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

I’ve lived both ways, when I was broke I had nothing spare in my cupboards, I’d buy the bare essentials and that’s it. Now I’m in a better position plus because of where I live, fairly remote, I make sure to have a lot of stuff in and can afford to have stuff in just in case.

It was Covid that did it for me, so now I always shop as if we might suddenly be stuck at home for 2 weeks. We have very little food waste though.

I recently stayed with a friend who had 4 jars in her fridge. Came home and counted mine- 37 . . . . Includes 4 types of mustard, five types of chutneys, jarred ginger, lemongrass, etc.

I do cook from a lot of different cuisines including Thai, Japanese, Lebanese, Chinese and Indian all of which require lots of odds and ends of ingredients.

We have enough stuff to mean that I wouldn’t have to go shopping for at least a week or more but I still do

We always have plenty of food available in fridge, freezer and pantry but I wouldn’t call myself an overshopper.

It’s a twenty mile round trip to the supermarket so I keep stocked up.

We have a huge 8 drawer freezer which is well stocked and a store cupboard that's also really well stocked. We could live for a month I reckon easily.

I'd say I'm halfway between you and your friend. I do a shop once a week and by the end of the week the fridge is getting quite bare. We'd always have staples like rice in the cupboard though.

That's fair enough - you can only work with the space you have.

We hardly ever waste food. Most of what's in cupboards gets regularly used and replaced and I never over buy on fresh stuff.

I buy fresh veg fruit milk bread cheese ham every week and always have a stock of food in. Tins and jars, rice, pasta, couscous, noodles. Also usually quite a bit of meat fish in the freezer plus freezer food like pizzas etc. And usually extra bread in there too. Although we'd miss the fresh things and would end up eating some strange combinations we could live for at least a month on what we have in the cupboards/freezer at any one time. Obviously in an apocalypse and no power the freezer stuff would go off but apparently if you keep it shut it stays frozen for a while.

Yes, my kitchen cupboards are always full (and well organised, with good rotation so I rarely find out of date stuff) and so is my freezer. When the first lockdown happened I also had an extra stash of tinned and dried foods that I'd collected in case Brexit caused food supply chain issues. I no longer have that stockpile. Whenever the children visit they head for the kitchen to see if I have any interesting ingredients that they can scavenge.

I tell DH that I keep the kitchen cupboards full because otherwise he'd fill them with bike parts and bike cleaning equipment, but it's really just what I learned to do from my mother when I was growing up and it's something I've done everywhere I've lived.

I’m always well stocked, fridge, freezers, pantry, including a large amount of baking ingredients.

We waste very very little food, my mum was the same, so I’ve obviously learned by example!
Im also very aware this is a very privileged position to be in

I meal plan, and do a main shop weekly, so fridge/cupboards more full some days than others. We don't have a big freezer (it died and we're waiting until we finish the kitchen decorating/flooring to get a new one) but I have reasonably well stocked cupboards and could certainly feed us for a short while if we couldn't get to shops/shops didn't have much. We live on an island and so deliveries can be cancelled/late due to weather. We also try not to waste food. There's only 3 of us (2 adults, 1xteen who eats like an adult).

I think I’m a bit too far the other way. Weekly online shop based on the meal plan for the week. By the time of the next shop the fridge is looking a bit sparse. I don’t have lots of space for surplus stuff.

Yes we have loads. I have a chest freezer and big double larder unit, both of which are full. We live very rurally, 10 minutes from any kind of shop and 20 minutes from the supermarket so it's partly why. We also do a lot of cooking and entertaining so I want to be able to pull together a meal or decide to make bread/bake a cake without having to go to a shop for ingredients.

It’s a standing joke among my friends that they would all come to mine in the event of zombie apocalypse/food shortages.

I always have tons of food.

I grew up hungry, which I think explains it in my case.

Snap.

My fridge isnt overly stocked, but my cupboards are quite full and I always make things to top the freezer up.

My parents, from India, always had a variety of lentils, chickpeas, flour for chapattis and rice when we were growing up plus staples of onions, potatoes, vegetables bought weekly. So, if anyone ever turns up- there is always food to feed. I have carried on with that. North Indian cooking is very easy and economical.

I have a big freezer and a small freezer full of assorted leftovers and cupboards of longer life stuff. I think the problem would be milk and butter. Everything else, well meals might be a bit odd but we could probably eat for a month or so.

Yes, cupboards stocked, so there’s always pasta, rice, herbs, oven chips, soup, beans etc.

I do meal plan as we have 3 DC with busy evenings, we both work (me part time) Clubs etc

But I could probably always make 3/4 days of meals.

if I ‘ran out’ of the recent shop I had done:

I always have types of flour, pulses, rice, pasta and noodles
herbs and spices
tins of fish, veg, soup
Cereals and oats
nuts and seeds
peanut butter. Jam. Marmite

Fridge has basic fruit, butter cheese milk, cheese spread

then freezer has some meat (bought on offer!)
Left over things like Bolognaise, chilli, lasagne.
peas
frozen fruit
bread

I waste hardly anything, which is why I do meal plan.

I usually buy dried and tinned food in bulk so we'd be ok for a few days if the apocalypse comes.

But if it comes on a Monday I'd say we'd have to chance it with the zombies by the Friday especially if the power goes off so we can't boil pasta.

I do have lots of food in but I don’t overspend - I just like to be able to make a variety of things easily. Anything that stores for a while I’ll have a couple of packets of. I buy tinned tomatoes, rice, nuts etc in bulk but we do use all of these things a lot! I cook mostly from scratch and it’s great to be able to pull a full meal together from the cupboards.

No I don’t overbuy as we don’t have anywhere to store surplus food.

I think we could live for almost a month on what is in my fridge, freezer and cupboards. We would definitely have some odd combinations and black tea and coffee when the milk ran out but we would survive.