The Brexit Cupboard Part 2

[PerverseConverse]

Following on from the fantastic thread of the weekend, I thought we'd continue discussing our brexit cupboards and boxes here. Here's to all the preppers and their cupboards, no matter what they contain. (Keep quiet about your stash in real life).

Gosh she's right! I was really hungry just now and then I said "this is England!" And it worked! I can almost taste the nutritious flag now! Crisis over guys. Phew.

They didn't put "you'll have to eat the horses, but they taste quite nice" on the side of that bloody bus.

What next? Dogs?

We should forward this thread to Venezuela. Once the world's 4th largest wealthiest country per capita, highest standard of living in Latin America, massive trading partner of the USA supplying it with half a million barrels of oil a day along with cement, steel and aluminium, Sixth largest member of OPEC with the biggest oil reserves on the planet.......... Inflation now at 10 million percent, families starving on the streets with 9 out of ten people unable to afford daily food, risking their lives to try to swim across to trinidad and tobago to escape starvation.

If only they'd known they only had to say "This is Venezuela"

How will this affect free school meals?

Very good question, and one would hope that the government has a detailed plan in place - and it had better be more robust than the plan for non-existent ferries to sail to a derelict, silted-up port.

It also raises the question - what about others who cannot get their own food and are totally reliant on others? People in hospital, in care homes, in prisons etc? We know that the Army has been stockpiling forward purchasing, but what about these other institutions? Hospital patients are in danger if there is insufficient food. Can care homes get the right food for their residents (and will there be anyone to prepare and serve it if the EU care workers go home)? How many soldiers will it take to quell a prison riot if the prisoners are reduced to a bowl of soup and a crust of bread a day (the prisoners lucky enough to be in Bedford Prison can roast the rats in their cells)?

Aww, wasn’t that enlightening? A flaming meteor of righteous anger across the firmament.

Ide be bloody pissed off if prisoners were given food BEFORE non criminal people of society

When mac refers to some of the greatest designers in the world, does she mean James Dyson? You know, that James Dyson who is buggering off out of Europe?

Anyway, back to prepping.

Batteries
Courgette seeds
WRM and top soil.

Just sorting out my cupboards and thinking through storecupboard meals.

(I used to shop everyday as I was passing shops as part of my daily routine but life has changed and it's not convenient now.)

Tinned cream: I remember Fussell' s cream but it has been discontinued. I have my sad face on.

I bought some dried onion and garlic to add to the spice rack.

Wine boxes are good value and easier to store than bottles. Just saying.

I asked people at work were they stockpiling and they looked at me as if I was the biggest idiot on the planet.

Now I’m 100% panicking. I have informed the husband we will be going to Tesco ASAP and have a huge online shop which is growing by the minutes. I am terrible for knowing what is enough - I don’t even know how much 6 weeks worth of food is .

I’ve always wanted a pantry to be honest but for now it will have to all go in the garage.

Please keep lists of what is in your cupboards coming as I really do need the idiots guide!!!

@ThePurpleFairy , please don't panic. And people playing dumb when you talk to them doesn't mean they aren't getting extras in.
6 weeks worth of food at short notice if you have no pantry stores just now is unrealistic and upsetting.
I'm a general prepper, I know this shit. I've been posting on here loads.
Deep breath. Here's my suggestion to start (or do no more)
Imagine you are snowed in for three days. What will you and your family actually eat? Get freezer friendly and/or shelf stable versions of that. What are your hygiene needs - toothpaste, sanpro, shampoo etc. Make-up too if it makes you feel good.
Think about snacks and treats. And entertainment. Because being stuck indoors is boring.
Why 3 days? It's doable and storable and keeps you away from the shops while you suss out how things are locally. Want to do more? Plenty of advice on MN.
Take some comfort in the success of the Spelman Amendment. Even though it was non binding, enough MPs including Tories put their head above the parapet and were brave enough to support it. There is no Parliamentary majority for No Deal.
My take on it is that TM will come back from E.U. with no real change and the headbangers and cowards on all sides will have to make a choice between WA or No Brexit.
WA will win. It's not perfect but we get a transition period which means stability, food supply normality (although prices might start to rise). A shit Deal Brexit is better than no deal Brexit.

Purple DO NOT PANIC

Do the three day thing as suggested.

Only put tins and bottles in the garage, you do not want a run in with opportunistic vermin.

Do not spend more money than you can afford.

Until the end of March the food will keep coming into the country as it's always done. Plenty of time to get a few stocks put by.

@bellinisurge thanks your response is really helpful I am actually a bit of a hoarder already anyway and I get a weekly food shop which lasts 7 days, so I know we would already survive for 3 days on that plus what we have in the freezer. I’m wanting to make a longer term pile now just incase

I had been toying with the idea of buying a standalone freezer for the garage so we could batch cook more (can fit about 8 dinners in our freezer currently). I’m kicking myself now for not having done it.

