What Preps are you doing this week? Part 5.

[ForgeCorvus]

BTW, I know that a lot of us regard chocolate as an important prep.
I dropped into Tesco's yesterday and thought I'd pick some up.
110gr @ £1.50 = 137p per 100gr
360gr @ £2.50 67p per 100 gr
Guess which bars I bought a tenners worth of

[jennyjj01]

More of a 'pasta cat' by preference but I'll be upping my powdered mash too, we're not big tattie eaters but as you point out, its gonna take a looooooonnnngggg time for it to go off. Saying that, a lot of things do.

How did you go with the fang missus ???

I have my big mixed stash of long grain rice, mid price spaghetti and some 19p Lidl canned potatoes. Needed a bit of variety. Benefit of instant mash, apart from being close to 'normal food' is that it only needs a bit of boiling water to prepare. Also pretty compact to store.

I discovered that the Lidl Risotto rice is vacuum packed in 1kg blocks and makes a pretty good base. I like that it's vacuum packed and beautifully rectangular, unlike bags of long grain rice. at only £1.69 / kg I see 20kg addition to stock this week ( all of Lidl's stock )

Currently thinking about how I might bring my survival rations together into actual meals. I see LOTS of tomato based options for flavour, but when I get sick of 'surviving' I'm going to need to get creative. Bread would be a missing option, as would cheese. Meat is a mix and match of MRM, spam and horrid corned beef. Got to give that some thought. I think maybe 50 quid on flavouring and seasoning options, a sort of DIY cook in pot mixtures, which are stupid cost in satchets.

Meanwhile, got a medium term repair of the tooth, thx. Will still be buying oil of cloves, paracetamol and more JD.

Can never have too much JD )

[jennyjj01]

BTW, I know that a lot of us regard chocolate as an important prep.
I dropped into Tesco's yesterday and thought I'd pick some up.
110gr @ £1.50 = 137p per 100gr
360gr @ £2.50 67p per 100 gr
Guess which bars I bought a tenners worth of

Pah! If it's for survival rations...
https://groceries.asda.com/product/choc ... 0000474923
ASDA. 30p / 100g.

When SHTF, I'll see your 1440g and raise you 1893g
)

[Deeps]

I discovered that the Lidl Risotto rice is vacuum packed in 1kg blocks and makes a pretty good base. I like that it's vacuum packed and beautifully rectangular,

Oooohh ! I'm not a fan of risotto generally but I like your thinking. That's a great prep if it comes already sealed.

I think maybe 50 quid on flavouring and seasoning options, a sort of DIY cook in pot mixtures, which are stupid cost in satchets.

Meanwhile, got a medium term repair of the tooth, thx. Will still be buying oil of cloves, paracetamol and more JD.

Can never have too much JD )

One thing to bear in mind is dried herbs & spices have a shelf life too. If its air tight etc then fine but if its in it's original containers then you might have deterioration.

While no JD fan, I salute your avant garde 'spirit'. How's the gnasher today Jenny ?

[jennyjj01]

Oooohh ! I'm not a fan of risotto generally but I like your thinking. That's a great prep if it comes already sealed.

I'm not overly keen on risotto/paella, but as a survival ration base it has to be way up there. A sprinkle of spam and a chicken oxo and a few peas and it will be all good. I really like how it's vaccuum packed in blocks. My biggest worry about my pasta stash and long grain stash is air and moisture ingress if the bags get popped. I assume the 'air' in them is oxygen depleted or pure nitrogen.

I think maybe 50 quid on flavouring and seasoning options, a sort of DIY cook in pot mixtures, which are stupid cost in satchets.

Meanwhile, got a medium term repair of the tooth, thx. Will still be buying oil of cloves, paracetamol and more JD.

Can never have too much JD )

One thing to bear in mind is dried herbs & spices have a shelf life too. If its air tight etc then fine but if its in it's original containers then you might have deterioration.

While no JD fan, I salute your avant garde 'spirit'. How's the gnasher today Jenny ?

I know herbs and spices won't last forever, but realistically I reckon on 5 years before replacement. Actually my ethos is not to replace out of date stuff but to just buy again and keep it all, so long as I have the space.

You'll see from this that my primary stockpile is of the 'everyday value' 'rice and beans' survival stash. It's not yet a case of store what you use / use what you store. I think I'm a pragmatist and wanted to buy six months survival first. In the new year, I anticipate branching out to some nicer stuff.

