I am starting with 1 week because it’s a realistic time frame for many power outages, and other disasters. It’s long enough that you can’t just buy a “72 hour emergency food bucket” and call it good. On the other end, we want to get started without getting overwhelmed about things like the shelf life of different kinds of flour!
If you already have a week of food storage in your house, please jump to the end and congratulate yourself!
Pick a place
Identify where you want to store your food storage to start. Don’t worry about how much space exactly because you can store in multiple locations if your first spot gets full. Let’s start with a space about the size of a medium size moving box or one door of a lower kitchen cabinet. Start to empty this space if it’s already occupied, or work on changing the organization so that more things will fit if that’s an option.
Make a list of what your people eat
There’s no point in buying and storing food that won’t get eaten! Make a list of things that you and whoever you plan to feed will normally eat. Kids may change their minds from one day to the next, so variety is also good. We’ll use this list again as you start to think of what you’ll buy and when. If you eat a lot of meals from restaurants include types of cuisines and/or dishes that you get. Take up to 10 minutes for this – it doesn’t have to be perfect, and you will change things up as you prep and gain more experience.
My own list would include rice bowls, tacos, chicken chili, bread, peanut butter, jelly, spaghetti, roasted vegetables, enchiladas, kale sausage soup, potato chips, chocolate, protein bars, trail mix, oatmeal, cookies, coffee, tea, milk, and many other things.
What could you eat from the pantry?
First, by “pantry” I mean anything that fits in your emergency storage. My own emergency storage does NOT include frozen foods because a power outage is a likely part of the emergencies in my area and I do not want to find space for another freezer or set up back up power for one.
Look over the list you made of what your people eat. Which could be eaten without prep? Which dishes do you already know how to make with pantry goods? Which ones do you think you could learn how to make with pantry goods? Which will you have to do without or find substitutes for? NOTE – where things fall on this list will change! You might start with pasta and canned goods, and that might be enough for you.
I already love cooking and do it a lot, so don’t feel bad if the list of what you can make right now is short. Part of our prep will be to grow the list of things we can make from the pantry. For my sample list, I would say:
- No prep: chips, chocolate, protein bars, trail mix
- I could make from pantry:
- chicken chili if I wanted to eat canned chicken
- OR swap for canned chicken chili for an easy option to get started!
- bread
- enchiladas (but no cheese)
- oatmeal
- coffee/tea
- instant milk
- canned soup instead of kale soup
- spaghetti with non-meat sauce
- I could probably learn how to make from pantry:
- rice bowls (if I figured out how to use dehydrated vegetables, or maybe find something in a can I’d use?)
- cookies (what would I want to use instead of butter?)
- I would have to give up the kale, enchiladas, and roasted vegetables
Make a menu for the “emergency week”
No, I don’t expect you to keep and follow this in case of disaster! In order to know how much you’ll need, you’ll want to think about how often you will eat which dishes. You don’t need to distinguish between lunch and dinner if you don’t want to, I could certainly have the same thing. If you can’t think of many meals, that’s ok. Start with 1 breakfast meal and 2-4 lunch/dinner meal options.
My week would have oatmeal for breakfast every day, with canned ingredients for soup, canned chili, canned veggies, peanut butter and jelly, protein bars. Boy, that sounds boring, I should work on adding variety once I have my basic week stored!
Make shopping list for pantry eats
Now that we know what we’ll eat from the pantry, we know what to buy! Keep in mind that you’ll need things like oil and spices if you intend to cook. If you would use beans in your meals, do you want canned or dried beans?
A small part of my list would be beans, corn, chicken bouillon, rice, corn masa, oatmeal, and instant milk.
Start buying
Depending on how much money you have to spend on food storage, you can buy everything at once, or you can pick up an extra item or two when you have the money. You might start with the “fun” stuff like snacks, or maybe you want to have the practical rice and pasta first.
Starting eating it!
Yes, eating your food storage is necessary! First, you want to be sure that you actually can make the things you thought, and that the amount of food it takes to make a meal is really the right amount. Several years ago my partner and I did a 3-day hike and calculated the amount of food to bring based on other people’s averages. We brought what we thought was “extra” and ended up leaving the woods on the third day having eaten every bite. We drove straight to a burger restaurant, but in an emergency we won’t be able to count on an easy back up if we don’t have enough on hand.
One way to check your pantry meals is to eat one meal per week. Eventually you will try all the meals that you have on your menu. Take note if the meal didn’t turn out to be filling enough. Add to your shopping list if you realize that you need more food!
Get someone to give you a pat on the back. Or a back massage.
Really, congratulate yourself! You’ve got a week of food storage that you know will actually keep you and your people fed in an emergency! I can’t find any stats on that, but I’m pretty sure you have more on hand than most Americans.
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