As I mentioned in a previous post, I am doing my best to support the local businesses I know and love in this time when most of them are closed, or at best offering curbside pickup of whatever it is that they sell.

Before the sheltering-at-home really took hold I went to two of my favorite St. Paul restaurants, Joan’s in the Park and Luci Ancora, and from each bought a gift certificate. Each was in an amount corresponding to what I would expect to spend there on a typical evening out with my wife.

Both restaurants are now offering their menus on a take-out basis. The gift cards are a bit of an optimistic bet on the future: a gamble that the restaurants will survive through the crises and reopen so that I can redeem them. Going forward, I expect that I will be ordering take-out from these and other favorite establishments, in some proportion to how much I would be spending there in a more normal time.