Ingenuity

I ran out of onion powder.  I hate to run out of anything, especially something that is a frequent ingredient in the meals I cook.  To add insult to injury, I normally buy onion powder (and most spices) from the bulk bin at the natural food store.  Which, currently, is not an option.  Bulk bins being unsafe--and therefore unavailable--during this pandemic and all.

As a settle-for, I decided to get a jar of onion powder at the regular (chain) grocery store.  Except that apparently now that people are home and cooking for themselves, they have had to buy out all the commonly used spices.  I could not find a single jar of onion powder.  Not a small jar, not a giant jar, not a generic brand, not a name brand.

What I could find, though, was lots and lots of minced onion.

Adapt.  Improvise.  Overcome.

Kind of a mantra for my life, not just in the current times, but always.  Maybe because my Dad was a Viet Nam era Marine. Maybe because all of my grandparents grew up in the Great Depression, some of them in the South in homes with no electricity or running water.  Maybe because we were pretty poor in my early childhood while Dad was trying to get through college and then law school, Mom  working  to support us even though child care for my brother and I took a lot of her income. Maybe because of becoming a mother myself right out of high school and having 4 kids and a husband and a mortgage by age 26; whyever it is, these three words are a good description of my mindset in times of challenge.

The inability to get onion powder at my preferred store (with good quality affordable spices) wasn't going to stop me from having onion powder to cook with.  The inability to get onion powder of lesser quality and greater cost wasn't going to stop me from having onion powder to cook with.

I bought minced onion and took it home.

At home, I got out DH's old coffee grinder that he broke the handle on (so apparently he can't use it and had to have a new one with a handle that doesn't fall off) that I had saved for my own purposes.  I poured the entire bottle of minced onion into the coffee grinder.

Carefully aligning the handle into it's original spot, I held it down to activate the grinder.

A few seconds later, viola!  Onion powder!

Good to go another month of these crazy restrictions and grocery store shortages.