If you couldn’t do any food shopping from now...

[IsTheRainEverComingBack]

How long could you last feeding your family on what’s already in your house? I’ve always been a bit of a food hoarder and eat a lot of staples (beans, lentils, rice, pasta) that are easy to store, but I’ve just looked round now and reckon I could probably feed us (just me and DP) adequately for a month definitely, maybe longer at a push, on just what I’ve currently got. How would you fair?

Might take myself up on my own challenge and see how long I can go without a food shop. If I can at least buy milk for my coffee as that’s the only thing I’m low on!

I genuinely thought £220 for 3 weeks was quite frugal (it does include toiletries and cleaning products).

I know people who live on ready meals who must spend that in a week.

Things like Camembert end up as a meal (puff pastry topped with garlic mushrooms and Camembert etc) so not as expensive as meat and 2 veg.

The only things I consider as 'luxuries' in the shop are 2 big bars of Cadbury chocolate, 3 packs of Jaffa cakes, big box of Coke Zero, maybe some crisps and wine (although given the way this month has gone the wine could be considered as a necessity)

I'm a prepper. It's about what you would realistically eat - don't waste storage on stuff no one eats. And it's about 3 meals a day. I bet loads of people have plenty of main meal stuff - even cobbled together meals that are a bit eccentric. But what about breakfast? What would your kids (if you have them) actually eat.
What about drinking - not just emergency wine. But tea/coffee etc.
Of course you absolutely do not need to bother with this kind of thing. But a couple of extra bags of pasta and some stuff in the freezer is always a good idea.

Probably about a week on the usual stuff, then another couple of weeks on pasta / rice / lentils / beans.

Monthly we spend:
£20 dog food
£48 veg, fruit, eggs, 2 small fresh meat items (a £12 mix delivered weekly by a local farm)
£5 washing powder, toilet rolls, toothpaste, soda/bleach (averaged as not all needed every month)
£5 pasta, grains, legumes, flour, oats
£15 bread, cereal, milk, cheese
£10 for odd shop things like coffee, tea, sweets, squash, herbs or spices for a recipe etc

We sometimes eat out on a weekend, I don't see us as half as skint as we once were this is our shopping without me feeling frugal or having to plan too much.

The dog food has just arrived, the kids have had bananas for breakfast, I've had a black coffee, I'll make pea soup for lunch with the open bag of frozen and some garlic, we'll have an omelette with homemade chips for tea and then the fruit/veg/meat delivery will arrive tomorrow. I'll probably pop to Lidl at the weekend to get some carbs like rice and pasta depending on what comes in the farm delivery tomorrow to match meals for the next week.

About two weeks, but there would be a fair amount of pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, and lentil and barley soup type eating. Milk would have to be rationed. It would be okay, but low on fruit and vegetables. On the other hand, also low on added sugar and alcohol.

Monthly we spend:
£20 dog food
£48 veg, fruit, eggs, 2 small fresh meat items (a £12 mix delivered weekly by a local farm)
£5 washing powder, toilet rolls, toothpaste, soda/bleach (averaged as not all needed every month)
£5 pasta, grains, legumes, flour, oats
£15 bread, cereal, milk, cheese
£10 for odd shop things like coffee, tea, sweets, squash, herbs or spices for a recipe etc

I suspect the vast majority of people would struggle to live like this though simply due to time pressures if nothing else. And do you genuinely not top this up at all? How are the kids eating bananas for breakfast unless your local farm is in the caribbean?

3-4+ weeks. Do I get to include courgettes, potatoes & apples from the garden? :) The biscuits and milk would run out within 3 days, though.

About two weeks before we got to having to eat mushy peas with water chestnuts. If we decamped to my mums, quite possibly the rest of our natural lives, provided we stopped her from chucking things out within a day of the best before date...

Do those who don't have anything put by simply think "it will never happen"
Pretty much.

*or do they think “I have enough money and job security that I’ll just pay the price whether it’s £1 a loaf or 5?”
Yes.

or do they think “I have enough money and job security that I’ll just pay the price whether it’s £1 a loaf or 5?”
Yes.

Well that's a nice position to be in. I suspect the majority of the UK are not there.

