not get 'emergency' food

[McHappyPants2012]

like frozen roast potatos, frozen chips ect.......what emergency would require a frozen potato

We moved to Canada 3 years ago, and they really push for us all to be prepared to last for 72 hours with no help or access to food and water. I currently have a gas camping stove, tent, water, canned and dried food to last us at least this time, flash lights and batteries, blankets, emergency radio, first aid kit etc.

Also we have an emergency plan incase we aren't together as a family at the time something happens, and a system set up with family where by if we make no contact with a certain relative in a set amount of time or the school cant contact us by satelite phone they will notify the uk embassy and fly out immediately to get the kids.

We are in a quake zone, and what happened in Japan was our worst nightmare, that is what is expected here. We have no way to predict when it will happen it could be next week or 200 years, thats the problem.

www.pep.bc.ca/hazard_preparedness/Directory_Earthquakes.pdf

Moving here made me realise how utterly unprepared people are for emergencies in the UK, its an island where we dont get massive earth quakes or tsunamis etc, but if the weather gets bad or in case of civil unrest can it really hurt to have a few bottles of water and extra beans in the cupboard?

So going back to frozen chips, probably not relevant in the case of an earthquake :P

I don't consider it emergency food but I do have "spare" food. In fact it was only recently that I discovered that some people only shop for the meals they will eat.

I always have lamb/beef in the freezer that can be turned into stew/bolognese along with bread and milk and pastry. If I cook lasagne/casserole then I always double/triple up and freeze.

I feel positively nervous if I am down to my last bag of pasta/rice or tin of tomatoes/chickpeas

I'm after ideas for freezer/cupboard tea when the emergency is not being arsed able to go to the supermarket. Lots of stuff seems to need to be defrosted first.

I'm adding filled pasta to the list.

Agree with Lulu - since moving to NZ (not Christchurch thankfully!) we've become much more disaster-prepped.

So, we have charcoal, firelighters, matches, camp stove and week's supply of LPG to run it on the bottom shelf of the zombie section in the garage. Next shelf up is dried & tinned goods, enough to make 3 reasonable meals a day for 5. Water for washing, drinking etc is on the shelf next to it. UHT milk x several litre cartons is above that.

The camping gear would be stored next to all that but we're on holiday next week so it's out in the hall. Which reminds me, must get the stove out!

We also have scanned copies of all important documents stored electronically in a few places and hard copies at the bank.

I figure we could cope for 2 weeks at a pinch, though when we move (6 months ish) and turn the hillside into a vege patch and get the chooks in, that should stretch to weeks longer.

Mum had a pantry full of dusty, random tins and hundreds of jars of coffee, now I have exactly the same. Although my 'emergency food' consists of a lot of Toblerone because if the nuclear alarm goes, I intend to spend my last moments eating all the chocolate I can get my panicking little hands on.

We came very close to running out of our emergency food last winter and certainly ran out of frozen/ tinned fruit and veg.

We had supplies for 5 which should have lasted for at least a month but the bloody winter went on and on and we could not get out.

PLEASE remember to pop a spare can opener in your emergency packs folks!

I tend to stock up in winter on cereals, loo rolls, jars of pasta sauces etc, meat & bread in the freezer & UHT milk cartons. I live in semi rural wales & will be moving this summer to a village with a shop which sells newspapers & sweets....and a few log & kindling bags. So I will get a chest freezer & fill it with goodies cos if I get snowed in its a 2 mile walk down hill to the Co-op...the up the bloody hill again with whatever food I find.

I'd rather not do that so I will hoard food.

I am also a massive food hoarder, to the extend that it's a running joke in here. I have something like 50kgs of pasta, another 50kg of rice, about 100kg of dried beans and lentils, not to mention all the dried milk, long life fruit juice, stock cubes, dried stuff and tins of everything. Then there's the toilet roll, sanitary towels, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, painkillers. torch batteries, candles and the like I always keep a good few bottles of water (still and sparkling) as well, just in case.

we would however be stuffed if the electricity went off.

I have an excuse, though.When Dh was drinking and taking drugs for years, I was very often left without any money for food and had to depend on either things growing in the garden or on sending the kids to my mothers "for wee visit" round about meal times. I am petrified of going back to that.

I'm not a hoarder as such but we have a cupboard with the staples in it - at any given time I could go and knock up some muffins, make beans on toast,have tea with UHT milk in it. there's also pasta and noodles.

In the massive freezer we freeze milk and bread. We often get snowed in and don't have a corner shop. I never used to worry about emergency food when we lived in the city and had a corner shop.

I have a corner shop about 200 yards away.
But 2 years ago I managed to get 1/4 of the way there in the snow and gave up - being in London I no longer have appropriate boots etc.

I have a large kitchen and often little energy so keep lots of cereal, long-life milk, a sack of spuds, pasta and jarred sauces, cans of tuna, veg, etc, so that a nutritious meal can be made by anyone in under 20 minutes when needed. We also tend to have frozen chips but often run out as they take up so much space in the freezer!

