The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Suffolksue

Now I’m on my own I’ve got reasonable stocks ,so if I had to isolate could do a couple of weeks ,but I do have friends who’d leave stuff on the doorstep. 

So far if the shop hasn’t had one brand it has another and I’m not fixed on what I eat , so will eat some odd combinations if I have to .
I do realise that I am luckier than a lot of people and can afford some increase ,but I have cut back on the quantity  I eat .
sometimes the fresh prepared veg are reduced a lot near their sell by date and I buy and freeze ( never ever full price though 

Florenceem

We have neighbours who offered to shop for us during the lockdown if we were not able to go ourselves. I have always kept a good stock of food in - we buy tinned stuff when on offer and store in the garage. I keep dry goods in sealed containers in my food cupboard and overflow goes under the stairs.

Karmacat

MingVase said:

I think if you haven't already started prepping then it might be too late now..

Ming!  Naughty Ming  There's always something more, I'm kind of with DigforVictory on this, though, that anything you can do is better than doing nothing.  I never learned that from my grandparents  all urban working class who lost the connection to prepping and the land a hundred years ago.

I must say my food stocks are pretty good - even though I'm down to a single drawer of frozen food in the freezer, I could last for ... months, with all the dried food, tins and seed for sprouting I have.  I need to refresh my stored water, actually, that's a bit old, but that's the main thing.  And my gas boiler isn't currently working (don't throw me out of the thread!) service is booked for Wednesday.  Oops.  I can get a bit slapdash ... and this is not the time!

daz378

Yea prepping is a spectrum....a few days extra food  is a start...I've probably  got a few good weeks  in.. I am thinking of getting a life straw bottle....I've got the syringe type life straw at the moment...is the quality of our water really going to deteriorate  and if so how would we know? Take care

Floss

@daz378 I think that's a perfect way to describe it - some folk are extreme preppers or non-preppers at the ends, with a lot of folk spread out somewhere in the middle.

Si_Clist

There was a telling thread somewhere on one of the news sites yesterday about the Tesco website problem.  Some woman was complaining that when the site went down she had to get over to the Asda site PDQ and book a slot for next day so she could get enough food in to last a few days.

Sure there are plenty of folk (maybe even the majority of them?) out there who have neither the money, the storage space or the common sense to keep some sort of stock of essentials and I do wonder how they'll cope when they can no longer carry on as they've always done.  But then there's those who have the money and have the space, but who either can't see what's coming, or can see what's coming but don't want to think about it, or simply can't get their act together.

One of our neighbours reckons she's prepared for anything now she's finally got her freezer full ...

Jellytotts

I've always been a "keep a good store cupboard in" type as there were times when I was growing up in the early 70s that I went hungry.  Portions were very small, if you didn't like what was on offer there was no alternative and I regularly saw my parents go without food.  Dad worked hard on the building sites but if the weather was bad, there was no work and therefore no money.  

I've always been able to feed unexpected guests, stretch a meal out to cover an extra day and make sure that small tummies were full with food they liked (not pandering to them but not forcing them to go hungry because all that was available was food I know they didn't like...proper retching, can't eat it dislike, not just "I don't fancy it" dislike).  

Both of our daughters now live in a world of convenience and shop when they feel like it, don't meal plan and just can't see the need for stocks of food.  Maybe I was overly cautious because of my childhood and then in turn made them feel secure that there's always food available (and the money to buy it as they both have decent jobs/savings).  Who's to say which way is right?

I'm happy continuing as I am but sometimes do feel I worry too much about what's in stock, what needs using next....but I have no choice, our income is small and I need to make every penny count and that means buying in bulk when cheaper, keeping stores of foods to last on a bad month and making sure I get the best deal I can.

Serendipitious

DigForVictory said:

MingVase said:

I think if you haven't already started prepping then it might be too late now..

Whereas I, ever glass-half-full, reckon that even one tin of baked beans extra is one tin I don't have to go out into the snow to buy. Sure, everything is getting more expensive & harder to source, but that means what I stash this week is worth even more time & effort next week.
Some days we can be our own worst enemies, and forget what Granny knew & practised - have a store cupboard, put what you bought today at the back (ensures rotation), always have Something you can feed an unexpected visitor and keep the herbs, spices & condiments well stocked so even if you're eating potato Again, yesterday was baked with pepper & cheese, today has paprika & a Mexican vibe, tomorrow we go Spanish omelette on it...
Also, if you start with a clear list of everything you've got, then you have better info for meal planning & then the shopping list can be targeted at what we need for this week & what might be enjoyed next week. As a Big tub of multivite is expensive & the way to afford it is early & then that's one less thing to worry about. 

As it is getting colder & darker it is so easy to loose sight of all we've managed so far. Opening a cupboard on a well thought through assortment of tins can be heart warming as well as stomach, toes etc!

Polar vortex next week? Eek...

https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1511137/uk-snow-forecast-news-polar-vortex-arctic-plunge-weather-latest

euronorris

Wow, I had over 100 posts to catch up on then!

We use Tesco deliveries, and I actually had an order delivered on the morning of the outage. I hadn't noticed that there was a problem, other than the app wouldn't show an estimated delivery time (within the allocated time slot), which it normally does. Then I saw the stories later. Still, we had enough in to see us through if needs be and would've just gone to one of the local shops if needs be.

Vegan recipes might be a good shout for cake and pastry recipes that don't use butter (or eggs). Though I'm not sure if they might favour margarine as the butter substitute. I also wonder if keeping tinned cream that can be whipped into butter might be an idea? Though electric for the beater might be required still (I imagine it'd take a long time, and be very tiring to make with a handheld whisk).

Meal prepping proved very effective last week, as I put together a full list of meals for our week away with DD and MIL. Everytime we ate in the apartment, I thought to myself (well that's another £30 saved!). No waste either (the small amounts of leftovers we had, we brought home).

I think certain meals lend themselves to batch cooking better than others. We often make batches of spaghetti bolognese, cottage pie, chicken korma, chicken stew, vegetable soup, beef stew etc.

Serendipitious

Living alone I batch cook quite a lot - even cooking a small pack of minced beef means one dinner for that day and two meals for the freezer.

Same goes for purchasing - barely anything comes in a single serving pack so chops, sausages, liver etc get divided into uncooked servings prior to freezing. So a lot of my prepping happens by default.

Where i come a bit unstuck is with tinned food - eg I have to be in the mood for corned beef as opening a can means a sandwich lunch, a corned beef hash for dinner that evening, and a sandwich lunch the next day to use it up. And a tin of fruit will give me 4 puddings - I'm not a big eater of puds and I have to remember the fruit is in the fridge.

It's a staggering waste of cash for me to eat out as the portion sizes are massive and a lot remains uneaten. A Chinese takeaway will do two dinners though!