to hoard. I was surprised by the flour/yeast panic and the run on King Arthur bread mixes, but again, I had enough on hand to get through. I was also surprised to not find garlic in the stores for a couple of weeks; the produce guy at Cub was stumped. Garlic salt isn’t the greatest substitute for fresh garlic, but we managed.
But pectic? This one brought me up short. I headed out early one morning and picked a big flat of raspberries and as is my custom, I stopped at Kowalski’s on the way home. There on the shelf where the pectin usually lives was a big hole. I asked an employee… they said that they haven’t been able to keep canning supplies and pectin in stock. Same story for a few other places I quickly called.
Unfortunately you can’t just keep fresh raspberries sitting around forever, so I kept calling and did find pectin at my local hardware store, although it was a different brand than I usually use to cook my jam. Since beggars can’t be choosers, I bought it and headed home. (The hardware store shelves in the canning section were basically bare; I actually got the last jar of pectin!) After a long search on the internet, I finally found a comparable low-sugar recipe that I could use. Presumably the jam will be fine when I thaw the first jar – you wouldn’t think you could mess up berries and sugar with a different kind of pectin, right?
Have you run out of anything lately?
Trail Baboon 