What 'meals' are you putting in your 3-day emergency kit?

[CheeryOnion]

Please be gentle, my mental health is delicate and I'm trying not to panic about preparing a suitable emergency kit for my family of 4.

I just wondered what meals you are putting in your kits please? It's me, my partner and our 2 DC (8).

I'd like to write a 3 day 'meal plan' which I can laminate and pop in my box so I'm fully prepared (for MH reasons I think this will make me feel a lot calmer)

Breakfast lunch and dinner with snacks.

Drinks
Water
Hot chocolate (we're not tea/coffee drinkers)
Long life milk.
Squash

Breakfast
Weetabix
Porridge oats
Tinned fruit
Long life milk

Lunch
Dry spaghetti & Tinned Bolognese
Baked beans & ?
?

Dinner
Rice & Tinned curry
?
?

I'm so sorry if this is a silly question I'd just really appreciate some help so I can do a shop, prepare it and 'forget' about it! I'm finding it very stressful.

Thank you :)

I got some tinned potatoes, tinned carrots and peas and tinned stew for one meal.

Tinned curry and rice pouches for another.
Tuna, sweetcorn and mayo mixed with pasta (if you can cook it) or tinned potatoes to make a potato salad.
Tinned meatballs with just add water mash and tinned veg.

You might find the full cream powdered milk better than long life, we have that and it can last a lot longer and not have to be used up when open, is also much nicer on cereal etc. It's available on Amazon, or most supermarkets.
Have a think about how you would cook without electricity, thats an important consideration and if you won't be able to cook, what you can make that doesn't require it.

Lunches:
Soup
Domio ready to eat pasta pouches
Tinned sardines or tuna mayo on crackers
John west do tuna salads in tins
Cans of veg and chorizo stew

Just normal food you eat
on any other day.

Sounds like you've got a solid plan here. I'd consider snacks/ comfort food so cereal bars/ chocolate/ crisps rice pudding/ flapjacks/ tinned fruit etc. I'd also plan a few non cook meals incase of no camping stove/ gas supply x

You need to be thinking about things you can make without water or heat and that don’t need refrigeration. Spaghetti isn’t a great choice as it needs cooking.

I would focus on tins - tinned beans, veg, fruit, custard, fish, etc. it doesn’t have to be cordon bleu, just stuff you could manage to eat for a few days.

We have a lot of rice pouches and yesterday I spotted pasta pouches (don't need boiling) which I might stock up on.

For tins, we have beans, potatoes, tuna and fruit but I haven't bought any tinned meat (yet). The thought of tinned meat just isn't very appetising!

I might stock up on dried stuff like jerky because you can cook that in a broth with noodles.

I figure that you don't need to buy that much that doesn't require any of water, gas or electric: I think the chances of all three being cut off together are low.

So I'm stocking up on stuff that only requires a different one of the above - if no electric, I will boil water on the hob; if no gas, I can use the microwave; if no water, I have bottled water.

Options that require none of the above are basically along the lines of cold spam and I just can't face that...! We do have a barbecue

The only things I've done is got a 3-day supply of drinking water, and a couple of extra gas cannisters for my little camping stove, and Instituted a general policy that for anything we need daily (bread mainly, loo roll, and a few staples for my ARFID teenager) we will henceforth put something on the shopping list if we are down to a 5 day supply so that we never get lower than a 3 day supply rather than ever actually running out, so that if an emergency happens we will have plenty in the house.

We run the household with a general policy of batch cooking and freezing meals so there's usually at least a week's worth of food in the freezer, and even with a power cut it will stay cold in there long enough to last 3 days and we'll have plenty of time before we have to start worrying about it going rotten.

I'm not creating a kit, just making sure cupboards don't run bare, doing the weekly shop before everything is gone.

For three days most fresh and frozen stuff will still be OK, but I always have in plenty of tinned beans and lentils, tinned fish, evaporated milk, tinned fruit, porridge oats.

