Do you keep a lot of food in stock at all times?

I stopped keeping so much in stock. I find it better to aim for an empty fridge and use as much up as possible.

We only have a few days of perishables (fruit & veg, fresh meat, bread, dairy etc), but have loads of tins and packets in the cupboard, and a (very) full chest freezer with all kinds of things, including a couple of frozen loaves, a couple of cartoons of frozen milk, several bags of frozen veg, frozen chips, frozen ready meals, and a few frozen joints of meat. So we'd probably survive a couple of weeks easily with varied meals and then maybe another couple of weeks on a "boring" diet using up the tins, packets and remnants of frozen.

None of what we have in "stock" is wasted. We have virtually no food waste as we meal plan and write shopping lists, so we only buy what we are going to use when it comes to fresh/perishables, etc.

I do, like you. But I've just been through all my food cupboards and am trying to whittle it down a bit to live slightly more simply and avoid any waste :)

We have enough storage to be well stocked with staples, tins, condiments and spices. A large freezer is always half full, but our fridge/fresh needs a weekly top up. I do start to run the cupboards and freezer down from end sept, ready for the Christmas crap!

I am the same OP.
Partly due to living in a village with no shop, partly a habit from when we had two teenage boys at home and partly because I don't plan and like a choice. I also grow some fruit and veg so have a freezer full of that.
I have a chest freezer, an American fridge freezer and a small fridge.
I could probably feed the two of us for a couple of weeks, longer if I made bread. We would run out of carbs first.
Not much is wasted, if I cook surplus veg it goesin a bag in the freezer for soup.
My keeps even more than me, she has a walk in pantry packed to the ceiling and if either of us runs out of an ingredient we go to each other rather than make a trip to the nearest shop 7 miles away.

I'm like your friend and shop every 10 days. It's because of having very little money and space for groceries. I'm on my own. It is what it is.

I have plenty of tins and dried food like pasta and rice. The fridge is usually full too as I shop every couple of days. But I don’t have tons as my kitchen is small.

It depends really. We do a big shopping delivery once a month. We don’t have a car so will stock up on heavy/bulky stuff so we don’t have to carry it. If you visited after we’ve just had a delivery, you’d probably think we were mad…who needs 15 tins of tinned tomatoes, but we get through it over the month. We buy fresh stuff from the little shop or fruit/veg market by us each week. By the end of the month, the cupboard is always looking empty again.

I have a lot of freezer space and use it, we get a monthly meat delivery and I grocery shop regularly. I also batch cook and freeze. But I can be feeding from 1 to 16 on any given night, I usually get advanced notice on the larger numbers, but occasionally not and its very easy to be able to grab meat and veg from the freezer, pasta or pulses and canned tomatoes from the larder and throw together a stew or some such. I can have leftover fresh veg in my fridge, if my estimates are off, but am quite good at inventing home made ‘fridge drawer’ soups to use it and then I freeze them in individual portions..which works for a night when its just me.
I keep a good stock of toiletries and cleaning products, but we tend to have just a single variety of each, so they get used and replaced regularly.

I wish I could use the regular delivery thing on Amazon for some of my most used products, but our speed of use varies so much at the moment that I cant make it work for me.

So I suppose I am saying that we have high stocks of most things, but low waste.

I used to, but had a walk in pantry (1930's council house, always great storage). Now I don't have a lot of space for dried/tinned, so only buy as I run out. I do have two fridge/freezers. I could always make three mains for two. We have lots of shops within five minutes and family about, so I don't over buy.

"I don’t understand people who go to the shops almost every day and only buy food for one or two days at a time"
A relative who I care for lives between an Aldi and Lidl, I can get my bus home from outside either. So I tend to buy fresh for a couple of days. I do a Tesco shop for heavy stuff weekly, which my DP picks me up from. I'm finding that the dates on stuff are getting shorter.

