That's what one week of being unable to cook and having to eat crap has been doing to me.
Actually, I had feared worse.
Yesterday, the first errand after work took me grocery-shopping. Yoghurt, eggs, bacon, cheese.
For the frozen veggies, a trip to the local Costco equivalent is planned tomorrow.
The experience of being flooded with no chance of saving any of the contents of my freezer has actually made me a bit apprehensive about what to put in storage. Stockpiling enough meat to last us through a whole month is something I'm not likely to repeat anytime soon. As long as I can get over two or three days' worth of cooking before the next occasion to grocery shop, I ought to be okay.
Once again, the damages were worse than necessary because I had too much of something. Too much stuff in the flooded cellar, which necessitated several times the work we would have needed to do clearing out everything than if we had been more choosy about what to keep, and too much food in the freezer.
And the experience of being in the middle of a natural desaster instead of watching it on TV has been humbling, to say the least. Maybe people who live in areas that are regularly hit by floods or storms are more sanguine about such things, but we had been operating under the assumption of being well out of harm's way. Things like the possibility of having to evacuate on short notice just weren't on our radar.
When desaster struck, we were helpless and unprovided.
My new pantry will hold some things I had not bought before due to relying completely on cold storage. I know now that I must keep some things on hand that can be prepared without cooking and don't need cooling.
And I will have to prepare a bug-out bag. We were lucky not to be cut off from water, too. Had we been, we, too, would have joined the ranks of the evacuees at local school gyms. If ever something like this flood were to happen again, I want to know just what to grab and take along. Hint: it won't be most of the stuff we still own.
As it is, digging through all of that waterlogged stuff from the cellar, tossing most of it and having to clean the rest was exhausting. But if I were to apply the same standards that the emergency forced on us to the stuff we still have high and dry in our flat, I am certain there would be even more things that are, mostly, clutter and need tossing.
Even after believing I had already got rid of most clutter. Some of it, instead of leaving our household for good, had ended up in that basement and came back to haunt me last week.
Of all of the china, glassware, stainless steel stuff, and cooking accessories from the cellar, just one box the size of a beer crate is left. These will have to find a home upstairs. Perhaps even at the cost of removing other things. And this time, those other things will feed the trashcan instead of cluttering the basement.
They say that what you keep in your basement is symbolic of your relationship to the past. If that is true, we have just been presented with a golden opportunity to bring new experiences into our lives.
Julia
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