Struggling with 'store what you eat'

[CookieMumsters]

As the title says really, I've been building up a little stock throughout the year with one eye on covid / self isolation, and the other on brexit. I've read the advice to store what you normally eat, and it makes a lot of sense to me but I'm finding it remarkably difficult.

Most of what we eat is fresh, lots of fruit and veg and dairy, and meat a few times a week. My freezer isn't huge, but the space we have is full of meat and veg and I'm trying to add tinned stuff into our regular rotation.

I dont really know what my question is, but does anyone else struggle with this? Any tips?

Glad I'm not the only one doing dry run tests @Whenwillow!

Trying to dry run my way through Tin Can Cook Cookie think I will start with Corned Beef Chilli on page 120.

We had the bolognaise with corned beef. Nice but too tomatoey, so I'll adjust my ingredients a bit. Can vouch for the
carrot cake oats breakfast (good way of getting veg refuses to eat tinned carrots) We also liked the 'chicken' soup made with pease pudding (that was a surprise) DH likes it with chopped frankfurters in it.
Also like the lentil curry with mandarins but DH didn't.
I was going to mention the sardine and tomato soup but I think that was from cooking on a bootstrap, but that was much lovelier than expected.
I like her books because they remind me how simple and tasty cooking can be. Worth having plenty of onions and spices in the house. Also garlic. They seem to make anything palatable.

Will definitely have to try these soups Whenwillow they sound lovely. The carrot cake oats breakfast sound yummy too, will definitely try to stock up on herbs, spices, garlic and onion as they always add to a meal don't they.

Thanks for all your tips Whenwillow

Pleasure It's nice to have people to chat about it with.

lentils and tins of beans and brown rice and whole grain pasta and tins of tomatoes all store well... great for us that transitioned frombeef to lentils a few years ago. not so great if you have to do it suddenly.

I have heard tvp recommended as an alternative to beef. I certainly liked it when my landlady swapped us all to vegetarians.

I think the key is to prep for what you will eat, rather than focus only on storing. So as others have suggested, get a veg box subscription or grow your own or make friends with someone who grows . Be able to make bread as well as buy it. Get onto a milkman’s books even if it’s only a couple of cartons while you buy the rest more cheaply in the supermarket.

Problem is, if there are suddenly shortages post this Christmas/New Year, there's going to be quite a long wait until the home grown veg is ready. Or your new friend's home grown veg for that matter.
Veg subscriptions are fine right up until whoever supplies that runs out (bearing in mind that if supermarkets run short, many people will also be looking elsewhere)
Being able to make bread is a great prepper's trick, but you need to have the ingredients available. Weren't flour and yeast two of the things that people had difficulty obtaining in the spring?

Olive oil
Spices
Nut butters
Rice
Jars of peppers
Tinned potatoes are pretty decent if you slice and fry them, or pop in a Spanish tortilla
Coffee
Dairy free milks (long life)

@Whenwillow

Problem is, if there are suddenly shortages post this Christmas/New Year, there's going to be quite a long wait until the home grown veg is ready. Or your new friend's home grown veg for that matter. Veg subscriptions are fine right up until whoever supplies that runs out (bearing in mind that if supermarkets run short, many people will also be looking elsewhere) Being able to make bread is a great prepper's trick, but you need to have the ingredients available. Weren't flour and yeast two of the things that people had difficulty obtaining in the spring?

The flour and yeast were certainly an issue in spring which is why I have shelves groaning under the weight of both. I can't even eat wheat flour so it's all for my DS Need to remember to get some more brown gluten free flour in...

Yes, likewise @RhubarbTea. I was posting in response to @thelegohooverer

@Whenwillow all very fair points. I suppose what I mean is that it’s important to expand your supply chains if and where you can as well as storing up what you can. And the further back you can get along the supply chain the better.

But it’s tricky. I have devoted a lot of freezer space to brioche because my asd ds will eat it and it’s hard to get hold of the only brand he’ll eat. So I guess prioritising is another part of the solution when you can’t be fully flexible about what to eat.

Just to pick up on the specific point about the veg subscription - during lockdown, those type of food delivery services weren’t taking new customers. That’s why I’m keeping an active account with different suppliers now. Nothing is foolproof but spreading the net a bit wider might help.

I've built up a stock of things we "could" normally eat. E.g. beans and lentils. We use some but not huge amounts in regular meals, but I could easily use more if we had them left to use up.

I've bought evaporated milk rather than UHT because we do usually use small amounts, whereas no one here is going to use UHT milk unless desperate.

Flour to make bread and jam so there's a treat in desperate times.

Porridge oats, which I do use daily and can have multiple uses in time of need.

Mostly though, tbh I'm just making sure we've got a enough to get by for a month or so rather than planning for any major siege.

Yes, I've also become a regular customer of local businesses that I hope will take care of me if there are shortages. The milkman, veg box, fishmonger, butcher and wine merchant

@thelegohooverer yes, you're right. I'm doing similar with the butcher in the hope that he'll look after his regulars. Sorry, after reading some of the more scathing posters on the aibu stockpiling thread, I had become both weary and wary of people saying oh I'll just go to the farm shop, or I'll just order a veg box.
Apologies - your post was a more balanced 'you could do this too'.

@Whenwillow I completely understand where you’re coming from.
I actually really value this corner of mn for the ability to discuss these things with people whose heads aren’t buried in the sand.

What I’ve done is meal planned January. 4 near identical weeks. Either store cupboard recipes (risotto, pasta and sauce), freezer meals (fish fingers/oven chips/peas/basa for adults) or batch cooked and frozen meals (soups, chillisc curries). So I have a month of available meals ready.

If things aren’t so bad we will eat all that over 2-3 months interspersed with fresh food. If things are awful we hope they aren’t that bad for more than a month

It won’t be the most interesting month food wise, and probably quite carb heavy. But it’s not long term. And hopefully it will be the “not too bad option”

I had my first delivery this morning from Milk & More and was really impressed. Hope that we can help to sustain local businesses in the coming year and they can help us out a little too.

@BareBelliedSneetch that's a great way of looking at it! Thanks for sharing. I've got a fairly large stash (for me) but no clue how it will piece together as meals added with what's in my freezer stash. I'm going to write a January meal plan in the morning and see what I'm left with in my stash after that and go from there

I started with an audit of what was already in the freezer, and went from there.

I like the idea of a January meal plan. I detest meal planning normally but I'm sure I could do one month. I also have to go through my highest stash shelf today to weed out any shorter dated items to donate to the food bank and replace, so I could start making a list of what I have up there at the same time.

Great idea thanks BareBelliedSneetch need an audit of my freezer. Did a similar thing wrote down a month's worth of meals and proceeded to get the ingredients for them.

I am never going to be organised enough to do meal planning for a month, but we do have plenty if tins and two small freezers of food. I signed up to milk and more and oddbox, so assuming that they keep running, we have milk, bread and fruit and veg to mix with the stores. I make yoghurt with uht and the kids will be happy with longer life milk, but if I can possibly have fresh milk for tea it will make life happier.

I bet you would be surprised at how much you have Dennis. I plan to try some store cupboard meals that don't need meat such as (tinned) veg curry, corned beef pasta and hash, frittata with tinned pots & tinned mushrooms, and make our own pasta. I am going to try and stretch my ingredients out as much as I can. I would also welcome any meal ideas too please TIA