Broccoli cancels chocolate

Ihave enough pasta, tortilla chips and frozen bagels to satisfy the whole neighborhood not to mention most ethnic groups. I could live months maybe years in my house without buying an ounce of food.

Should the apocalypse occur, my community is secure. Yet anything short of all-hell-breaking-loose leaves me panicked I’ll starve to death.

Me and the rest of you. I know this because I saw you at midnight at Wegmans before the last storm. I hope I see you again before the next one because I now consider you part of my social group. We’ve been through a lot together.

For example, no bread on the shelves. Not even manna from heaven.

You learn a lot about people’s eating habits in the dark, dreary hours before the first flakes fall. A ragged, sleep-deprived group of us are strolling the aisles in search of life — a knowing smile, a sympathetic ear, another desperate creature ready to be trapped indoors like a wild animal.

Sure, most of us could survive on what we have at home. But the thought of not being able to make well-balanced, healthy meals to build our immune systems — like cheese-stuffed French toast with gobs of energy-rich syrup — is terrifying. Where is the bread!

The motley crew is getting anxious.

One guy with hair to his waist flings his arms wide as I slink by. He tilts his head back and sucks in a big breath of air. “Don’t you just love it here,” he says. “It’s so big.” He waxes poetic: “When I need space, this is where I come. Just me and Wegmans. Ahhhhh.” He struts on, delirious. It isn’t just bread that’s gone. A tiny mushed eggplant is left — not enough for eggplant parm — and not one blueberry and I hear through the grape aisle, I mean grapevine, they have almost run out of milk and not a shard of broccoli remains though there’s a green hue that reveals it’s probably been there. We scour the leftovers, we hunt. Lots of shelves are going bone dry. So says a customer service rep., another new best friend, who I pepper with questions about the empty bins.

“We have a very fresh product here at Wegmans,” she explains, “and when we run out, it’s gone. We don’t have a storeroom. When something is done, we have to wait for the next delivery, or the next batch to be made. We get deliveries every other day.”

“So what usually runs out?” I ask perkily, trying to get a conversation going to delay cabin fever. She thinks I’m an FVI — Food Vanishing Investigator — but she loosens up when I moan, “Where’s