How much food do you keep in the house?

[Owlsintowels]

Following a recent chat with someone who had a really strong reaction to having lots of food in the house, she was shaking and teary at the thought of having more than just a day or two of food, especially food which can be eaten straight away without cooking, I'm interested how common this is.

I'm the opposite, I sleep easy knowing if the shit hit the fan brexit my family would be fine for the best part of a month without visiting any shops, and I assume most people are like me, space permitting.

The person in question is someone I love, I'm not trying to criticise them at all, I am ken to understand how common this is and if anyone is willing to share their reasoning for it. I think this one is related to a fear of overeating and regaining weight which was lost a few years ago. For context the person in question is a lovely healthy weight, neither over nor under, so there definitely isn't anything like anorexia in the picture.

Wow, some well-organized shoppers here!

When I read the OP, I plucked the thought out of the air that we probably have about £200 worth of food and drink in the house. A lot of that is in the chest freezer (ready meals, home cooked, ice creams, prepared veg, party desserts) and the drinks cupboard (whisky, rum, gin, brandy) that we rarely touch, plus wine and beer. Not much use in an apocalypse!

I have a good supply of spices, condiments and baking ingredients, a drawer full of tins, a month’s worth of ground coffee, teabags and 4 litres of UHT milk.
Apart from a few jars of jam or pickles lingering in the fridge door, that’s your £200.

The rest gets bought on twice-weekly shopping trips, the main one to Lidl/Aldi and another to a higher end supermarket, mostly for branded biscuits and quality meat (in-store butcher). I use lots of fresh fruit, veg, bread and meat and prefer not to buy them too far ahead.

I know the price I have to beat for most things on my shopping list and always do an approximate check on my price per portion. However, I ENJOY food shopping and cooking so I’m not above buying from the reduced section or below splashing out on an extravagant new dish to add to the repertoire.

But yes, in a zombie invasion, I’d be screwed!

I’ve got enough dried goods and tins to last us two weeks. There’a a freezer full of food and normally plenty of veg in the garden, although not this time of year.

I shop a month at a time and meal plan. So apart from fresh stuff like salad, veg, milk there's always plenty. I hate the feeling of not having enough food in.

A ridiculous amount of food, didn't use to, but now live in the sticks and I only do the food shop about once a month. So two chest freezers and a stocked pantry, I could survive a zombie apocalypse happily

I think it definitely depends on how close you are to a shop. If I lived within walking distance of a supermarket, I'd stock a lot less at home.

My village shop, with paltry basic supplies, is a mile away and my nearest supermarket 5 miles. We use Ocado and I generally shop every 5 days or so. Family of 4 including 2 hungry teens plus cat.

I do meal plan but also like to go off piste which is difficult if my store cupboard isn't stocked.

This thread reminds me of when we had a free Gousto trial via MN and how weird it was having every single ingredient, assuming people had bare cupboards. So two garlic cloves, four weeny sachets of soy sauce etc.

How on earth do people cook from scratch with no store cupboard? When making our regular stir fry for example, the sauce I make uses soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, sherry, cornflour. In addition to protein and veg which I buy fresh, I'll also use garlic ginger and chilli. Do people that have nothing in stock just buy ready made sauces etc?

Just don't get it.

I do a shop once a week. So I always have a weeks worth of food. Some bits at the bottom of the freezer! My friend is from China and she is amazed at weekly shops. Where she's from they buy their dinner each day from the shops. Think its possibly a cultural thing.

I agree there is a probably a fairly strong correlation to distance from shops for lots of people. We are a couple of miles from the village shop and 8 miles from a supermarket and we get snowed in fairly easily if it snows.

I also don't understand those with no store cupboards though. Now that would make me panicky rather than the reverse.

Loads, there’re two of us. I’m terrible for cooking exotic so there’s dribble bottles of pomegranate molasses and baking stuff that’s been used once...

We are moving soon and I need to eat up. There’s going to be some strange meals.

I live in a town, walk past a really good greengrocers, butcher and small supermarket on way home. Have s chest freezer, Aldridge freezer, a store cupboard. There’s something psychological going on that I’d lik3 to break.

I’m an under buyer by nature, hate food waste and don’t like having to eat more than I want to eat just because it’s about to go off, so typically I wouldn’t buy much food.