Don't have frozen roasties as they don't have the right texture! We never peel the spuds for them - huge waste of effort!

Like many people I don't feel comfortable without at least a 16-pack of loo roll in the house. Was at a housewarming party once with about 40 students eating curry, ran out of loo roll, and no-one could get more as a bloke with a machete was outside the door threatening to kill us. Most unpleasant... suspect landlord not happy with loo blocked by newspaper, either.

I'm another hoarder, but live in central Scotland and suffered last year. It's not just getting to the shops, it's the fact that the transport network was down so the shops had nothing anyway.

Have got hundreds of toilet rolls (well about 30 really), tins, pasta, cereal, longlife milk, coffee, tea, sugar, candles and torches, etc.

As for frozen chips - I love 'em, not emergency, just a staple.

No frozen spuds here but always frozen chips

I try to keep 3-4 weeks worth of pasta, tinned stuff etc and always bulk buy loo roll, soap powder and so on.

Some of it goes back to being kept hungry for part of my childhood. Nowadays it's more practicality- DH is self employed and if there's a gap between jobs then I can just buy essentials until he gets paid again. It doesn't happen often but the last time was recent enough to remember what a relief it was that we were half prepared.

I am aiming for this food hoarder life! Honestly. DH and I are on a tight budget and our shopping bill is enormous and then because I'm 8 months pregnant and cant be bothered to cook we waste more money on takeaway.

DH says its because I dont cook frozen stuff etc and how right he is. I have a cupboard full of herbs and passatta but only shop for the meals I'm making so right now the freezer has one pizza, some ice pops and a bag of frozen peas in it.

My MIL has brought us another freezer as i really really need to start hoarding food and batch cooking purely so I can stop relying on takeaway when I'm tired, something thats going to be far worse post c section/newborn next month.

I even started a thread about what jars/packets etc are good. So what is in your freezers? Im ready to cook double meals over the coming weeks to start stocking up but I have no frozen or tinned fare except kidney beans and baked beans! If there is a national emergency I'm screwed.

oh and is it possible to freeze homemade mash? I sometimes buy ready made mash in the supermarket on lazy days but I've never frozen my own?

Emergency chocolate. For those awful days, when you need a hug from a calorific vegetable fat laden bar. Actually I also believe in emergency gin.

Oooh, emergency chocolate, of course! Learned my lesson after I had the most enormous chocolate craving and was reduced to eating cheap 'chocolate' stars meant for decorating cakes .

Do you think this thread was what Tom from The Apprentice was getting at when he pitched "the Emergency Biscuit"??

Did someone above really say they made a sandwich with left over mash? A sandwich of bread and potatoes, carb on carb? That is almost enough to convince me the zombie invasion has already started :-)

EMERGENCY food must come in a tin. I need to eat something right NOW! Ah beans on toast - viola!

I've never made a leftover mash sandwich, but I do occasionally make a very nostalgic cheese and potato pie a la my childhood ? a baking dish of mashed potato with Cheddar mashed into it, put under the grill with some sliced tomatoes on top, then eaten piled onto lots of cheap white sliced toast, heavily buttered.

We always had it for Saturday tea, in front of The Tripods.

[we was poor but we was happy emoticon] well not so happy but that's for another time

My dad used to keep fresh pasta in the fridge for 'emergencies'. They live in a very rural area, and the nearest shop is a 20 minute drive away.

It used to drive my mum potty, because they would go shopping at least twice a week, and she couldn't even begin to imagine what sort of emergency would require fresh pasta to be readily available. Last summer my dad became too frail to do the shopping any more, so she took it over, and got rid of the stashes of fresh pasta.

However, my dad still maintains that he was right about the pasta after an incident when I went to stay with him whilst my mum was away. I decided to cook a dish that really needed a pasta base, but finding none in the house, I decided to make my own pasta. One of those 'how hard can it be' moments. Two and a half hours after his normal dinner time, my dad was definitely mourning the lack of his 'emergency pasta' supply.

why would people be embarrassed about eating frozen chips? Oven chips are far better for you than fresh fried ones and far easier to cook

I dislike competitive mummycooks - cook from fresh or don't - it's not like either option is child abuse

I am a mini hoarder. I've usually got a couple of days worth of essentials frozen and there's always tins of stuff hanging around in the cupboards

I also have a gas fridge freezer for emergency use :)

The combination of lazy parents and hungry teenagers = emergency food situation.

Anything teenagers can cook quickly and, more importantly cleanly without fecking up every available surface, while I mumsnet do important things is good.

Hence frozen pizza, frozen fish and chips, frozen portions of leftovers, cupboards with pasta, stir-in sauce, backed beans, tinned sardines and even packet noodles.

I wouldn't call myself a food hoarder, but I do like a well stocked cupboard, and it really annoys me when I find that I am out of tinned tomatoes, frozen peas, tuna or pasta etc. Whereas DH seems to see this as food that needs to be eaten. And not necessarily replaced. Grr.