What do you regret buying in your prep stash and lessons learned.

[RusticaRubra]

I regret buying tinned stuff. I don't have loads but probably have about 20 tins of beans, soup, veg and fruit. We will get through it but the family are all cats bum face about it. Tinned toms and Devon custard - yes, other tins just no. I won't do this again. Next time my focus will be on having external delivery supply chains of fresh fruit and veg if I can't get to the supermarket.

If there is a next time, I will cook and freeze.

What do you regret buying in your prep stash and lessons learned.

Nothing. I bought nothing I wouldn't ordinarily use, and we have eaten most everything now (and been very grateful for high levels of stock in our cupboards). We eat a lot of canned beans and tinned toms in normal times. I will store more flour next time.
I dread the project of no deal Brexit in December and having to go through all this hassle again

We’ve actually eaten most of ours. Mainly because dp refused to let me buy anything we don’t normally eat.

The exceptions have been:

tinned potatoes (were yuck)
Chopped garlic in a tube (not used as we have fresh)

I’m thinking to rebuild stash and freezer stores now for potential second corona wave and no deal Brexit will buy most of the same stuff again.

Things I wish I had had:

Extra chest freezer in garage
Bread maker
More flour

I have tinned potatoes but waiting to chuck into a soup. Soup season sort of passed, but date is long so will be fine as a thickener.

Will add more treats to the stash next time. Otherwise we’ve been ok, didn’t need any food for a long time and we were self sufficient which felt great.

Nothing, in fact wish I had bought more tins and more flour and baking stuff, and more pasta. We only go shopping once every two weeks to minimise risk as I have asthma.

You don’t need a bread maker. It makes a hole in the bottom. You can easily make it by hand. Our bread maker hasn’t been used in ages, but we have been making loads by hand. Freeze flour if you have space.

Nothing really. I hate tinned veg other than toms and sweetcorn so didn't buy any. If any regrets, it was stashing chocolate and biccies as I ate them and now feel fat.

Tinned potatoes can work nicely in a curry, especially something like a massamam curry. I wouldn't eat them as normal potatoes, though I vaguely remember my mum used to sometimes roast them.

I haven’t used the tinned soups I bought but then again I haven’t been ill (yet) - I only bought them because if I had been ill I didn’t imagine I would be capable of making myself a proper meal (and I live alone so no-one to minister to me!).

I have roasted tinned potatoes when I have run out of fresh and also used them in a chicken tray bake. I also saw Jack Munroe use them (with tinned sardines) to make fish cakes which the celebrity panel all raved about.

If Corona comes back with a force, even if we don't go into a lockdown as the economic impact will be too great, I will still be minimising my outings to twice monthly. With that in mind, I am going to make sure I am stocked up. I really don't fancy queuing up in 2 or 3 different places like I do now in the cold and rain. Right now it is OK getting a bit of VitD and reading my book or listening to a podcast or chatting to those around me. In the dark, at 4pm, freezing my nuts off. No thanks!!

The other thing I forgot is tin tuna. I have loads of it, but not used it that much. I will keep a few but didn't need 15 tins. I saw it on offer a few times and jumped on it.

Right noted about tinned potatoes - will toast what I have left!

Toast?!! roast

Tinned potatoes shallow fried are good for frittata or deep fried they actually taste really good. You can grate them for hash brown

We bought instant mash that I thought we’d never use but it make really good coating for onion rings. (Determined to use all that we bought )

We’ve actually done ok with our tinned tuna:

Toasties
Baked potatoes
Salads

Tinned potatoes are lovely chopped or sliced and then fried in some garlic butter.

We have now signed up to who gives a crap loo roll. We’ll always keep a good stock of flour now - i’ve made all the bread the last couple of months and it is so much nicer. We’ll probably sign up for a local veg box too. We have used almost everything we stocked up on. We are only shopping every 3 weeks, so, so pleased we were ready in advance and didn’t need to shop at all in the first three weeks of everyone panic buying.

I still have plenty of supplies of toothbrushes etc but we are using them up. Need to get all the kids to the dentist if I can as one is complaining of a sore tooth and my temporary filling keeps falling out! They have all missed appointments (cancelled by dentist) due to the lockdown.

Planted lots of veg though. I think the less you need to go out the better. Treats are important too.

We bought a tin of Quality Street that came out one evening when we had all had a grim day. That was a good buy. And the big bag of pancake mix was also brilliant. We have fluffy pancakes every Saturday morning and the kids love it.

We now keep a stock of 4 blocks of cheese and 6 of butter in the freezer. And a stock of 10 pints of UHT milk and 6 of oatley.

None of the kids liked the tinned spuds but they loved them in a curry (thanks to a suggestion on here)

So grateful to those on the prepper boards.

Sorry, I didn’t answer the question!

I regret buying a box of mini- packs of mini eggs. I ate most of them myself and have put on about a stone 😬

Tinned potatoes are good for gunpowder potatoes or bombay aloo. They are also good chopped in Spanish Tortilla with a bit of onion.

You don’t need a bread maker. It makes a hole in the bottom. You can easily make it by hand.
It’s having the time is the issue for me, we’re both out working longer hours/more days than pre-Covid. I used to have a bread maker but gave it away years ago due to trying not to eat so much bread....(since then DP has moved in who inhales loaves). I definitely would have got it out again now, flour supplies depending! Even if you just use it for the mixing/proofing/kneading stages and then turf it out into the oven for actual baking.

Also ran out of pasta and cheese. Restocking is including more cheese in freezer and lots more pasta.

I resisted panic buying for quite some time but did eventually break about newborn nappies. I was very laid back about buying baby stuff as I had almost everything from my first, but just as I started thinking it was time to get nappies etc, they were nowhere to be found. I didn't buy too many myself but asked my mum to pick them up when she saw them and I ended up with about 10x packs of size 1.

I've now got a chunky 3 week old who's nearly out of size 1s and a tower of unopened packets. I'm assuming I'll not be able to swap them for the next size with current infection control measures at the supermarket, so will just donate them. I also semi-panic bought maternity pads, but I only have a couple packets of those to donate.

I love our bread maker. Being able to chuck everything in, and then walk away by far negates the minor annoyance of a hole in the bottom. I often set it on a timer and come down to fresh warm bread in the morning

We bought some extra tinned fruit, tuna and water recently. I'm mildly worried about droughts and supply chain issues later on in the year, and we'll either use it up, offer it to neighbours or give it to a food bank, so it won't be wasted.

I do regret buying chocolate - I bought really dark stuff and even that is adding too many calories a day.

Generally though I did my stupid "buying a Kelly Kettle" level of prepping many years ago, and since then we've only ever bought stuff we actually need and use.

UHT milk - it's gone way out of date so needs to be thrown away.

I don't like it generally, so was never going to do a "stock rotation" with it.

I think I'll just buy oat milk or freeze cow's milk in future.