I test-fired the barbecue on Sunday with a boned pork shoulder, the gas turned down as low as it will go, a large smoker packet, and a pan of water on the tiles. It took forever; good thing it doesn't matter these days if we eat late. Delicious, and that's us fixed for ready-to-eat animal protein for the rest of the week.

We are definitely seeing supply-chain problems now. During my last foray at the supermarket, I saw large vacuum-sealed packets of instant yeast, the kind your local pizzeria should be using but isn't, on the shelf where the household-appropriate jars of active dry yeast should be. The products are not interchangeable; a fair amount of boring technical adaptation has to happen before an old-fangled bread recipe will work with pizza yeast. Worse, the 250-gram commercial packet of instant yeast had a supermarket sticky label on it that said "Dry Active Yeast". Which it ain't. Instant yeast is far more concentrated than the dry active kind, so 250 grams is a hell of a lot. Good thing I read labels.

But the people who make the household-appropriate little brown jars have been laid off. Likewise the people who make egg boxes that hold a dozen, and the people who print the Robin Hood trademark on paper flour bags. So the yeast companies don't have little brown jars to fill with dry active yeast to sell to Sobey's to sell to me, and farmers are dumping their eggs because they can't get boxes that hold a dozen and Sobey's is reluctant to stock up on flats of 30. The Robin Hood flour company recently laid their hands on some plain white flour bags, which explained the literally no-name flour I saw on the shelf.