How do you manage food stores without changing everyday eating?

[MintoTime]

We live city centre and tend to shop every couple of days plus a big shop every two weeks for staples. We eat / cook from fresh pretty much all the time. I’ve read the advice about keeping stores of non-perishable foods, and rotating them ie eat them then replace. But it’s all tinned / dried / highly processed stuff that we wouldn’t normally eat. Of course I would be happy to eat tinned ravioli in an emergency situation but I don’t want to eat like that all the time. We currently don’t eat anything tinned except tomatoes for cooking.

How do you manage this? And not waste money / food?

I keep some tinned food that I drop in the food bank when it gets close to going off. I don’t have a lot of tinned food so it’s not much of a financial loss.

My stores are only what I’d normally buy. We use a lot of tinned beans and lentils anyway so when I cook I take from my stores once I’ve used what’s in the cupboard and then replace when I go shopping. I don’t have a huge amount as it’s not really for prepping but more so I never run out of anything- probably 4-6 tins of each thing.

Tinned beans, tomatoes and lentils and chickpeas arent highly processed and are a good source of protein which can be stored long term where as most meat needs to be frozen or refrigerated. Although i do have a couple of emergency fray bentos pies in tins.

Sorry didnt really answer your question did i! I guess i would look for sources of protein which you would eat which can be stored long term in an emergency and not worry as much about ultra processed stuff if you cant hit both targets. You can get nice chilli in a can.

Rice?
Tinned beans/lentils/chickpeas
Dried beans/lentils/chickpeas/split peas
Tinned veg?
Flour
Pearl barley
Jarred veg (pepper, pickled onions, sun-dried tomato, beetroot, pickles etc)

What do.ypu have in that you can eat if you were too ill to cook and eat? Or there was another COVID type scenario, or a local large fire where you don't go out, or flooding, or snow or a bereavement or accident/illness?

Do you grow stuff in pots on the window sill?

Have you experimented with any of the foods?

Freeze extra portions of food you normally eat..also sauces, bread, meat, chopped veg.
Dried beans/lentils, pasta, rice, oats, flour and nuts are just longer lasting, not junk. It’s more of a buffer stock than a seperate stash.

Also where do you plan on getting water from, if you don’t already have it?

Rice? Yes
Tinned beans/lentils/chickpeas - Yes
Dried beans/lentils/chickpeas/split peas - Yes
Tinned veg? - never, it’s pretty grim stuff
Flour - Yes
Pearl barley - never eat this
Jarred veg (pepper, pickled onions, sun-dried tomato, beetroot, pickles etc) - yes, but they aren’t exactly a meal 🤷‍♀️

What do.ypu have in that you can eat if you were too ill to cook and eat?
hmm, right now ? it would depend how long it lasted. We have a big fridge full of fresh stuff that would last a few days, plus a freezer (not huge, two big drawers) with lots of the things that @yespleaseskipad mentions - leftovers, sauces, individual portions etc.

we live within five minutes walk of daily fruit and veg markets, plus numerous bakers so don’t tend to freeze or preserve either. No garden. We’ve got a big cellar and a loft space.

i guess my question was prompted by wondering how prepping works when your whole lifestyle is organised in the opposite direction ie city centre, apartment, limited storage space, no garden etc - but loads of services within 5 minutes walk so really no impetus to ‘be prepared’ at all times.

I grew up on a farm and my folks still live very rural . They have acres of space, chest freezers in the garage, vegetables and fruit in the garden, both enjoying preserving fruit and veg, their log piles are immense and their ancient wood burner will be pulled from their cold dead hands if it is ever outlawed. But this is not something I (or the millions of other city dwellers) can replicate.

Food (boom boom) for thought. I know my local city authorities have recently published a guide to ‘being prepared’ so I will look for that.

Tinned veg is good for going in other stronger favoured stuff, but only if you like it. There's absolutely no point getting stuff you don't like whatever anyone recommends. I'm disabled and can't cook as much as before so tinned veg in tinned curry or packet dal is a treat. Not ideal. I miss home cooking.

How about approaching it another way and buying a power station (big power bank battery) that would run your fridge freezer for a few hours?

Batch cooking so you have something to microwave if you are ill.

Cous cous and olives/tinned beans/seeds/sultanas is popular round here.

Don't forget spices, herbs, vinegars, sauces etc to make your tinned tomatoes and rice into something more like your normal meals.

Keeping some longer lasting veg in the fridge. (squashes, beetroot, or whatever you like.).

Frozen veg if you like it.

You can grow stuff in a flat but you would need to see what grows in your conditions. Mainly herbs, salads etc.

I’m another that accepts that some items I buy are never going to be part of my daily diet, but I will eat them if I have to.

