I expect significant supply chain disruptions this fall, due to the “second wave” of infections. So I feel like the responsible thing to do is to lay in a supply of stuff that I can store now, so I don’t have to panic buy, repeatedly go to stores, and compete with my less far-sighted neighbors then. I’m trying to build a list, and thought I could crowd source part of it.
Some parameters:
I live in a large house in the suburbs, with my husband and adult daughter and one cat.
We have lots of storage space, although my husband will get annoyed if there’s too much stuff lying around.
We have a large fridge with a too small freezer compartment in the kitchen, and a sort of ordinary kitchen fridge/freezer combo in the basement.
My husband and daughter don’t eat pork, and avoid most cheese. My husband also doesn’t eat fish.
I don’t eat anything in the capsaicin family (green pepper, hot peppers)
We have town water and sewer, and the water is pretty good. I can’t recall the water ever going out in my town or any nearby towns, except once there was a “boil water” order in nearby towns when the main water line was contaminated. Since then they’ve built a back-up. Also, my town sources water both from that reservoir and ALSO from local wells, and during that incident I brought bottles of tap water everywhere I went, since we had plenty to drink. (“please don’t waste water, or water lawns, as our supply is temporarily reduced”)
We often cook Indian dishes, so lentils and an assortment of beans and dry rice seem like obvious foodstuffs to hoard. (but how much, and in what sort of storage?)
We are competent cooks, and have been. making most of our own bread, for instance, during the pandemic.
I am especially wondering how to handle fruits and veggies, as my family has a strong preference for fresh > frozen >>> canned, and we wouldn’t naturally rotate through a stock of canned vegetables. Despite my title, I don’t actually want to hoard stuff we won’t use, I just want to have reserves in case it’s hard to buy stuff for a while.
My dad used to buy half a cow twice a year from the butcher just because that was the cheapest way to feed a family of five. It wasn’t considered hoarding back then because a lot of families did the same thing, it was being frugal. Any more than that and you have to deal with freezer burn. That and I never really learned to like pot roast.
I’d need to buy a new freezer to buy half a cow. I suppose I probably could do that. I’m hoping for suggestions that don’t depend on uninterrupted power, though. I’m not worried about losing water, but we do lose power a few times a year. Usually just for a couple of hours, and the frozen food is fine. But that seems like a real risk.
Last time I checked deep freezers were fairly cheap (~$350 for a 10 cu ft) and they keep stuff frozen for a couple of days if they are full and you don’t open them too much. You could also stock up on fish and chicken if too much beef is an issue.
If power goes down for a long time you could have a barbeque!
Back at the start of the stay home orders here (and a bit before–we didn’t really need to be ordered) we tried to only go shopping every one to two weeks. We had existing supplies of food just because we had some emergency supplies already (earthquake preparedness), a big stand-alone freezer, and we shop in bulk to save money. So, our plan should have worked.
What tripped us up was the fresh fruit and veggies, and milk and bread. We now have a pound of yeast we bought from a local bakery when it was sold out in all the stores, so bread won’t be an issue. But we tried all kinds of things to deal with getting fruits and vegetables.
Here’s my advice: 1) try out some recipes now using Frozen or canned veggies. We found out the kids like green bean casserole, and an enchilada bake, and a quinoa, bean, salsa and corn casserole. Look for stuff your family might like and try it out now.
2) network with neighbors. We have a WhatsApp group of people that live on our block. It was halfway in place as part of an emergency preparedness initiative, and expanded a lot when Covid-19 hit. During the strictest phase of the lockdown, people would announce that they were going grocery shopping, and offer to pick up stuff for others. We were able to take advantage of that to get avocadoes, milk, and tomatoes – huge staples of our diets – a few times, and we picked stuff up for others a few times.
try out some delivery or curbside options in your area to see what it’s like, if you haven’t already. We tried all kinds of options, but none wound up working for us.
be prepared to lower standards temporarily. Talk about how you all prefer fresh vegetables, but you need to eat canned/frozen every other week (or whatever) because it’s the responsible thing to do. Find what you like best now (maybe have a taste test to see what you as a family like best) and lay in a supply of that.
As you say, it’s not too hard to make your own bread. We also bought a pound of yeast, and have already used more than an eighth of it. I’ve also found that ultra-pasteurized milk has a shelf life of more than a month. (in the fridge.) We successfully went a month without shopping when my state’s cases peaked, and we’ve been shopping every other week since. And we consume a LOT of milk and yogurt. (We’ve been making our own yogurt since before the pandemic, so that uses up milk, too.)