Nothing that needs heating really so instant noodles, instant couscous that just need a bit of boiled water (rather than spaghetti which would need to be boiled for 8-10 mins. Ditto tins of soup which will take a bit of heating. Tinned protein (salmon or tuna), tinned fruit and veg, baked beans. Sweet biscuits, crackers, nuts, cereal bars. Along with the wipes, water, bin bags, kitchen roll type stuff.

I'm assuming that I would have things in the fridge/veg that won't immediately need eating even if the power goes but that I would need to use up before resorting entirely to tinned food. So e.g. a Mediterranean salad would still be something I could make using some fresh items and some tinned - red onion, tomatoes, olives, feta, white beans and tinned fish.

This may sound like a really (really!) silly question, but, there seems to be quite alot of stuff on people's list that need cooking, heating, boiling water etc. How are you all planning on cooking or boiling the water with no power for a microwave or kettle? Gas? Stoves? Bbqs? We are a family of 4 and I am also trying to prepare a little bit too.

First thing is I would say your thinking is a bit rigid. In a brief emergency situation eating 3 square, nutritious meals a day isn't a priority. The thing you want to make sure of is that you're not uncomfortably hungry or thirsty. You don't need to plan for meals.

If you look in your kitchen cupboard, do you currently have 3 days worth of food in there? What shelf stable food do you normally eat? Buy an extra one or two of each item and keep it in your cupboard if you've room, or a box somewhere else is you haven't the cupboard space. Buy stuff you like, and from that point on, always keep the surplus of food constant as you eat it.

If you buy stuff you don't normally eat and have it in a separate kit, you won't end up eating it, it'll go out of date and you'll throw it away.

For us we have:

Drinks
Bottled water, uht milk, fresh milk in the fridge and I freezer, alcohol free beer

Carbs/fats/sugars
Cereal, porridge, nuts, jam, honey, bread in the freezer, cereal bars, biscuits, crackers, chocolate, crisps, butter, oil, sugar, flour, christmas cake

Protein
Tinned tuna, tinned salmon, tinned mackerel, corned beef, cheddar in the fridge, eggs

Fruit/veg
dried fruit, tinned sweetcorn, mushy peas, tinned pineapple, baked beans, mixed beans, tinned green lentils, tinned chickpeas, frozen peas, frozen mixed veg, frozen sweetcorn, frozen berries, fruit and veg in the fridge

Non of that needs cooking. We wouldn't be hungry, but we wouldn't be eating normal meals. It would be fine for a few days to a few weeks.

The only thing on that list that I don't normally keep in the house is bottled water and uht milk.

Think foods you don't have to prepare in the off chance that there's no electricity, gas or hot water.

Breakfast could be cereal with tinned coconut milk or powdered milk made up with water.

Packaged rice that can be eaten cold if necessary
Tin of beans e.g butter beans that you could tolerate eaten cold
Crackers

With a protein e.g
Tinned salmon, tuna other fish
Corned beef
Tinned ham

Snacks
Flapjacks
Museli bars
Crisps
Biscuits
Nuts
Seeds
Spreadable e.g peanut butter for the crackers

It doesn't have to be healthy because it should only be a few days to a week at the most.

For true emergency planning it’s all about having stuff that needs zero heat or refrigeration.

As someone who has done a lot of remote hiking especially when younger I took lots of stuff that was small but lots of calories that needed no heating or prep. Stuff like mackerel fillets in tomato sauce, beef jerky, cubes of raw jelly, flapjacks, fruit, fig rolls, I love food and creating dishes but this is all about just having calories. It’s what will you eat straight out of a tin that you don’t mind. I can eat cold beans no issue, corned beef stuff like that.

Switzerland has had a law for many years that people need a 3 day emergency stash of stuff.

Please don’t worry. You kids are little. When I was their age we had the 3 day week and loads of power cuts. My Mother bless her made it all in to a bit of a game, we were not scared at all. It was Russia as usual back then, we had to do drills getting under our desks at school in case they nuked us.

