I thought of my mother the other day when I went to the market and realized that planning a meal meant starting with what I could find on the shelves, not with choosing a recipe from a niche cookbook. Women in my mother’s generation cooked whatever was on sale.

I’m not being snarky when I say my mother would have relished the current Covid-19 crisis. One of her most quoted Bible passages was from Matthew 24 (I had to look up the address but there was a time when I knew it by heart): “there will be famines and plagues .  .  . you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” This was a signal that the end was coming and the end meant Jesus was coming. Plagues and wars and rumors of war. Plagues and wars and rumors of war. It was a mantra.

The wars and rumors of wars have actually never stopped in the 2000 and some odd years since the book of Matthew made the cut as being the word of God, according to some ancient males on the other side of the world, adjudicating in an ancient language. But this Co-vid 19 outbreak would probably qualify in my mother’s mind as an End of Time indicator. As a plague or as a “rumor of plague” if she wanted to go that route.

When she was feeling angry and thwarted by our ebullient mischief, my mother used to say “What you kids need is a good depression.” By this she meant we needed to experience some deprivation until we came down from our high horse. She had been there and done that herself in the 1930s and as a result my mother always had enough toilet paper to supply a public rest area for months. She had a basement packed with food past its sell date, which I would starve rather than eat, but where toilet paper is concerned, I grew up in a house of plenty.

When I heard that people were toilet-paper-panic-buying, I wondered if they all knew something I didn’t. Was there a shortage? Maybe I needed to lay in an extra supply. At Bartells in Edmonds, the toilet paper wasn’t even being unpacked onto the shelves. It was in warehouse boxes by the front door with a sign limiting you to four packages. I bought two even though being my mother’s daughter, I had plenty at home. Thus I came to understand how panic buying (or selling) happens.

I doubt there was any panic going on, however, on St Patrick’s Day when I got an email from Licorice International promoting a one day special: a box of Irish Potatoes with every order over $30. If you don’t know what these are, Irish Potatoes are not Irish or potatoes. Neither are they licorice. They are wads of coconut and cream cheese shaped like tiny potatoes and dusted with cinnamon. I knew of them but didn’t know if I would actually like them. And here was a “free” box of them.

I occasionally order Salmiak Rocks (salty/sweet Dutch licorice) from Licorice International, hence the email. I was currently more into bubble gum cigars and just wasn’t feeling the licorice. But the free box of Irish Potatoes that I didn’t know if I would like! Let’s see $30 worth of licorice. That’s 2.2 kilos of Salmiak Rocks, what would that be, one pound? Three? I wasn’t sure which way the ratio went. And $30. Now? When I have no income because I can’t have students in the house?

Blog Reader, I ordered five pounds of Salmiak Rocks and got my free Irish Potatoes. They are creamy and taste buttery and it makes me smile to see them. It also makes me smile to know I have all that licorice in abeyance.

Oh and by the way, I am teaching on Zoom. Tell all your friends.