Which is why I’m most worried about fruits and vegetables.
But… ignoring that. How much food do people buy? How do they store it? What are good options for food with a good shelf life that my family will eat? Any hints about how to be responsible about rotating stock, so we really do use the food we buy?
Do this by monitoring your current purchasing/eating for a week or two. Basically, you’re keeping a food diary for your entire family, but ALSO include
How much paper goods - TP, paper towels, tissues, wipes, pads, etc. your family goes through NOW.
How much in the way of cleaning supplies your family goes through NOW - dish soap, laundry soap, bath soap, shampoo, wipes, cleanser/cleaner, etc., etc.
Ideally I’d do that for a month but two week should work (if you’re in a hurry just one week, but a whole month will give you a better picture.
Once you do all that you’ll be able to figure out how much of all of the above you will need for 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, whatever. You can then purchase the stuff that will keep for whatever length of time you decide on, so stuff like paper goods, cleaning supplies, pasta, etc. I recommend keeping this stuff in vermin-proof containers, like those big rubbermaid bins. For paper goods double-bag the stuff to protect against moisture, especially if you’re keeping it in a basement.
That will get you started.
I’d suggest increasing your stash of these things over the course of a month (or even two) purchasing extra stuff each shopping trip rather than trying to buy X months’ worth all at once.
When you buy food, label it with the date you bought it. As you use it up (because you’re only buying stuff you’ll use, right?) replenish the stock with a new purchase at your next shopping trip, put the data on it, then put it behind all the stuff you bought before that. That’s how you keep rotating stuff.
Suggestions about trying new recipes now are very good, but I won’t repeat them.
Now, a couple of your points:
Hence, the bins. Label the outside of the bins things like “paper goods”, “cleaning supplies”, “rice and lentils”, whatever is appropriate.
Then don’t buy those things. Only buy what will actually be eaten.
OK, good - I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you opt for an emergency stock of water. If you do, come back and we all can go over that.
Do you already purchase dry beans/lentils and soak and cook them from scratch? If so, buy dry beans and store them in tight, vermin-proof containers. You don’t have to buy a 20 pounds sack of them, in fact, since you SHOULD be rotating this stash rather than keeping it for the apocalypse purchase in packages the size of quantities you’d normally use in a week. Properly stored beans keep for 2-3 years (actually, they can be edible even longer but the taste and nutrition falls off after that). WHITE rice keeps for years as well, but BROWN rice can go rancid in less than a year. Unless you freeze it. For emergency supplies white rice is probably your better option as it can be kept at room temperature.
If you use canned beans already, great - buy cans.
Likewise, white flour, properly stored, keeps a long, long time. Whole wheat (or other whole grain) can get nasty. The other downside to flour is that, although producers try to avoid insects flour stored long-term can turn up with weevils or other critters, like pantry moth larva. Which, by the way, are harmless if you do ingest them and can be sifted out of flour (which is one reason a lot of old-time recipes called for sifting a lot of the time) but the average suburban family will likely freak out if there are critters in the flour. You can freeze flour - but you say your freezer space is limited. The good news, though, is that if frozen flour does thaw it does not go bad and can be refrozen without harm.
You can opt for canned stews, soups, etc.
You can also opt for freeze-dried meals which are pricey but some of them actually taste decent and have a shelf-life of up to 30 years as long as the packaging is intact. Easy-peasey to make (just boil water). But you want to find out if your family will eat something like that BEFORE you buy a ton of it (Personally, I keep about three days worth of this stuff, but then, I used to backpack a lot so I’m familiar with it and know which ones I’ll actually eat).
That’s a long enough post for now - ask more questions any time.
What other kinds of natural disasters is your area prone to? You might want to think about how to stock up on things that would fit into that plan.
I think figuring out what to buy is pretty personal to you and your family, and I made suggestions about how to do that.
My family eats a lot of the things that your family doesn’t, so I can’t really translate my experience directly to yours.
We have some shelves and a set of wire rack drawers in the basement. We keep canned goods on the shelves. We tend to buy a case at a time at Costco, or stock up when something’s on sale at the store. The kids like nachos, and rice and beans bowls, so we go through rice and beans and canned olives and salsa regularly. We buy cheddar in 2 lb blocks, but don’t usually keep an extra, so it’s just something that goes awhile between purchases.