I buy as much as I can that I will use, for me, that is things like tinned tuna and soup, peanut butter, tinned fruit, porridge, etc. (I ampartial to a tin of ravioli 🤣🤣🤣)

Stuff I buy but don’t consume as standard: tinned veg, tinned meat, pot noodles, some cereal/protein bars, uht milk, some tinned stew type meals.

I accept this as the cost of feeling comforted, and donate a couple of months before expiry and replace with new. So it doesn’t go to waste and I am giving to charity.

Also do this with Calpol but give to a family member or friend, no kids of my own, but I remember it being the one thing during Covid I could not help my sister with for her baby - I won’t let that happen again!

We have things like:

cous cous (generally flavoured already so that it just needs water)
pasta
rice
noodles
instant mash (youngest DC loves this)
soy protein mince (lasts for a very very long time)
falafel mix
lentils
flour (plain, SR and bread)
oats
sugar (various types)
honey
jams
marmite and nut butters
spices and herbs plus stock cubes
jarred pasta/curry/cheese sauces
tinned tomatoes, sweetcorn, chickpeas, beans, custard, evaporated milk, lentils, soup, salmon and chicken in white sauce. (I also actually love a bit of corned beef so I have a few tins of that - DH would rather starve)
crackers
olive oil and coconut oil
ketchup/other sauces
jars of peppers, olives and tomatoes
dried fruit (pineapple, mango, apple rings, strawberries and raisins)
biscuits and cereal bars
chocolate (white and dark keep best)
crisps, popcorn, nuts and rice cakes
cocoa powder
coffee
tea bags
emergency powdered milk
grated long life parmesan (emergency cheese needs can't be ignored)
orange juice
soft drinks
wine
water
lemon juice
vitamins and cod liver oil

I then grow as much as I can in the garden and always have a large variety of herbs growing on the windowsill.

Also store pet food.

This could have been my list. I also have cheddar cheese powder (lasts even longer in freezer!)

What do you use evaporated milk for?

There is no point in buying things you don't want to eat. No apocalypse will make me want to eat spam! I do think about things with multiple uses. Eg i use powdered milk day to day for making yoghurt and makingmy own instant porridgefor the office, but it could also be made up to be milk, added to food for extra calories etc in a pinch.

Milk substitute diluted down with water. its sweeter than normal milk but its ok for things like porridge.

Thanks

I get a big black sharpie pen and write the expiry date on the top - mainly because my eysight is rubbish! I also have a shelf purely for things that are close to their expiry date. I tend to buy extra when offers come on but no more. I don't buy extra for anything kids eat as they are so fickle and go off things! I buy tins of coconut milk, jars of pesto, soup. The only tinned veg i buy is sweetcorn. Essentially only buy what we eat usually.

I only buy what we use reasonably regularly and actually like to eat. Then when I use one of these items I make sure to replace it so the stock is constantly rotated. We aim to eat mostly UPF free and there a loads of shelf stable items that can be used in a cooking from scratch diet. Our store cupboard is mostly:

Tinned tomatoes
Tinned or jarred beans and pulses
Tinned sweetcorn
Tinned potatoes (sound awful but are surprisingly good in curries or frittata)
Dried split lentils
Dried pearl barley
Bags of flour, sugar and porridge oats
Sachets of dried yeast
Jars of honey and peanut butter
Jarred pesto
Dried pasta, noodles and cous cous
Cartons of bone broth
Olive oil
Dried nuts, seeds and dried fruit
Tinned tuna
Tea bags
Coffee
Sparkling water
Wine!

Fortunately we have a garden so I do grow some of our own fruit and veg plus we have an extra freezer but in the event of a power cut that wouldn't necessarily last long.

I'm not saying that in a dire emergency we'd be having lots of lovely meals....but we could easily survive as a family of four for a week or even two.

I've learned to buy only what my household will actually eat otherwise it'll just go to waste. I put expiry date stickers on all products so I don't have to hunt on the packaging. Anything getting close to date goes in my 'imminent' kitchen cupboard to be used in the near future. Having said that I have eaten 2 year old tinned veg that were perfectly OK!

I lived for a while in a country where there was political violence and it would shut things down during elections and sometimes in between. I lived in a flat so didn’t have a lot of storage space, but we were advised to keep three weeks of supplies including bottled water.

Long life fruit juice.
Long life milk.

Jars of chickpeas are good as they can become hummus even if there is no power.

Otherwise some extras of the basics you have anyway. Pasta, tinned tomatoes, pesto.
cooking oil. So if I had an open bottle of olive oil I would have a closed one behind it. Can be used ordinarily to make tomato sauce with veg or spaghetti bol.