Do your best not to panic. I’m a patchy prepper. I know a bit about this stuff. Focus on what you all actually like to eat and include treats. If you have the power on, you are probably already sorted. Jars of pasta sauce, soups, that sort of thing. Tins of sweetcorn or whatever veg your household eats. Baked beans of course. Porridge with Nutella is good.

If the power goes off , remember everything in tins is already cooked. Just cold. If (and only if) you have an outdoor space, get a little camping stove. If not, you can buy self heating food (MREs) but they are pricey and best for when spirits are very low.
Set yourself up with a clean empty milk bottle and a head torch for a less scary lighting option than a torch. Get cheap fairy lights

It’s only 3 days - you should be able to keep fresh stuff for that time too.

We have bread in the freezer for sandwiches and ham - in a power cut the bread will defrost and the ham will last at least a day. Supplement that with crisps and it’s a normal meal for us.

Soup and bread is then another meal.

You can have bread with your baked beans.

We’d have veg left over so there would be some sort of stew, likely using some of the meat in the fridge or freezer.

For the next 6 months it’s winter, so anything for the fridge will keep outside just as long as it would in the fridge - so normal milk will be fine.

How are you cooking the things you’ve listed? I’d assume a power cut is the reason we need to stockpile, so I’ve chosen things that I can eat without cooking or that can be cooked on the BBQ/in a fire pit.

Potatoes are good for this - so jacket potatoes are also an option.

We generally have well stocked cupboards anyway, so for me this is just making sure the fridge and freezer are also stocked at every shop so that we generally have enough fresh to get us through three days. If we were talking about three weeks we’d need to get more inventive, but I’m actually confident we could make it through that with more haphazard meals if needed

We have spare BBQ canisters so could at least boil a bit of water.

For me I'm electricity only and no garden. So the only prep I'm doing is for no cook meals - I could (and most people could) limp together meals from what they have in already. So my main prep is non cook foods and witha fussy child that mainly looks like snacks and camping picnics. It's more a mindset piece I think, just getting your head around a plan makes all the difference. Even if that looks like short term snacking for a few days powercut followed by grim tinned food x

Mental health wise - I remember the power cuts in the 1970s - you may have heard old gits like me wanging on about them. For kids, it is an adventure. Like everything in the 1970s which us old gits talk about like it was paradise- it was fun if you were a kid. Old gits now were kids then and didn’t have to worry about anything.
Our parents didn’t think it was fun. They muddled through doing the best they could. And you will too. You already have a sensible head on you.
Don’t neglect a treat stash

Oh my goodness thank you so much everyone 🥰

Personally for kids I reckon the way to go is things like tinned baked beans and sausages, tinned ravioli, tinned spaghetti etc. All could be eaten cold if the power is out. They're appetising and filling.

No, I never normally feed my kids these things, and they're not the most nutritious. But they are likely to eat them, and by definition they are for use in an emergency when calories are the most important thing.

I check my supply monthly and anything a few months off its sell by date goes to the food bank and is replaced. If you can't afford to do that then eat and replace when nearing their end.

I always find the "stockpile what you eat" advice a bit useless given that as a family we don't routinely eat anything suitable for stockpiling, and I imagine many of us are the same.

Prob just eat out of the fridge/freezer first. Then if still no power after that's spoiled/eaten we would start on the baked beans/soups and tinned fruit - we tend to have a bit of that anyway in the cupboards.

I have finally paid attention to the warnings, so bought a camping stove, kettle and some gas and a bit more water as well as long life milk. I don't care about the food side much but I need a cuppa in the morning!

I presume power cuts would be more likely in the winter so at least the shed in the garden will keep food things cold.

Mixed beans, sweetcorn, some dressing and crackers or bread is an easy cold meal.

You can live on baked beans for a very long time! They are incredibly nutritious. I remember reading as a kid if ever stranded, hope for beans and a tin opener, lol.