"Cornflakes. And Special K." I reply, with self-justifying weight in my voice, and pointing to the two different varieties of Special K on the top of the fridge.
16-yo laughs. "I think I'll have toast instead".
I always have one item that I stock up on. It lodges itself in my memory as something we get through a lot of, and that we mustn't run out of. Then, when I'm going round the supermarket, I buy it. If I don't have a list, I buy it. Even if I have a list, I go off liste, and buy it. "I might as well stock up while I'm here", I think, as I pass it. Then I get home and see that my purchase was unnecessary. "Oh well. We'll use it up. Must remember not to get any next time." Remember for next time? Ha! No chance.
For a while, it was Ritz crackers. I think that one stemmed from my excitement when we got to America that they have Ritz crackers. Just like at home! The Ritz crackers phase lasted for a long while. It didn't really matter, as we had American-size storage options in our kitchen and utility room. If that near-miss tornado had struck our house, the ground would have been littered with red cardboard, and soggy wheat-based discs, but I guess the embarrassment of having the quirks of your kitchen cupboards revealed is unimportant in those situations.
Then it was lentils. For a short while. Turns out we don't get through lentils as quickly as I think we do. But they're so healthy that it's hard to walk past them in the aisle without feeling that stocking up on them is a good thing. And I had a recipe for sausages and lentils that I was convinced my children loved, even though they repeatedly told me they didn't. I wanted them to love it, and the sheer force of my desire was enough to lodge lentils in that "buy me" spot in my brain.
For the moment, it's cornflakes. Cornflakes are my domestic comfort blanket. Not to eat, but just to know I have them there. In the case of a nuclear armageddon, we'll at least have a good breakfast option.
The cornflakes are little more out of hand than usual, for two reasons. First, I haven't quite got used to my smaller kitchen, and those big packets of cereal, they're BIG. They don't fit in cupboards. So when I do stock up, it's all very visible. They have to stand like soldiers to attention on top of the fridge, or lurk in the utility room, annoyingly in front of the outside light switch, (though I'm not using that much at this time of year, and perhaps the Great Cornflake Plenty will have passed by the time the nights draw in again in the autumn. Autumn 2016, that is.)
Second, it was those dreaded multi-buy offers, combined with a voucher incentive. A 21st century housewife is powerless in the face of such weapons, especially the lethal combination of them both at once, in a pincer movement. I was at the till, and my trolley had come to about £4 less than the total needed to get a "Week 3" voucher, and I'd already got weeks 1 and 2. So I asked the cashier to wait a second, and rushed off to the spot, nearby, where I knew the cornflakes were on "two-for" offer, because I'd already put some in my trolley. I came back with two boxes. He scanned them through, but - because they were on special offer - they didn't tip the balance over the required total. I needed something else, but - under the pressure of the narrowing eyes of the queue behind me - I couldn't think of what else to get. My mind froze, then jumped for the simplest option. I went and got another couple of packets of cornflakes. We'll get through them, my inner voice whispered, down its well-worn neural pathways. It was only when I got home that I remembered just how big those bumper packs are. And just how many were already on the top of the fridge.
Cornflakes, in my defence, are good. They have a lot less sugar than most other cereals, even the diet-y ones. Special K, for example, has lots of sugar in it, particularly if you get the packets with added flakes of suspiciously highly coloured, edible dried substance, which might or might not once have been fruit.
I feel like the fourth little pig, who built her house out of cornflake packets. I know that when the big bad wolf comes, the cornflake bricks will probably not stand his huffing and puffing, but at least he'll be distracted by the prospect of a vitamin-enriched snack while we escape.
What about you? Do you hoard food? If so, what kind?