At the moment it’s things like tinned tomatoes, passata, water, juices, toilet rolls, toiletries - we go through all of it anyway so piling some supplies in the garage would do no harm. Any extras we wouldn’t usually eat such as tinned veg/fruit I will give to a food bank should we not need it in say 6 months - tinned sponge puddings I’m actually looking forward to, this may spark some new found favourites .

As I mentioned about the pantry thing, I’ve always wanted a cupboard that I can ‘shop in’ if that makes sense and then top it up only when the stuff is on offer. I guess now is a better time to start than any!

It’s an integral garage, would I still be at risk of vermin if I put bags of pasta and rice on shelves? Those can always go in the cupboard under the stairs

@ThePurpleFairy , don't buy a freezer you won't use.
Don't spend money you don't need to spend.
Take it very slow.
You can have as many batch cooked meals in the freezer as you like but if you are too on edge to eat them it won't help.
Take this time to build up some personal resilience with e.g. yoga if you don't do it already. Seriously, it will help you loads.
Take time for cheap thrills, down time whatever you want to call it.
A positive morale is an important part of prepping.

@bellinisurge oh don’t get me wrong, extra freezer is not part of Brexit stockpiling. That has been on the list since we discovered the delights of batch cooking, coming home from work having a nice home cooked meal without much effort and wanting to be able to cook huge batches at a time. We were also throwing out huge amounts of rotten fresh veg, so have started buying frozen which makes the extra space handy.

It’s not taking over my life, but it is a small worry in the back of my mind if the worst were to happen and the shelves were empty everywhere for a little while.

Agreed.

Freezer isn't necessary, you can absolutely just do tinned and packets. And you have nearly two months. That's loads of time. Budget wise, how much can you spare each week? If you can spend a fiver then that'll buy you a lot of tins, bog roll, sanpro and toothpaste over the next 8 weeks. Tenner even better.

Think we cross posted... in our house we had a chest freezer long before the referendum and I find it really convenient for the reasons you mention. If you were going to get one anyway and would still use it if we stayed in or went out with the WA, I say go for it!

I am terrible for knowing what is enough - I don’t even know how much 6 weeks worth of food is

Its difficult to know. But I would suggest that you either work out a few meals that you could rotate using shelf stable items and your frozen items and then work out what you need for each and then multiply it up for the time period you are aiming for. Or if that is too tricky that you just buy items that you use anyway, in bulk and then stop when you feel like you've gone far enough/have no room/have no funds left to put to this. You'll use it eventually and whilst you might end up with some odd meals, its unlikely that in the long term there would be nothing at all available. Hopefully empty shelves would be short term and longer term we would be looking at a lack of availability of particular things, lack of variety and increased prices. Then your stockpiled items will come into their own in supplementing the food that is available in the shops. So for example I have lots of orange juice. More than we would drink in 6 weeks but we will use it eventually, it has December dates on it and I expect the prices to go up so there's no downside for me in having it.

Remember that suggestions on here that we are giving of 3 days, 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months or whatever it happens to be, are just guess work or just to get you started. Nobody knows what we might be facing. Some people will feel the need to get in as much as they physically can, others will be comfortable with a two week stash.

I've always held a good stock of food/toiletries/loo roll in the house and can usually stretch about a week on a fairly normal diet, two if we eat a weird menu from lurking tins that live in the 'Narnia' section of the cupboards. Very useful when you get ill for a few days at a time and till have hungry kids. Having this stockpile doesn't seem to have affected the shelves in my town, or the rest of the country over the past 20 years - but I might be living on some fluffy cloud and am unaware of the impact this has caused to others.

Sorry if I've been the cause of any food issues for you all.

Have been discussing upping the easily stored stuff to about double - literally the only extra thing on my 'list' is long life milk, but I usually get a 4 pack when heavy snow is forecast (like about now). DHwas a bit at first but then became enthused over the nerd-planning aspect of it all. Apparently I am authorised to buy the rest of the years' usual supply of tinned tuna, beans and sweetcorn.

He asked if I would add a couple of litres of Baileys onto the list as that's milk-for-coffee substitute and we'd all need a little boost if things go pear shaped. I like his thinking. Right off shopping. Sorry if the bottle of baileys and fresh mango my kids have asked for creates a panic-riot later today in my part of the country.

I live in a leave voting area that's crawling with no-deal crazies. And yet asda never seems to have any tinned potatoes lately.

Oh and 2 of the tinned steam pud flavours that I put in my online basket yesterday are suddenly unavailable

But if you ask them if they're stockpiling it'll be 'oh no, not meeeeee.'

I have recently discovered the delight that is the Fray Bentos micro waveable s and k pudding. Dirty food at its best in my view. I will have to restock the Brexit stash now ...