When You Can't Buy It, Make It

 The ongoing weird grocery shortages are really beginning to bug me.  For the most part, I'm a patient person, and I try to be flexible.

BUT, there are some things, simple things, that make life better.  And having frozen diced green peppers is one of them.  Having a bag of peppers in my freezer just makes homemade pizza better, and omelets better, and spaghetti sauce better, and sloppy joes better. . .  Makes my state of mind better, to be honest.  

Peppers were hit and miss in the garden in 2021, and we've all ready run through the ones I diced and froze last fall.  Honestly, we ran through those by the end of November.  Thinking I'd just go back to purchasing them, I put them on my grocery list.  And then couldn't find them in any of the (few) grocery stores near me that I frequent. Since that's pretty much a 20 mile radius, that meant no frozen peppers for me.  I do have limits on what's reasonable to drive for one grocery item.  So I adjusted my meal plans to just be without that little zip that green peppers bring to a recipe.

And so it went, all through December, and into January.  Still no frozen peppers.  In fact, all frozen veggies seemed to have disappeared.  No companies processing them?  Was this a shortage caused by all the tons of fresh produce left to rot in the fields last year due to a shortage of workers?  

Who knows?  But I wanted some damn blasted frozen diced peppers.  And, I can be really good at workarounds. So in January, when I found fresh green bell peppers on sale, I bought 4, took them home, diced and froze them myself.  

Guess what.  4 peppers worth didn't last long.  I started, again, in early February, to peruse the frozen veggie aisle at the store(s).  Still no peppers.  And so it went, all month long. For the record, I haven't seen frozen peppers in any store since last summer, when I had enough fresh ones in the garden that it didn't occur to me to stock up yet on frozen ones.

This week, still no frozen peppers.  But, fresh green bell peppers went on sale again!  So, I grabbed four more and repeated my stubborn process of making my own durn frozen diced peppers.

Cream cheese has been another MIA item for several months. We're almost out of it at this little place here, and today I pulled out my book on home cheese making.  Cream cheese sounds simple enough, I just need to check to see if I still have starter and rennet. . . Milk and heavy cream so far have been easy enough to pick up whenever I'm at the store.