שהחינו וקימנו

 I am going to ignore the elephant that has been in the room since the terrifying events of January 6th.

As we head towards the one year mark of the start of Covid 19 and the upending of life as we know it, I wanted to take this moment to give thanks.

Early on in the pandemic, aside from the terror that we would all fall ill and die, another big cause for anxiety was acquiring food.

This anxiety was exacerbated by the fact that the early weeks of the pandemic coincided with the time when we start to do the giant food shopping that we do every year before Passover. 

I didn't know if we would be able to buy meat for Passover. I didn't know if we would be able to get all of the other things we needed for Passover. During the weeks before Passover, we ate as little as we could because we didn't know if and how we could re-fill our larders.

Friends frantically messaged one another to try to source basic foods.  We all did research on who would deliver to our neighborhood, who had prices that weren't terrifying. We pooled resources and picked up extra for one another.

After Passover, buying flour and yeast was a struggle.  It seemed that during  Passover the universe decided to learn how to bake bread.  The stores were unprepared. One of my sisters bought me a pound of yeast as a gift.

As the weeks and months have rolled by, getting food into our home has its own new routine.  We aren't comfortable shopping inside food stores. Our neighborhood markets are tiny and crowded as compared to typical suburban markets and feel like a great place to pick up a dose of Covid along with your groceries.

We pick up produce from the Turkish man who mans the pushcart on 97th  Street. We shop from him several times a week.

Our meat and some grocery items come from Riverdale Kosher. 

Dry grocery items come from Costco.

These days I am beyond grateful for these vendors that help us to keep food on the table and help sustain us safely.

שהחינו וקימנו