The Art of Hamstering (or Stocking Up)

You’re going to laugh at me. Especially if you live in Holland. But I just came back from the supermarket, and bought food for about three months. Well, maybe not three months, but for a loooooong time. I’ve got kilos of rice, sugar, flour, powdered milk, chick peas, lentils and toilet paper stashed away. I’ve got cans of coffee, chocolate powered, ravioli, Campbell’s Chicken Soup, Swan luncheon meat and spaghetti sauce on the shelves. Extra tahina, liters of cooking oil and olive oil and skimmed milk. Candles, boxes and boxes of those. Matches too. Chocolate paste, and apple sauce. You name it, I’ve got it, and I’ve got it in surplus. In Holland, we call that ‘hamsteren’. Hence the title, ‘the art of hamstering’. Enough food to survive a war.

And that’s exactly what the purpose is behind this shopping trip. Personally, I don’t think it is ever going to get that far. But the rhetoric between Hezbollah and the government isn’t exactly improving these days. Sunday’s Hezbollah demonstration promises to be a biggie!
But even if we’re going to into some kind of disagreement with each other (Lebanese, that is), shops will always remain open, or at least a couple of hours a day. I mean, we’re not going to starve.
So I sort of disagree, but hubbie says that “you weren’t here during the war. I’d go into the supermarket and find empty shelves.” I cannot argue with him, I wasn’t here.
I have to add that hubbie never ever ventures into a supermarket. At least not since he married me. So how would he know what an ‘empty’ shelf look like? And besides, who cares if the shelves for the chicken wieners are empty, we don’t eat those anyway.
However, I was given the order to go out and ‘stock up’, so – the obedient wife that I am – I did.

I’ve never had to do this before, so I am not sure if I did it right. I mean, we never ever eat canned food, so why buy canned food right now? I probably end up having this at my kitchen shelves until two years after the expiry date, and then we throw it away. I still have like 27 cans of sardines in the cupboards, remnants of this summer’s war (when hubbie went stocking up. We have never eaten canned sardines in our lives! Where he got that sudden inspiration, I do not know). We’ve finally munched our way through a massive amount of serial and toasted bread, also from this summer.

And what about the 7 packs of spaghetti? It’s going to mighty dry if we have spaghetti, but no sauce to go with it. Well, I bought the sauce as well, but you need fresh mushrooms, and fresh tomatoes, and onions and bell peppers, and minced meat as well. So in theory I’d need to stock up on those as well, but you can’t. So you’ve got to go to the store anyway to buy those items, and then you might as well by the spaghetti too, no?

So what is the purpose of all this, if I may ask? I bought flour and yeast and sugar, so I can bake my own bread (don’t laugh, I have a bread machine). And I’ve got extra butter in the fridge. But what to put on the bread? I cannot stock up on cheese, and I hate jam. So back to the supermarket, to buy the salami. Well, if I go to the supermarket to buy salami, I might as well buy the bread as well, no?

I find all this stocking up useless, without purpose, and I just spend about a million pounds on food items I’d never touch if it weren’t for the fact that hubbie wants to be ready, ‘just in case’. Well, I am ready. Bring ‘em on!

And in the meantime, what did I forget? The wine! May God help me (and Lebanon) if I do not have my wine.