Excuse me...where are all the pizzas?!?

I think I got a small inkling of what shopping in a communist supermarket might have entailed back in the day.  Or not even "back in the day" in certain parts of the world - the situation can be a little more current depending on where you are.  But let's not turn this into a discussion on world politics...let's focus on the craziness that was D.C.'s supermarket scene around the time of Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, and Snoverkill.  Oh, and while I'm preoccupied with the state of my refrigerator/freezer/pantry, someone else is much more concerned with the obscene rate at which snow was falling:

I ventured out at some point, in desperate need of actual staples like fresh vegetables and milk and personal staples like butter (crucial for baking adventures!!) and ice cream (necessary for personal sanity).  When you have four federally-approved days "off" from work (yes, yes, I actually accomplished quite a bit from the comfort of my living room while watching the snow fall and avoiding the slippery sidewalks) and spend a substantial amount of time confined to your city apartment, you might go just a teensy bit stir-crazy and try thinking of interesting combinations that you can concoct from the ingredients you have on hand.  Now, to be fair, I'm the type of person who always has supplies on hand, even with my reduced cabinet space here in D.C. - you can bet there's pasta and canned goods to be had (thanks for the training, Mom!), along with at least one Lean Cuisine lurking in the freezer (helllllloooo, butternut squash ravioli!), and I've never been opposed to fashioning a day's worth of caloric requirements out of cheese and crackers.  However, when I contemplated making my own tortillas, I knew that I was reaching a state of culinary delirium and needed to make a mission-critical grocery store run.

Not that I won't make my own tortillas.  It sounds kinda awesome.  But when you can buy a decent dozen and get that time of your life back...why bother at this particular moment?

As an additional component of this stir-crazy time, you may also have spent an excessive number of hours attempting to resuscitate a hapless, totally zapped wireless router with the "help" of a somewhat intrusive assistant:

It's definitely time to get out of the house...I'm taking pictures of Harry curled up on an ethernet cable?  Need human interaction.

As far as the grocery store goes...just take a look at some of these pictures.  I mean, absolutely ridiculous.  My personal experience wrapped up with some typical scenes across our nation's capital:

• Lines halfway down the aisles...which is a far sight better than before the storm.  They were wrapping around the entire store and back again.  Yeesh.
• Boxes of produce haphazardly scattered about...the banana truck definitely made it to my Safeway, though.  Bananas everywhere.  I think everyone bought some just because they were there.  I also think I might be a fan of restocking in the form of just throwing the boxes out there and ripping them open - I don't care how pretty the broccoli is in its refrigerated case, this is much more efficient.
• Nothing available at fish/meat counter...but randomly packaged items strewn about in the freezer compartments.  Take it and run, folks, that's all there is.
• Only two flavors of Ben & Jerry's left!!  I've never seen such a thing!!  And yes, this is a necessity.  Just exercise portion control.
• The milk supply was surprisingly intact...guess that truck made it through ok, too.  Plenty of potassium and calcium to go around.
• I don't know if there was a frozen pizza to be had...I'm going to assume this was a Super Bowl holdover of some kind, or maybe the population of D.C. that frequents the Safeway at 5th & L NW really, really, enjoys the joy that is frozen pizza.

I'd like to know just what people did with their giant stash of milk, eggs, and bread.  Massive quantities of French toast, perhaps? 

Mmmm, that sounds pretty good...especially if your car is buried and you have nowhere else to be...