No Flour. No Rice

Just had an interesting trip to Costco. There is absolutely no rice, and no wheat flour. None. Not just my favorite brand gone. Not just stashed in the back room because they're rationing it. It's all gone. And apparently it has been for the last two weeks.

Major wake-up call here, people. I knew it was bad. I didn't know it was this bad. Did you?

I did find flour and rice at the local grocery store, double the price I paid four months ago. They were suprised that Costco was having a supply problem, but said they had lots in the back, and hadn't needed a shipment in a while. There were a couple of brands of rice gone, but maybe they hadn't restocked yet.

I now have about a two-month supply of flour, which will hopefully get us through until the spring harvest in June. Hopefully it will be a good one, and the shortages will diminish.

This has, however, made me want to redouble my efforts in the veg garden. Not so much to grow my own wheat, but to fill out our meals with more veggies. I'm thinking nutritious filler, here. That'll work well with Thing 2, as he's not that big into meat, but Thing 1 practically will eat nothing but meat and bread.

Today I'm planting out 10 tomato plants and seeding the corn. We're supposed to have hot weather on Thursday, so hopefully that'll speed germination.

Interestingly enough, Western Washington was known for good yields of oats back in the early 1900s, about 90-125 bushels per acre. For whatever reason, it's not grown anymore. I figure that we could grow enough on 3,000 feet to feed us oatmeal for breakfast three days a week, and have enough left over for occasional oatmeal bread and seed for the following year. Of course, talking dh into ripping up 3,000sq feet of lawn to do it would be impossible unless absolutely necessary. It's just a thought, though.