We like a specific kind of local pancake mix, which had been off the shelves for about 6 months. No clue why, exactly. When itshowed up again last week, I bought 3 large bags of it. That’ll go on the shelves. Bags of dry goods generally go in the wire drawers.
I can’t say we have a system exactly, some stuff is just stacked on the floor in the basement and not yet put on the shelves.
Obviously this is a YMMV type of thing, because each family’s tastes are different. My family, for instance, loves Midwestern Lutheran staples: casseroles and barbecue and things made with Campbell’s cream of whatever soup. Your family may be different. Follow the advice upthread: find out what your family likes. Make a list of dinners that will never disappoint. We did that, and made a menu of 28 different dinners. We won’t have to repeat anything for a month.
Then, make grocery lists. List the ingredients for each meal, and figure out how it fits into a budget (this is the hard part, obviously). If you can afford it stock up for a month’s worth… and the go shopping every week or two so you always have at least a month of groceries (and pet food and TP and sanitary products and all the rest) on hand if necessary.
So what I did was do everything that I just mentioned, and then figured out how to do it with canned, frozen and shelf-stable options. For instance when I make stew, I use fresh chuck and fresh veggies. However, as I started stocking up for round 2 of Covid, I’ve done 2 things: I’ve cubed and then frozen half a dozen pounds of chuck for future stews, as well as picked up “stew mix” frozen veggies. This is a pound bag each with carrots and onions and diced spuds and celery and whatever else needed for stew. Dump it into the pot and voilà! Dinner. So everything I need for stew is there in the freezer but I don’t plan on using it unless I can’tget the fresh stuff. Ive also picked up 8 or 10 cans of Nalley canned stew as sort of a back-up for the back-up. Not nearly as good but in a pinch it beats eating cheerios for dinner.
Basically this is what you do with everything: 1) find what your family will eat, 2) figure out how to make it with frozen or shelf-stable ingredients. And then use those staples only after you can’t get the regular / good stuff. Again, this is for back-up.
However, you don’t want this stuff to go bad so you plan on actually using it. For instance, I’ll use the cubed beef in a couple of months for stew or beef stroganoff and replace it with some fresh bought stuff. If I can’t find fresh stuff becausr of shortages, well that’s why I had it on hand to begin with.
Rotating is really that simple: use up what you have, replace it with the fresher stuff so the oldest stuff is used first. Lather rinse repeat.
Keeping a running inventory really helps. It may feel a bit OCD but its pretty important once you start filling a freezer with dozens of lbs of meat and bags and bags of veggies.
And do stock up on veggies now. They’re in season and likely as cheap as they’ll be for a long while.
Gold. GOLD! hoard a big pile to slumber peacefully on! And if any God damn Hobbit tries to burgle the slightest of trinkets, you burn the nearest village down!
What do you recommend for this? I’ve been following recommendations for big earthquake preparedness, and previously had thought we would rely on our basement supplies, which I have no vermin concerns about. But with more information specific to my house, I now know that, although my house is not likely to collapse, the basement might not be accessible for awhile. I’m storing my emergency water in the garage, and I want to have around a week’s supply of food there as well, but we periodically have to deal with rats invading. Storing food there is like sending out invitations to Ratapalooza.
Is there any real evidence that a second wave of COVID-19 would be worse than the first time around in terms of getting groceries and supplies?
The thing is, something is going to end up being the toilet paper or hand sanitizer of the first go-round, but I doubt it’ll be either of those things again. It probably will be dependent on what part of the supply chains actually ends up being affected, and what people decide to do with their spare time if there’s a second round of lockdowns. Probably not bread and yeast this time around, but probably something else.
I wouldn’t worry about water; it’s treated such that it’s extremely unlikely that COVID-19 would be present.
I think in a general sense, I might lay in larger than usual supplies of non-perishables with the plan that if there is a disruption, you have enough on hand to ride it out, not necessarily to go the entire second wave without resupplying.
So make an educated guess of what your family uses frequently and in what quantities/what rate. Then come up with a number for how long you might expect a supply chain disruption to be, and then figure out how much you’d need to ride that out from there.
If you wear glasses, get at least two spare pairs. Its very likely they will be sourced from somewhere far, far away, and your nearest optometrist could easily be shut and the supply of cheapies from pharmacies not restocked.
