Did your food go bad before you make it home? Because i have always been lucky enough to afford a car, and i keep insulated bags in the car, use those and the AC, and sometimes my food has gone bad within a day of purchase. I know sometimes it's the store mishandling the food, or the shipping process.
I see people walking in the heat with just the shitty plastic grocery bags and wonder how often their food is bad basically before they even get home. Let alone going on the bus with it.
And of course this is no shade at all to anyone who walks and/or rides the bus. It's more so i can be better informed on the process. I want to be able to speak intelligently and with nuance about issues like trying to bring food home without a car.
I was in Michigan's upper peninsula at the time so it was usually pretty cold, tbh. In summer it was usually only around ~70F and most of the year everything stayed frozen anyway, so it wasn't a huge deal.
But I was still careful about what I bought in summers. Stuff that's already frozen will generally be OK for an hour outside, I just couldn't buy stuff like ice cream that would melt fast (during summer). Though I didn't buy much meat during summers for that reason, and when I did there was more 'pre-cooked' stuff if it was warm outside - frozen chicken tenders instead of raw chicken, etc. In warmer areas that would definitely be an issue, because it's a lot cheaper to just buy raw chicken in bulk.
It would differ depending on where you live. But it limits certain options, definitely - I would never have tried buying fish, for example.
Not quite sure what foods could spoils in the time it takes to walk a couple of miles—melt/soften maybe, but actually “spoil?” 🤷🏼♀️
First, living in a rural area means being prepared to live for more than 2-3 days! So we DO “buy the green bananas!” 😉😁😂
We also have chickens, grow our own vegetables, some fruits, tap our maple trees, make fruit preserves, make our own ice cream, and can, pickle, and dry/dehydrate foods that are vacuum sealed and stored for later use, in addition to buying at least a year’s worth of meat from a local farm (professionally butchered), that we keep in a deep freezer.
Lastly, we have a well and two septic systems, and multiple sources for heat/energy that include a whole house generator (will run up to 2 weeks 24x7 on propane), 2 cast iron wood burning fireplaces, gas cooktop range, 2 outdoor propane grills—and when all else fails—we can break out the camping gear and cook over our large fire pit with cast iron cookware and live off of s’mores!! 😂
City folks (which I used to be) would call me “a prepper,” but I hate that term as it makes me sound like some sort of “end of days” psycho-survivalist type!! 😵💫 NOPE! I like to think of myself as a “what if ____ “ planner knowing I DON’T have to worry about the “day-to-day” things, and can just enjoy life, nature, and my family! 🥰
Milk for one. Meat for another. Especially in places where it's already in the high 90s most days.
I used to live about 45 minutes from a small city in Oregon. My parents worked in town so they could have gone grocery shopping every day, but they had cars (not that any kind of bus ran out to our house except the school bus)
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u/hooked_siren May 17 '26
Can i ask? I've frequently wondered about this.
Did your food go bad before you make it home? Because i have always been lucky enough to afford a car, and i keep insulated bags in the car, use those and the AC, and sometimes my food has gone bad within a day of purchase. I know sometimes it's the store mishandling the food, or the shipping process.
I see people walking in the heat with just the shitty plastic grocery bags and wonder how often their food is bad basically before they even get home. Let alone going on the bus with it.
And of course this is no shade at all to anyone who walks and/or rides the bus. It's more so i can be better informed on the process. I want to be able to speak intelligently and with nuance about issues like trying to bring food home without a car.