– in which Dorn dabbles with commodities futures.
I had talked (here) about my strategy for scoring some toilet paper before our stockpile ran out. I had orders to sellers with uncertain supplies, made six weeks ago, four weeks ago, and two orders made one week ago. I also had a couple of unsolicited volunteer offers. By some alchemy of time and commerce, many of these gambits were coming to fruition—if they were going to be successful at all—last weekend.
The six-week t.p. order from Amazon arrived, as did one of the one-week orders from the local grocery store, and one of the volunteer offers. All the packages of toilet paper were quite large, so I think we’ll be set maybe until the supply chain restabilizes. So our strategy for solving the Cottonelle conundrum has got to be called a success.
We haven’t had as much luck with our handling of some other commodities. Kathleen ignited a Facebook firestorm when she bemoaned our continued inability to order spaghetti online or from local stores. All we can find is the dreaded American Angel Hair pasta.
Among the many responses she got were: commiseration from those with similar stories, gloating from those whose local stores seemed well stocked, some suggestions for online ordering of overpriced pasta from gourmet sources (which haven’t worked for us, yet), and several reminiscences, recipes, and remonstrations about making pasta from scratch. Mark Zuckerberg helpfully offered an unsolicited news article about why spaghetti is so scarce.
We tried making some pasta at home. It came out pretty good, although Kathleen thought it tasted suspiciously close to Angel Hair.
A little research proved her taste buds were right, as usual. Spaghetti is typically about 2 mm in diameter, while angel hair pasta is about 1 mm. By A = (π/4)d2, a typical spaghettus has a circular cross-sectional area of about 3.1 mm2, while an Angel Hair pastum has a cross section of about 0.8 mm2.
From my pasta roller settings, my spaghetti was rectangular in cross section, 2 mm wide by 0.6 mm thick. (The pasta purists among you will rightfully argue that the very lack of circular cross section makes it not spaghetti at all, but rather a “modified fettucini”.) Whatever you call it, my pasta’s cross-sectional area of about 1.2 mm2 made it much closer to Angel Hair than to the desired product. Next time, I’ll roll the stuff out thicker to get a spaghettier flavor, I’m sure. Still don’t know what to do about the rectangular aftertaste, though.
We were too successful buying red meat futures. We heard the news that the coronavirus was making its way through the meat packing facilities, resulting in meat shortages. So I broadcast orders for red meat among multiple meat-ordering pathways, hoping that at least one of them might still have a supply.
Unfortunately (for us) the word that beef was scarce had not yet reached the meat delivery pipeline, and every one of my orders was successful, resulting in a full stone (look it up) of beef showing up at our house in the space of two days.
This might not seem like much, but it was something of a calamity for us when you consider (a) I had sworn off cow meat last fall (here), and although the duration of the beef-fast (or cow-lent, if you will) was now long over, it had its intended effect of reducing my craving for red meat; (b) Kathleen has never been that much of a carnivore; and (c) our refrigerator and freezer were already completely full from all the other hoard-buying we were doing.
But we managed to squeeze what we didn’t barter away into our freezer by sacrificing the sacred space reserved for ice cream (if we could just figure out how to get that mail-order) and kicking all the vodka out. Desperate times call for desperate measures, y’all.
Thanks,
Dorn
5/21/2020