This might mean, if you have old broken prescription ones, getting new screws or scratches buffed out so they are serviceable. If you have you have self-raising flour and rat poison in similar survivalist tubs, being able to read the labels will probably be useful.
Are you saying people were hoarding it? Because that’s not it. It really disappeared, as in, its shelf space went away. Its website had no updates for like, several years, so no clue what happened. It was never in stock from back in March, even though almost everything that was out has been back for awhile.
We thought at first that it was part of the flour, etc. hoarding, but it stayed gone much longer.
Hey! Some of us like a bowl of Cheerios for a light dinner!
Which is yet another example of how tastes vary. What works for one person/family won’t for another. (Also, Cheerios can serve as parrot food in a pinch and I have three of them to look after)
Well, yeah, “vermin proof” can mean different things. I mean, three years ago I came home to find a raccoon IN MY KITCHEN helping himself to my pantry.
There are basically two forms of vermin: insects, and mammals. OK, that’s a rather broad description. For insects you want something airtight - sealed original packaging, for example. I’m a big fan of ziplock bags, too.
For mammal vermin you need something better than a baggie - they can get through those (so can my birds - not that they’re vermin but they’re nature’s little can openers and they’re hungry all the time). That would be heavy duty plastic, or even metal, tight-fitting lids and so forth. It’s also why you need to inspect these sorts of stores fairly frequently and not just put them in the basement or garage and forget them for a year.
You have to ask yourself what are the vermin you’d likely face where you live. (Sort of like “what sort of natural disasters is my area prone to?”) City dwellers need to worry more about insects and mice, maybe rats, too. If you’re more rural raccoons. My in-laws had to worry about bears in their area. Rats seem able to chew through damn near anything, so you want heavy-duty containers that you can, hopefully, spot damage on before they actually get through to the food. Raccoons (and bears) are a problem because the little bastards almost have hands and can be very clever about getting into things.
They do sell “rat proof”, “raccoon proof”, even “bear proof” containers. I’d suggest doing a little research for something that will serve your needs within your budget.
For years I kept a supply of water on hand because we depended on a well and if they power went out we had no water. I currently keep a few days supply on hand partly out of habit, and also because things like water main breaks requiring a boil order have happened, and a really bad storm can knock out my town’s water services temporarily. I wouldn’t keep massive amounts around, but having a couple gallons on hand isn’t a bad idea for anyone.
It again comes back to your situation. If I still depended on a well with a pump requiring power I’d stock more emergency water. I’m on city water now, much less likely to have that sort of interruption and if the city did lose water either they’d get it back on quicker than an individual household or be more likely to supply water to those without it.
I’m not saying anyone should stock up for a specific length of time - a lot depends on who you are, where you are, and what’s likely to happen (or not). Heck for well over a century the Mormons have been encouraged to keep a year’s worth of stuff on hand for their families. People in rural areas have long had supplies. People in earthquake and hurricane country. Those of us in the Midwest where tornadoes or blizzards could result in a week of no power or being hunkered down and having to deal with disruption from storm damage.
Yeah. Following the idea of the thread, I will say that it was not unusual for us to buy 2 bags at a time before this, so even though I was momentarily tempted to buy more, I only bought one more than I might have otherwise bought. When we have it on hand, we sometimes go through it quickly.
I almost feel like I need to provide my nonhoarding bona fides, but I’ll try to limit my defensiveness to this.
Potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, winter squash (some varieties better than others), garlic (if you can get actual fresh local garlic, not stuff a year old from the other side of the planet), some varieties of apples, all store for quite a while without refrigeration at cool room temperature. They do want some air circulation (especially the garlic) so don’t keep them in the trash cans (see below) or airtight bins. Potatoes must be kept in the dark, though heavy brown paper bags will do the job. Winter squash and sweet potatoes should be stored above 50ºF. If you’ve got a moderately cold basement, cabbage and carrots and oranges will keep for some time; so will brussels sprouts on the stalk, if you can find them that way. Try farmers’ markets for those and for the garlic (and the rest, of course, as long as you’re there.)
If your family won’t eat canned vegetables, maybe they’ll eat pickled ones. Lots of things besides cucumbers can be pickled. Dilly beans are really good; so is pickled cauliflower.
Heavy galvanized metal trash cans with tight lids.
Plastic will not keep out rats or determined mice. They’ll chew right through it.