I hope my stockpile goes to waste, just like the fire insurance on my home. But if TSHTF, I'll hopefully 'be prepared'

Tooth is fine now, thanks.

I would be interested in discussing the trade off we make between survivalist rations and general continuity of supply. E.g. what do my peers actually stockpile?

[Arwen Thebard]

I would be interested in discussing the trade off we make between survivalist rations and general continuity of supply. E.g. what do my peers actually stockpile?

We started by keeping a written record of what we actually ate over about a month and then ticking off the items we could stock cheaply and in good quantity. It showed up a few anomalies, for example we thought we ate a lot more rice than we really did.

Then as we got more precise about our prepping, we started designing menus from the 'prep-pantry' and calculating the calorie rates etc. Trying to get one meal (hot or cold) containing between 1250 and 1500 cal using just our prep stocks showed up some gaps. Filling bellies is important short term, keeping up protein/energy levels over the longer terms is harder. We decided it will probably better for us to eat the lower value (cal) meals first and keep the higher (cal) ones for later on. All sounds fine on paper but in a genuine emergency situation who knows what we will do, but its always good to have a plan.

[Deeps]

I try and store what we eat as much as I can although we didn't eat much tinned stuff (just beans and tuna) but I've changed my eating habits to 'justify' storing more tinned food. We have plenty condiments etc, again, trying to keep things as 'normal' as possible, if there is a 'situation' then its about keeping things as 'normal' as possible. Alternative lighting and cooking means we can feed ourselves more or less as we do now. If there's no lecky then its work our way through the chilled/frozen stuff first then onto the other stores. There might be a few odd combinations, we have a lot more pasta and rice than we do tattie based carbs for example.

I've got a load of dried beans etc that we use occasionally but are really there for that pesky apocalypse. The variables involved make it difficult to know exactly what's best so lots of pasta and rice, tinned tomatoes/passata, beans, if things are THAT serious that we're down to living off this stuff then it would be serious shit and to be honest, its not really what I prep for although you play the hand that's dealt you and we would be augmenting our supplies with foraging/growing/hunting if possible.

[jennyjj01]

I would be interested in discussing the trade off we make between survivalist rations and general continuity of supply. E.g. what do my peers actually stockpile?

We started by keeping a written record of what we actually ate over about a month and then ticking off the items we could stock cheaply and in good quantity. It showed up a few anomalies, for example we thought we ate a lot more rice than we really did.

,,, All sounds fine on paper but in a genuine emergency situation who knows what we will do, but its always good to have a plan.

I just toyed with the idea of listing what we normally eat. Hmmm. KFC, Fish and chips, Maccy D, Carvery, ... OK, tongue in cheek, but it's odd to think about normality without a plethora of dining out and takeaways. Note, none of those use rice or pasta or canned tomatoes or baked beans. Clearly my hunkering down over my stockpiled nosh would be quite a culture shock.

I know I'm being frivolous, but there's a serious point to this thought experiment. I'll maybe make a new thread about preppers' menu cards.

[Arzosah]

I really do store what I eat and eat what I store though I've gone off rice recently. *What* I store wouldn't be a map for anyone else, I'm a vegetarian with cow dairy intolerance and gluten intolerance Plus when I had the severe chronic fatigue, I used tinned potatoes, and found out I actually like them. Lidl do tinned tatties for 19p?

[Prepping_Al]

Al: Buying car spares when you don't have to is a prep.... Its probably a lot more use then some of the things we buy, after all you will use them.

Don't start about car parts mines decided to do intermittent headlights :/ new switch on order for £20 and 5 screws and a multiplug it's not worth trying to deal with a garage at this time of year

Wish I hadn't now just had a quote from the garage for £400 to replace a small motor that opens a flap in the intake manifold seriously. Wouldn't be so bad but just bought a welder to sort my project car, so that's back on hold again.

Large Asda order due tomorrow so should have enough food to see us through Christmas. But need to go to Tesco for the instant mash

Nooooo. Asda Instant mash rocks.
One of the cheapest at 28p for 120g or >400kCal. Add in a spoonful of Ghee, or powdered milk and maybe a spot of mustard and you are fed.
It's often a low stock item... Especially when I've just emptied the shelf.

I really rate it very highly. Real shelf life pretty much unlimited.

That's what I like about the Tesco mash it's creamy straight out of the packet serves 2 per sachet with a reasonable portion