However because we live rurally, I hate going to the supermarket, love Ocado (who stock everything I like!) and have a massive kitchen with loads of space I can easily go for a week plus on fresh food and then a few more weeks on freezer and cupboard.

NoraBarlow I admire you a lot

In my mind I'm like you. In reality I go through the freezer twice a year, write it all out, then don't update it as it feels too much faff when I'm taking things out the freezer. Store cupboard I've got a vague feeling I've got x bags of lentils, y tins of tomatoes etc, but no list exists yet

The reaction I was very surprised by. Its a step away from my business to do or say anything helpful, but that I could be sure of day the right thing

I am planning to live out of my cupboard, particularly my brexit stockpile. I'll probably make another one, but I don't want to suddenly find it all 3 years out of date one day

We would manage for a bit but there's 4 of us so the kids would have to start getting used to some bonkers combinations.

Plenty dried stuff - pastas, lentils, rice.
Some tins - tomatoes, beans.
Cereals - would run out of milk quickly.
Freezer- probably have around 8 portions of meals prepped plus veggies plus some carbs. Maybe 6 chicken breasts, some mince and some sausages on top of that.

We have loads. At least six weeks I'd say (though it would be just lentils and rice by the end!) I think it's a bit of an anxiety thing for me as we live 30 seconds from the shops. I sometimes have to remind myself in the supermarket that it'll still be there next time I go!

Sod all in my house.

Live in London with almost adult son. Found we wasted SO much food when I shopped weekly (even when meal planning) because DC would be out / I'd stay at work late / we went out for dinner etc.

We have a cupboard with tuna, tomatoes, beans, spices, oils, pasta and the like but we shop daily.

Also I'm a terrible cook and hate cooking.

We have pasta and rice in the cupboards but we don't have anything much else, maybe tinned tomatoes. We have to shop little and often, I get essentials when I get the child benefit and some more when the child tax credit goes in but that's my only income so for anything else it's the food bank but I won't go there so we make do.

I don’t keep anywhere near as much in as my mum used to. She always had a chest freezer full and huge number of cans in the larder. I do, however, always have a good supply of dried goods and basics. We can always make bread if needs be, put together a lentil curry or make a bean chilli etc. I have less fresh stuff in, but tend to buy a weeks worth at a time.

I think it depends on where you live

Very much agree. We live in suburbia with about 10 food shops within 15 minutes walk. Even when the Beast from teh East hit us very hard the local Co Op was open. The only issue was getting milk so we now keep a carton of UHT in the cupboard. We probably have enough food in the house for a couple of weeks, although by the end of those couple of weeks it would be fairly boring meals and no fruit/veg.

On the other hand my parents live very rurally, 5 miles from the nearest (very small) shop and 15 miles to the supermarket. It's not as easy to just pop out when they run out of something. They have a freezer in the house which is always packed to bursting, plus a huge chest freezer in the garage with bread, milk, cheese, endless bags of frozen fruit and veg, They'd probably be OK for months.

I grew up in the 70/80s, when there was not a lot of food, and with parents who had not a lot of food growing up. Bad weather, and electricity cuts frequently, meant we mightn't get to shops for a few days, and the local shops were very expensive. So we did a "big shop" weekly, and also parents did various bulk buying things in specific places when possible (wholesaler, summer gluts from farms direct, etc).

In our house, we have plenty of money but are time poor instead. And have a DD with food issues (SNs and goes through phases of not eating various things that were loved, and having been very underweight for years, we need to make sure she does eat enough). So need a variety of nutritious foods available to choose if the plans don't work out.

And plans have a habit of changing - work goes bananas, opportunities come up that we take advantage of, there is a lot of travel and training and different things that we need to work around so need a variety of very quick to prepare meals and some that take longer for more relaxed evenings.

So I have a freezer with plenty of both raw ingredients and batch cooked meals, and also leftovers to use another day.

I have a reasonably well stocked fridge, with things like cured meats, cheese, chorizo and bacon bits, as well as short life items for the particular week - the longer life items can be used in lots of different ways.

And my store cupboard is well stocked generally - plenty of rice and pasta, tins of various types, a few different types of jars of sauce, lots of herbs and spices and basics, etc. I always have a couple of packs of wraps, and 1 pack of long life gnocchi.

My veg cupboard always has at least 2/3 onions and some garlic, and enough potatoes for 1 meal (I buy a sack once I am down to about 1-2 meals).