On reflection, it would be more than a few days, but it would be pretty dull and not very balanced. I have pasta, rice, the dreaded(!) lentils etc in reasonable quantities. Some cans of tuna. Eggs. Frozen peas. Oats. Some flour to make bread. But I'm not a bit user of the freezer - tend not to keep meat and fish there normally. I prefer to buy fresh, eat at the start of the week, and be veggie for the rest of the week.

And Cloudtree no, I'm really not worried about a food crisis right now. Different mindsets I guess.

Cloudtree possibly, but really I just don’t believe I’ll ever need to eat out of my kitchen for 6 months on end with no access to any food in the outside world. So I don’t have stacks of food piled up.

What happens after that 6 months is up? And you’ve run out of food entirely? And there’s still no food in the shops? Anywhere?
If you stockpiled for 6 months, what’s the plan for after then?

If I could get milk (and possibly bread) I would be ok for about 3-4 weeks at least. But as we were away on holidays, I haven’t done a proper food shop yet this week so haven’t restocked fruit and veg properly so I’d run out in 2-3 days of fresh (have frozen and tinned), and have not got much of snacky bits (crisps etc) for school lunch.

And I’m not having a dig at anyone who does have months of food at home, I just don’t feel the need to do it.

What happens after that 6 months is up? And you’ve run out of food entirely? And there’s still no food in the shops? Anywhere?
If you stockpiled for 6 months, what’s the plan for after then?

Well that's a weird illogical argument but if that ever happened you'd be in a far better position than those who had nothing to start with . But the reality is that in most situations you'd hope that some food was available all the way through and use your stockpile to supplement that.

I said they were delivered by a farm, not bloody grown there, pipe down ! My husband and I both work, 2 kids and 2 dogs, life is no less busy than any other family. How would most people struggle time wise, I don't get it. A delivery of food once a week, a dog food delivery once a month and a trip to Lidl once a week or so. Local shop for last minute forgottens. How's that any different to a lot of people?! We just spend a lot less because clearly don't have the money to splash. I would also worry that we'd wasted food if we had half as much in as some people list.

I said they were delivered by a farm, not bloody grown there, pipe down!

It's a fairly logical assumption that a meat and veg box delivered by a farm comes from the farm not via the local tesco!

My freezer is reasonably well stocked at the moment (I had been emptying it, then a glut of veg from the garden topped it up again, and the meat/fish drawer is near full).

I have lots of jars and packets of sauces, and reasonable number of tins of tomatoes. corn etc to get through.

A sack of potatoes, and probably enough pasta and rice for about 6-8 meals each when I add all the various shapes and types together (and another 4/5 days of risotto as well), maybe 3 of couscous.

Loads of baking stuff, for sweet or savoury. I could stockpile a cruiseship with jam at the moment for some reason (I haven't been buying it - it has just appeared!). And we have a reasonable pile of cheese in the fridge (but we adore cheese so that probably wouldn't last long). Only 12 eggs though (thanks to my NDN who bought them for our return!) and not a huge amount of butter - but I'm sure I could figure out a way to do flapjacks without butter....

In our case, it's a combination of poor childhoods (80s recession), prepping-ish mentality towards snow and other storm events, and also the fact our lives are generally 100mph so we need to have decent stocks in case we just cannot get shopping some weeks - that I can manage by grabbing milk and bread on my way home but that we can survive on what we have otherwise.

But I DO rotate what I have, and run down those stocks as well, when there are slacker periods. And we had just agreed last night that we're having a "clear out cupboards" couple of months before doing a big restock before winter sets in properly.

Despite being a prepper I don't have six months of food stored. It's as much about having sustainable supplies of what you can renew without a shop. I grow some of my own veg. I have a normal sized freezer with the usual stuff plus a bit extra meat. I also do other stuff to preserve meals without relying on the freezer. You don't have to.
It can't hurt to have an extra box of cereal if you can manage it. Or whatever.

If I didn't have a 6 ft teenager, over a month. Having one right now I wouldn't like to speculate.

Maybe ease off on assumptions before you begin to get snarky in future.

I have enough flour to make at least 20 loaves of bread and we have dried milk powder so at least 6 weeks. We have fruit and veg in the freezer too so we wouldn't die of scurvy.

About 2 days. There is nothing in my freezer except frozen herbs and peas.
I hate defrosting food so never freeze food.

I did my annual clear out of the cupboards yesterday, so not long. Once I’m restocked, probably a few weeks.

Oh. We would get scurvy quite soon.