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 :)

@Tiptopflipflopyou are absolutely right that “stockpile what you eat” doesn’t really work. Better to think of it as “have a stash what you would eat at a push”. If you don’t like baked beans, don’t bother with them.

How are you going to cook the spaghetti? You might not want to waste water on that. I’d get some pre cooked rice sachets instead (can be heated or eaten cold).
Tinned potatoes and carrots also a good option, mix up with the beans or bolognese to make a stew. Hot dog sausages if you will eat them (my DC wouldn’t even in an emergency!)

I would also get some juice cartons in case you need something ready to drink.

Some porridge oat or granola bars for breakfast and snacks.

Tinned soups, preferably ones with pasta in.

Dried fruit, chocolate, sweets, biscuits. High calorie snacks that keep well.

Wise advice. We had a prolonged powercut after the Great Storm in 1987 and couldn't get anywhere as so many trees were down on the roads. Very happy memories of playing Monopoly by candlelight. Our parents were no doubt stressed. But we thought it was brilliant!

Camping gas stove which can be used outside if need be, I appreciate this is not something people in flats etc may be able to do if concerned about safety. Also we have a fire pit and a stock of wood. I stocked up on gas canisters last month as the prices have been creeping up.

It’s a bit grim but pasta gets soft sat in cold water - so … pasta salad … I know it doesn’t sound delightful, does it?

I haven’t been stockpiling but I’ll just eat what I always eat. Meat. Chest freezers stuffed with it

I don’t have a camping stove and don’t want to store one, so I’ll be eating crisps, biscuits and cereal bars.

Wont kill me for a few days.

Let's not forget the humble peperami and it's cheaper Lidl cousin that don't need refrigeration.

We keep tinned fish in for easy dinners anyway - tuna, butter beans, onion and a vinaigrette is a nutritious and quick dinner. Salmon, spring onion and rice is another.

I've usually got plenty of dried fruit and bags of nuts and seeds for snacks/extra calories. Sultanas, peanuts and chocolate chips (aka Gorp) was my favourite snack in Guides.

I bought a few pouches of rice and the freezer is well stocked all the time anyway. As is the biscuit tin

The point is 3 days isn’t really stockpiling.

I’ve got more than 3 days of fresh normal meals in the house right now, because I do a weekly shop which by definition has 7 days of meals on it. I can’t think of a time when we’ve not had 3 days worth of fresh veg and meat in the house other than when we’ve just come back from holiday.

We get random (well electricity men never know why they’ve happened or how long it’ll be to get it back 😂🤔) powercuts here, so I’ve lately have made a collection of rechargeable lamps as cleaning teeth by candlelight & negotiating right angle bend (cannot leave candle due to cat/fire danger) in staircase @ night is tedious.

I keep a full loaf of sliced bread in the freezer (use a slice at a time and replace when half gone). That will last me a week, even once defrosted fully. Plus cheese (from fridge or can be frozen) and jam etc to spread, or peanut butter,crisps and snacks. Large water bottles. Trying to only think of things that I will use anyway on rotation.

I don't really think of specific meals but always have at least three days of food in. There are dozens of basic ingredients so loads of meal possibilities.

I’ve pulled together a few basics too.

genuine question though- why is it 3 days recommended? If disaster hits, what’s happening on day 4/5/6 ?

During covid I thought about what I would do if we had to isolate and couldn't go shopping for fresh, so got in some tinned fruits (peaches, pineapple) and a couple of tins of custard.

I always have lots of tinned fish because we eat these normally anyway - tuna, sardines, mackerel. There are versions of sardines and mackerel in various sauces that I quite like.

Tinned corned beef.

Maple syrup to jazz up porridge.

I've only really focuses on our toddler. We have rice pudding (his fave), baked beans, spaghetti hoops, spam, some microwave rice, sweetcorn (he won't eat any other tinned veg), banana chips, raisins, crackers...

I have been trying to keep an extra box of weetabix and bag of porridge. Just buying earlier than needed.

Then we have loads of bits in the freezer and fridge. I know power cuts maybe an issue but some of that stuff would be fine. Like carrots, onions, potatoes etc. They don't need to be in the fridge. And I know the freezer stuff would go bad but you would obviously start eating through that first. And we always have flour, eggs, sugar pasta, cheese etc because I baked and cook a lot

As for DH and I we have extra fat stores and would be absolutely fine if we couldn't eat at all for 3 days. So water and teabags mainly for us. But like I said above we have loads of bits in. I figure our chest freezer would take 2 or 3 days to fully defrost so we would be struggling to eat all the food rather than starving.

I think the idea is that 3 days gives enough buffer time for the services to repair things or deliver supplies. It's also a more manageable goal

I think the idea is that in theory after 3 days the government woukd have got their act together to declare a state of emergency, mobilise the armed forces and organise whatever massive scale relief programme might be necessary eg delivering lorryloads of water bowsers to street corners etc

Couscous can be cold soaked, much better option than pasta.
Mix a tin of tuna, tin of white beans, pesto, olives and whatever tomatoes you have. Yay Italian.

A carton of custard poured over half a crumbled flapjack and some fresh or tinned fruit is going to make kids happy.

Lidl do 6 packs of little multi vit fruit juice cartons
Asda do 6 packs of little chocolate oat milk cartons.

Expensive but M&S chunky steak is lovely

We're not planning for the apocalypse, just keeping enough in so we can look after ourselves for a few days while infrastructure and supply chains are repaired.

If it goes much beyond that (which I have no reason at all to suspect that anyone thinks it would) civil unrest would be such that you'd need the means to defend your stash.

I've bought some tinned mixed bean salad, some baked beans, some rice pudding and tinned chocolate custard.

@KindlySurfiingPlatypusagree. Obviously we can all think of scenarios where that doesn’t work and that’s how you get paralysed by overthinking. Keep it simple. If 3 days is what your financial and/or emotional health can deal with, go with that. It is absolutely 100 percent better than nothing at all. Remember Covid (for which my preps came in v handy). Things settle.
If you only think about preparing for nightmare scenarios, you will be in a worse emotional situation than doing nothing at all. Maybe with a few more beans.

We purchased a gas camping stove.

First question to ask is what potential scenario are you preparing for? Then what cooking options you would have should each scenario come to fruition?

Im all electric cooking as a rule but have gas camping stove.