One of my roles during this period has been to keep my family's spirits up. All of our lives have been severely disrupted (to say the least) with the imposed restrictions on social and work activities, death or illness of family or friends, and fears of contracting the virus ourselves. It is easy for depression or anxiety to settle in for all of us under these circumstances. To counter this, I do whatever I can to keep the mood cheerful around here, such as these pandemic snack jars.
Under normal circumstances, I don't stockpile commercial snacks or breakfast cereal, even when I do find a good price. My reasoning (which comes from our family's experience) is that these commercial goodies, like chips, pretzels, and cereal, are often favored over the homemade foods for quick snacks and gobbled up in a flash, regardless of how much I buy at any one time. Here's an example: Years ago, when triple coupons were a thing, I bought about 15 boxes of assorted packaged cereal at a steep discount. While the boxes of cereal were considerably less expensive than their regular price, the cost per ounce/serving was still above what I would spend for homemade foods. I don't eat most commercial dry cereals; so imagine my surprise when about 10 days later, I opened that cupboard to make room for more groceries and was met with 14 mostly empty boxes (the bran flakes were the only untouched box, ha ha).
So, keeping a small stockpile of commercial snack foods is out of the ordinary for our household. However, this is an out-of-the-ordinary time in all of our lives. Wanting to provide quick, easy, and quasi-fun snacking experiences for my family members, I did buy several packages each of saltine-type crackers, graham crackers, pretzels, roasted peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, toasted oat cereal, applesauce, and canned pineapple to have for quick and easy snacking. You'll notice, I deliberately did not buy the uber-fun, sugar-sweetened, brightly colored or super cheerfully-shaped treats. Those would be devoured far too quickly. I stuck with rather boring versions of snack foods.
Even so, I've found the best way to ensure that our supply will last for months and not weeks is to ration what is available through some fun (fun is a subjective word -- my family thinks these jars are fun) jars on the kitchen counter. (As you can see, the jars themselves are simply jars that I already had -- nothing fancy.) To keep things new, I rotate what goes into each jar every Sunday or Monday. Some weeks I add a sweet treat like a very small jar of chocolate chips or small candy pieces. This week, we have Cheerios-type cereal, oyster crackers, raisins, roasted sunflower seeds, and candy corn.
To give you a comparison indicating how this is a change for us, in "normal" times, cereal would mean homemade granola or a cooked cereal, crackers would come out as an accompaniment for soups, raisins would always be available in the pantry, nuts and seeds would be occasionally out, and candy would be for special occasions, like movie night. In the past, snacking for us has mostly meant simple foods like popcorn, homemade tortilla chips, toast or pbj sandwiches, raisins/other fruit, carrot sticks, or any baked good. But nothing really sitting out on the counter, at the ready for impromptu munching.
Do any of you remember the character Julie from the TV show The Love Boat? Julie's position was that of cruise director. I've often thought of "cruise director" as an appropriate title for my own role in our household. On a cruise ship, the cruise director is responsible for entertainment, hospitality, and social events -- the job of making fun for everyone onboard. This may not be the Love Boat, but call me Lili the cruise director for the Mounce family cruise, which features such highlights as a pandemic and a heated national election. 2020 has been a doozy. Anyway, keeping jars of snacks has been a part of what I'm doing to keep the mood in our house festive and not gloomy.
As an aside, I'm so glad that I had already been planning a cook-out for our Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law. Our governor announced yesterday that indoor gatherings with members from outside our household are prohibited, including Thanksgiving dinner. The only exception is if every person quarantines for 14 days or for 7 days plus a negative COVID test. So, outdoors for Thanksgiving it shall be!
I hope your week is off to a good start!
Time for me to get back to cruise-directing.