I plan because I'm single and mostly batch cook so I eat a lot of "ready meals" (homemade and frozen into individual portions)

This week I've realised I've no frozen chicken meal so I looked up a recipe for one to batch cook and freeze. I have most of the ingredients in. Then I will have some spare ingredients from it so I found another recipe that uses up the sun dried tomatoes and Parmesan for my lunches

Lunch - there is always tuna, ham, cheese, eggs and bread in so I can mix it up

Tea - I will batch cook 6 portions of the chicken to freeze. But I won't eat it all that week! The freezer has lasagne, cottage pie, beef stew etc and I always have eggs, beans, frozen chips and veg, salad, feta, halloumi etc in

My fridge is usually pretty empty, I do have food in the freezer and cupboards but not really enough stuff to make a proper meal. I tend to buy foods on the spur of the moment without meal planning or much thought as to what I will do with them, often things like curry pastes and chutneys and hot sauce etc but not really foods that can be eaten without other fresh ingredients, which I rarely think to buy. My freezer is full with items such as ice cream and ice lollies and then things like onion rings and frozen Yorkshire puddings that don’t actually constitute a meal and I rarely actually cook. I mostly eat toast for breakfast/ lunch and then in the evening either eat ready meals or take aways which I buy the day I need them as I rarely have what’s needed to cook a meal in the evening. I have adhd and autism, I hate going to the supermarket and meal planning just completely overwhelms me so even online shopping feels too much. If I couldn’t get to the shops for some reason I could survive on the food I have in for a week or two without starving but would be eating some very very odd combinations.

I don't even have a pantry!

I buy stuff on offer so there's always a surplus
Couldn't get a delivery at the start of covid and I managed 6 weeks with what I had in. Was some odd meals though!

Always have what we need. Hate food waste so need to meal plan and make sure everything fresh is used. Plenty of leftover meals in the freezer, should we need. Lots of snacks/cupboard food - tins, noodles, biscuits, crackers - items that won’t spoil.

I grew up with an empty fridge at Mums and full fridge at Nans, so I’m a little inbetween. I don’t get worried if my fridge isn’t full, but would feel uneasy if I didn’t have all my meals planned for the week, but this is only since having kids.

The only thing I found hard to get during Covid was yeast & then I gave up the notion of baking my own bread & just bought shop bread.

When we had the first lockdown I didn’t need any shopping for 3 weeks. I had stocked up a bit though because I could see it coming.

You one of those who saw it coming months before hand? 🙄

Same here... always have full cupboards and freezer, fridge gets bit depleted before big shop but never empty and there's been lots of times in recent years I've been glad of it (hello 2020 covid! And the newborn years...)

We didn't have lots of food (or nice food) growing up and my parents still have very sparse fridge etc except for Christmases (by choice now rather than lacking) so always having plenty in gives me a sense of comfort and is something I definitely prioritise

I’m like you but only since Covid and want to change back.

Think when things went mad in 2020 I had a space in the garage where I had a few extra tins and bags of pasta and things like that that I built up.

Now I seem to have cupboards over spilling and it’s really annoying me. Want to go back to having enough for the week and meat and tidy cupboards again. Shops are only a 5 min drive away and deliveries are possible if I was ill or something. Feel like I have a lot of food clutter 🤣

Same

I don't overbuy because my parents are overbuyers and also hoarders. In their kitchen and pantry you will find 6 or seven of everything.

I can't bear it so I shop little and often and keep a very limited range of spices, oils etc.

I think it’s normal to have random stuff in the freezer, half empty condiments in the fridge, and random jars/tins in the cupboard. Who uses all their herbs & spices in one week, my mum has some as old as me!

I have a lot of food in stock. It's home economics for me, both time and money. Also a 20th century awareness that not everything is available all the time. Stood me well in the COVID lockdowns. Nor can you always get out to get something. Being at the mercy of supermarket delivery services a lot of the time I make sure I have one in stock so if a new one can't be had for a while it's less of an annoyance.

There's never anything in my freezer apart from frozen peas and vodka.
I make sure there are tins of everything in...kidney beans, chickpeas, tomatoes etc.
Buy fresh food/ meal plan every 4 days.

I'm more like your friend tbh. I shop for the week and the night before the shop is due, my fridge is nearly empty 😂
I always make sure there's enough for sandwiches, enough food in the cupboards and the freezer though. It's only the fridge that will look a bit bare.