Dear Reader,
From: The 5 Min. Forecast
“My husband and I eat rice at least twice a week,” writes a reader in response to our highlight of U.S. food rationing yesterday, “and we usually buy it in 10-25-pound bags at Costco. When I read in today’s 5 that Costco was going to start limiting rice purchases, I ran out during my lunch hour to stock up.
“First I stopped at a back street discount/restaurant supply store to check the prices, thinking I’d do some comparison shopping. The discount store had various brands of brown rice in bags ranging from 3-50 pounds, but the rack sections where the bags of elephant, basmati and jasmine rice are normally stacked were empty.
“I dashed over to Costco and found pretty much the same situation. There were dwindling stacks of brown rice still available, but except for Uncle Ben’s instant rice, all the white rice was gone. I grabbed 50 pounds of brown rice while the getting was good.
“I suspect every Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian restaurant in town has snatched up all the white rice they can get. I wonder how long I’d have to hang out in the rice aisle at Costco to see a food riot right here in the U.S.”
The 5: If it weren’t so serious, we’d find a food riot at Costco fairly amusing.
Editor: Be sure you make those minimum monthly payments on your credit cards. We wouldn’t want to ruin our credit rating, even for food. Would we?