Coconut milk. Curry powder and the above mentioned chickpeas, plus meat and fresh veg in ordinary times.

My main problem is I need to be gluten free so I have quite a lot of GF foods in my stash as during Covid people would just buy GF foods even if they didn't need to, just grabbing things randomly. I probably face not being able to get the few GF breads I can eat and trying to make those would be very difficult so I need a plan to cover that hungry gap. I can make chickpea flour flapjacks and have with home made jam (just made a big batch) - not a very exciting thing but is simple to make. Also a scone variation. Which reminds me, I need some coconut oil.

I have pasta and rice, curry packs, roti breads that last ages, passata, tins of beans and chickpeas - but this is all stuff we eat regularly. I was thinking about this though and the thing that will be tricky for us is getting enough fat. So I’m planning to get some more peanut butter and other nut butters, seeds, walnuts, coconut milk etc. We always have a few butters (and they also would work out of the fridge) and I need to get more olive oil.

I have a vegetable garden and quite a lot of seeds, and it’s most open pollinated so the seeds can be collected and saved to grow again. Inside a flat though you can grow microgreens on the windows that are ready to grow in a week. There are some windowsill tomato plants you can get - basically small bush cherry tomatoes. And things like orange trees can grow inside.

I don’t have bottled water but I do have water purification tabs. Really small container so perfect if you have no storage

My reserve stuff is;
extra bags of frozen peas & sweetcorn.
6 months dried yeast, an extra sack of wholemeal flour (I make all our bread)
extra tinned tomatoes, kidney beans and UHT milk.
A 25kg sack of potatoes in the utility room.
Dry rice, lentils & pasta
Coffee plain chocolate
Meat in the freezer

We eat all of this regularly so I just rotate it all, first in first out.

I grow our salads, summer veg, fruit & hazel nuts so no problem lasting a couple of weeks.

I currently live in a country where supplies are not as robust as the UK/Ireland, despite being very developed. There are often big gaps on shelves or products already out of date on sale. But it is also a country where the majority of people drink bottled water, most milk is UHT, they sell things like confit duck and coq au vin in tins, etc.

So I tend to eat as much fresh as possible in general - fruit and veg, meat and fish, milk, cream, cheese, eggs…
I always have some store cupboard items for normal use…rice, pasta, couscous, tinned tomatoes, tinned beans, tinned corn, frozen veg and oven chips etc.

I also have some conveniences like a bottle of UHT milk in cupboard for returns from travels(shops have more limited opening hours than home), box of smash type mashed potato (add real milk and lots of butter and it’s perfectly fine and much easier when life is mad busy), the odd ready meal (for ovens as I don’t have a microwave). And some nice ribs like the confit duck as a treat.
But I also do a lot of batch cooking because I am so busy - so buy all the fresh things, and make stews, curries, spag Bol, chilli etc sauces (using fresh ingredients and often involving slow cooking g for hours and maybe reducing down a half bottle of wine in a spag Bol etc) to freeze in 1 person portions. Or I buy a chicken and portion it up, make stock with the carcass, roast some for today, but chop up the breast and freeze and make greek lemon herb marinade (from fresh lemons, fresh herbs, fresh garlic and local honey) to pour over the thighs and freeze, for other easy dinners.

I have a 2 drawer plastic unit in a cupboard with my “stockpile” - which is all things I eat anyway but maybe a tin of olives that can go in a casserole but would be good to add variety and can be eaten straight from the can. Or a couple of jars of pasta and curry sauce for emergencies but that can be helpful in very busy weeks - when I don’t have time for onion, garlic, ginger, coconut milk, spices….versions.

I generally only buy what I will use in some form - and rotate what’s there. Sometimes it means experimenting with things (mostly successfully…but I can eat 1 strange meal once in a while…so I try to limit real experiments to once in a while). And usually it’s adding those as ingredients to other fresh things, rather than a full store cupboard meal of tinned potatoes, tinned mushrooms, tinned corned beef and a glass of UHT milk. (I don’t have corned beef or hot dogs…but will buy a tin of cockles or mussels on occasions for a couple of different pasta or paella dishes when it’s not shellfish season).

My examples are all relatively normal and relatively cheap here. Baked beans and spaghetti hoops are more expensive than many things we’d consider exotic at home but are good basics here.

I only prep what we normally eat a lot of. Pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, baked beans etc.

I'm not trying to have a complete menu for months. Just food for a few weeks if we saw shelves being stripped like at the beginning of covid. Things like tinned ham we never eat. I'd rather get two jars of jam as we would eat that.

Make sure your essentials don't run out that you and kids can't cope without. When the shelves was stripped in covid, what did you need but couldn't buy? Get that. I don't have bags of flour. I just don't let my current bag run out.