Did lockdown change what u have stocked up on.

[Paranoidmarvin]

I know from different threads on here that different areas suffered from gaps in the shelves in different areas.

As an example where I am you couldn’t get meat. But my friend the other side of the country had loads but couldn’t get flour which we had lots of.

I’m about to do a massive re stock ( been saving for a while now ) for January’s mess. But do I take into account what was generally missing from all of the supermarkets round here ? And stock more meat in the freezer ?

Did lockdown change what u got in terms of what was missing in the aisles.

I couldn’t get eggs , flour or pasta
Although my DH did find a small independent shop that had plenty of stock of flour and even now she said she has never run out , but I don’t think many people know about it ,it’s a garden shop but had a little bit out back that sells cake ingredients £2.50 for 2kg I think she charged
I now buy a bag of pasta with every shop , I have about 7 small bags ,
Obviously I can’t keep eggs for long periods , but I make sure I have an
average of 2x12 when I go shopping .
It’s a metal thing shaped like a chicken so I make sure it’s full. I eat a lot of eggs , the other family members not so much
I make sure I always have one extra bag of flour when my kilner jar gets to half empty I’ll buy another bag , top it up then have an extra bag extra
I haven’t got storage for too much
I could always get meat if I got to the butchers before he opened ,leave it 2 hours after he opened , quite often he’d have run out of the cheaper cuts of meat and completely run out of chicken , I now buy a little extra so have a good stock of meat
He’d quite often still have fore rib of beef and huge legs of lamb left
Unsuitable for a family of 3 , when 2 of them are not big eaters
I’ve always got huge stocks of toilet roll . I have IBS
I don’t think we will have another 3 month lockdown , no way , I’ve probably got enough freezer food to last about 6 weeks, so if we have these mini ones that are happening at the moment we’ve definitely got enough of everything to last

One of the things that bothered me most was the amount of people taking stuff from the free from aisle that didn’t need to. Just incase.
I am dairy and wheat free. I cannot eat anything else. I went without some foods for weeks until they came back in stock.

I bet the people who bought it ( overheard many a conversation about they were buying it as everywhere else had gone ) tried it and realised how awful it actually is.

I will be stocking up my food this weekend in my new freezer. Not being without food again.

I made a few small mistakes, like buying emergency pasta sauce, ragu stuff, that we don’t usually eat, and prefer the fresh stuff, so still finishing those 6 bottles. We bought them in case we got really ill and couldn't cook, and hoped to have some easy stuff. Will save 2 jars just in case. Also, didn't have any tomato puree in the house, it was impossible to get hold of for 2 months, as were chickpeas, kidney beans, rice and all lentils sold out online and in supermarkets.

I'm not overthinking it to be honest, I'm just making sure we have enough to tide us over for several weeks. So that means shelf stable versions of what we normally eat.
I'm not sure that just because stuff didn't get used during lockdown, that it won't be used early next year when potentially there'll be even more chaos in the shops.
I would rather have something than nothing to eat.
I'm basing my shopping on a 'What if' scenario - what if there is no fresh food, what if fights break out over what little is there, what if there are power cuts/fuel shortages/problems with water supply.
What if we are rationed. What if the aisles look like they did in march.
So I don't regret anything I have already bought, even if it hasn't been used yet.
I have practised a few emergency tinned meals but mostly anything that will be out of date before February has been donated, and supplies replenished.
Agree about meat in freezer too, and hope that any power cuts wouldn't be too long (or we'd be cooking up a storm over a camp fire and sharing with neighbours) And what if there aren't power cuts? Happy for stocked freezer.
Prepared for worst and hoping for the best!

I now keep a 16kg bag of bread flour in the understairs. Likewise 25kg of spuds ans a 16kg of plain flour. Restock as they run low.

And oatmilk because my family hate cows milk.

We used it as a time to trial stuff and bought more of the stuff that came together as a reasonable meal. I've also tried to find a better variety of some things as we got bored quite quickly.

We were pretty on point but changed:

• Fresh veg box (+milk) every week and deliveries from the butcher
• Bread mix instead of bread flour. DH can manage the former, which was good when I was out of it with Covid in March and he lived of fresh bread and tinned soup
• More treat foods
• Treat-type drinks
• We got a couple of gadget-y things (e.g. roomba) because we're both home 24/7 now, so maintenance stuff etc that we would not have needed otherwise
• Doubled the already very generous supply of DH's favourite "easy to make" foods with a long shelf-life. I eat whatever is there but he can't, so gets priority
• Someone suggested Ocean Saver for cleaning products on here and we switched to that
• On that note, ALL the mould remover - because it has bleach in it, it was impossible to get and the flat promptly developed a serious mould problem
• Spares for some things I don't want to be without, e.g. nail clippers, in case non-essentials aren't sold anymore
• Got some hair cutting scissors as DH decided my skills are good enough and he never liked going to the barber anyway (no pressure then!)
• Finally got a jump starter - didn't before because DH insisted we would never use it, now we use it all the time.

Supermarkets were generally fine around here, although pasta took a good month to come back in, flour probably a good 3 months. We had plenty of that, though.