Rotating emergency food stocks

[Arzosah]

Seeing all the information laid out like that ... awful it really is an environmental issue, thats horrendous.

[jansman]

Seeing all the information laid out like that ... awful it really is an environmental issue, thats horrendous.

It is Arzosah. Although I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, I have a lot of time for Friends Of The Earth. When folks are hungry, they will care, but only then I am afraid.

[Arzosah]

Seeing all the information laid out like that ... awful it really is an environmental issue, thats horrendous.

It is Arzosah. Although I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, I have a lot of time for Friends Of The Earth. When folks are hungry, they will care, but only then I am afraid.

I *do* consider myself an environmentalist, tbh, quite dark green actually, a bit like this but I've just had a really nice example of the law of unintended consequences. I thought that with all my digging up of weeds, and then putting bark chippings down until I can plant fruit bushes and kale/chard when the soil warms up, I thought that I was making my garden a bit of a desert. But needs must, I thought to myself, I need those crops. To my surprise, though, looking out of my kitchen window just now, the whole garden is alive with birds pecking at the chippings: blackbirds, bluetits, sparrows, even a goldfinch. Consider me Green Gobsmacked
I might even rotate some foodstocks (just to drag it back to stock rotation!) and put some of the older seeds out to be pecked at.

[jansman]

This is rather timely.We have let the pantry run right down,so that we can move a !ot more stuff ,' forward'.Being off work ( we timed it that way) we reloaded the shelves,and moved stock from storeroom 1 to 2.This leaves space to restock longer dated grub.Took about an hour and 20 mins.Normally,as gaps appear we refill them,so rotation doesnt take long.As a reward,we have a nice bottle of red from our ' cellar',which is a series of bottle racks in one of the store rooms.Tomorrow we shall look at the freezers ( which I am ashamed to say are NOT organised).I have plums and rhubarb in the bottom of the chest freezers.I thought I had processed them all.I will probably brew them,as it is quicker.

As a result of our mega- rotation,we have gaps now.Given what I am reading about inflation,this is good timing,and will be our last big shop before B- Day.

[ForgeCorvus]

I'm currently rotating the UHT stocks, I take the oldest carton to work and then we get a new one.

Recently, I disposed of a tin of soup that was two years after its BBE date.... It tasted great

[jennyjj01]

It only takes a quarter hour management per week.

How you manage your stock will be your way,of course,but managed properly it must be.No excuses.To put it in context,how would you react if the food you purchased was all close to/ off date? Your stock should be managed as well as the place you buy it from.

Hi Jansman,
I have spent a lot of today getting my rotation better. Conscience and simple economics. Not right, but better. I spent a fair few hours on it, which I don't regret. But nor do i beat myself up about the compromises I've made, or the wastage that I built in. Sorry Jansman. Sorry humanity. Sorry environment and Sorry to all the cows and chickens that gave their lives for the soup I potentially wasted.

Using your maths. 1/4 hour per week or 1 hour per month or 12 hours per year. Call it 120 quids worth of time, which can only be spent once. So, if I allow myself to waste £120 per year to stock expiry, it's a zero sum game to me ( Yeah. I know: Selfish ) Like Deeps, I'm a decadent swine.

Last time I burrowed into my special void and moved stuff around my loft, I ended up with cuts and bruises and aches well out of proportion to the gain. £1,000 per year of composted food would not deter me enough from wasting some of the worlds resources. Heck, if the s doesn't hit the fan, all my stockpile will have been wasted anyway, and all the tin and plastic used to seal it will just be more environmental damage.
I used to work about 30 hours per year to insure my home against burning down. The damned thing never did. I could have spent more time and effort on fireproofing it. It's just a cost of living, either way.

Sorry. Just adding the angle of devil's advocate.
.

[jansman]

It only takes a quarter hour management per week.

How you manage your stock will be your way,of course,but managed properly it must be.No excuses.To put it in context,how would you react if the food you purchased was all close to/ off date? Your stock should be managed as well as the place you buy it from.

Hi Jansman,
I have spent a lot of today getting my rotation better. Conscience and simple economics. Not right, but better. I spent a fair few hours on it, which I don't regret. But nor do i beat myself up about the compromises I've made, or the wastage that I built in. Sorry Jansman. Sorry humanity. Sorry environment and Sorry to all the cows and chickens that gave their lives for the soup I potentially wasted.

Using your maths. 1/4 hour per week or 1 hour per month or 12 hours per year. Call it 120 quids worth of time, which can only be spent once. So, if I allow myself to waste £120 per year to stock expiry, it's a zero sum game to me ( Yeah. I know: Selfish ) Like Deeps, I'm a decadent swine.

Last time I burrowed into my special void and moved stuff around my loft, I ended up with cuts and bruises and aches well out of proportion to the gain. £1,000 per year of composted food would not deter me enough from wasting some of the worlds resources. Heck, if the s doesn't hit the fan, all my stockpile will have been wasted anyway, and all the tin and plastic used to seal it will just be more environmental damage.
I used to work about 30 hours per year to insure my home against burning down. The damned thing never did. I could have spent more time and effort on fireproofing it. It's just a cost of living, either way.

Sorry. Just adding the angle of devil's advocate.
.

You got your way,I got mine.

[Arwen Thebard]

We've got into the habit of writing the expiry date on the side of all the tins and packets using a BIG BLACK PERMANENT MARKER. No more trying to see the tiny dates the makers print on them.

Makes rotation so much easier.

[Bosworth]

I’m probably going to make myself unpopular here but I hope all perspectives are welcomed...

My emergency food is not stuff we regularly eat. It’s crap. Tinned vegetables, dried pasta’n’sauce, plain rice etc etc. We normally eat fresh, organic, or go out many times a week.

For me, food preps are worst case. If starving, or bugging in, it will suffice, rather than part of our everyday consumption. Eating crap is better than eating nothing.

I have a LOT of it and keep accumulating in boxes divided up with balanced amounts of tinned vegetables, tinned meat, carbs, herbs etc. Plus powedered milk (to make the pasta sauces more creamy), vitamin tablets, tin openers etc. Each box a self contained pile of sustenance that I could grab and know would sustain me and my family for a week or two.

When I run out of room, I chuck a box.

Best-before dates don’t feature. Tins don’t go off. Dried food doesn’t perish particularly. (And to pick up on a comment earlier - I’ve had UHT milk a year out of date in my normal cupboards and for comedy value opened it. There were a few creamy bits but made pancakes perfectly well for the kids!)

If you are in desperate trouble it doesn’t matter. Dog food would suffice. Anything better than that, even if fractionally out of date, would be a godsend.

So... I store as much as I possibly can, and when I max out, I chuck the oldest box in the local tip. I did once leave one at the end of the road, but almost nothing was taken over 48 hours as it was all out of date.

Don’t hate me

[nightowl]

I don't hate you

Personally though, although there are some things I'll probably stock that I normally wouldn't use, I would try to keep things as close to my normal food buying as possible. I know I could obviously stock up incredibly quickly using Happy Shopper style, cheap as chips, tasteless products but I don't see the point. I might as well buy stuff that I'm going to reasonably enjoy. Obviously there might come a point when even dog food seems like a treat but I don't want to start off from that point, or near it.