So I am able to make meals, probably for about 2-3 weeks at least, from what is in the house. We'd get bored, and we'd run out of milk in a couple of days, (I don't have any frozen or dried), but otherwise we'd manage fine.

Our street is well known locally for being sociable - we can decide at 4pm on Saturday to all have dinner together in 1 house so we all bring a dish. The snowy winters in 2009/10 in particular saw the beginning of a tradition of "snow BBQs" on the green outside - gas bbs going with anything from fridges/freezers (sausages, chicken, burgers etc), hot wine for adults and hot squash for DCs, and great sociability while DCs all had great fun in the snow. And yet, the local shops were always stripped bare in those events, so we needed to rely on ourselves - and we did!! There have also been a number of bad storms with high winds and flooding locally where we haven't wanted to go out unless necessary - so we rely on what we have.

As long as you stock up on things you will actually eat, and make sure to rotate your supplies so that older items get used up before going off, then having some supplies makes sense.

And I really don't have time to go to the shops every day to get whats needed - I'd love to be that kind of person, but I don't think it will ever be that relaxed in our household (or at least, not until I retire which is over 20 years away yet).

We could probably last 2-3 weeks if we had to without leaving the house

About 5 days in the freezer and virtually nothing in the fridge.

We have a fairly well stocked ‘store cupboard’ of spices and stuff, and I buy rice, chapati flour and cooking oil in bulk but stuff for actual meals? I don’t know, maybe a week or two.

We live a 10 minute walk from loads of shops, and both pass them on our way home from work.

Absolutely loads of snack stuff in though. I used to think I couldn’t keep it in the house or I’d eat it all, then I gave myself full permission to eat whatever the hell I wanted, and now it’s not half as desirable, just nice to have with a weekend g&t or whatever.

Loads! We live rurally so popping to the shops involves a 20min drive. I do a big weekly shop most weeks and a top up shop for milk/ bread / salad midway.

I have a large half fridge / half freezer, a larder and overflow larder in the utility room.

I went shopping on Sunday evening and our fridge and cupboards are full. It makes me very happy knowing that. I won't have to worry about stopping at Aldi on the way home from work till tomorrow evening (milk)

I get twitchy and unsettled if the stock runs low. Having said that, I would never, ever be totally empty. I ALWAYS have tins of beans, tomatoes, rice, pasta, eggs, frozen stuff - peas, chips, sweet potato fries, there's always a couple of chicken breasts, usually a fillet steak (3 in the family so have to buy 2 packs of 2 if cooking so lob the 4th one in the freezer and every 4th time we want steak we have 3 frozen ones - free )

I could not have just a tin of tomatoes and a tin of rice pudding as per a pp. It would make me very unsettled.

We have loads of biscuits, bars, crisps, nuts, popcorn, hot chocolate, ice-cream in stock too and always do. And none of us binge on it.

We are another rural family so I shop monthly. I buy the same stuff each time in terms of store cupboard so that I've always got several bags of flour, boxes of tea bags, tins etc We use meat as more of an element of dishes than the main feature - so chicken curry is actually cauliflower curry with some chicken in it if that makes sense? Which means that I can stretch a freezers worth of meat across the month.

So we have a well stocked fridge freezer, a second freezer for bread and milk and a larder. We get fresh milk from the milkman so the stuff in the freezer isn't touched and comes in handy when we are inevitably cut off via floods or snow. We also get a weekly veg box which contains all our fruit veg and salad for the week but again there is tinned fruit and frozen veg for emergencies.

I buy potatoes by the sack as well. We also have a wood fired range in case of power cuts, a truck with a snorkel in case of floods and stock pile heating oil and logs. Nearest small shops with limited opening hours are 10/15 min drive and nearest supermarket is 40 mins. Used to live in a town in Cambs, it's been a steep learning curve living this way!!

Oh forgot to add that we keep hens so always have eggs and when we have been seriously cut off like the beast from the east few winters ago, and we had run down the stocks to scary levels, we survived on eggs - pancakes, omelettes, quiches etc.

In terms of perishables like fresh meat, veg and dairy products - not that much because we have a tiny fridge and no freezer so it would only last us a few days. But store cupboard stuff like spices, stock, oils, tins, lentils and pasta we have months worth of stuff but only because we have every version of every product. 4 different types of paprika or 6 different oils for example.