Straw Poll. How much food do you have in reserve? How well do you stock rotate?

[GillyBee]

Salt is fairly well demonised these days due to it's well known ill effects on blood pressure but it can go a long way toward making dire food edible.
My Dad was a teen in WW2 followed by 15 years Navy during which time he was fed some pretty bad meals. His solution was to smother everything in salt and pepper. That way he couldn't taste anything else. This annoyed my step mum no end as she was a decent cook since he continued to smother everything regardless of quality for the rest of his life.
I would not be too worried about having it in a BOB but it has enough uses (outside of ruining good food) to be worth keeping in the general stores. (DIY reydration salts, antiseptic rinses for mouth, eyes, wounds and of course creating sauerkrauts and bacons)

[Frnc]

Unfortunately, manufacturers still put tons of salt in food. This is why I make my own pasta sauce. It's in bread, pizza, Quorn, baked beans, cheese, biscuits, all sorts. Pizza is one of the worst. Aldi Everyday Essentials pizzas are the lowest in salt I've found. Portion size is one way to reduce the amount. I don't eat ready made baked beans for other reasons (high oxalate content). I do add a bit of salt to things like fried egg or chips, but I use 66% reduced sodium salt, and I use it sparingly. I got a little plastic salt shaker with a lid, and I shake it in a way that only a bit comes out. I need to weigh it before and after I fill it, but I'm guessing it holds less than 50g, and it lasts me a few months, so I can't be adding more than 1g a day, and that's 1/3 g of normal salt. But it's easy to have 5g in food.

I make my own gravy as follows: teaspoon each of Bisto reduced salt vegetarian gravy granules, teaspoon of Sainsbury's vegetarian gravy granules, teaspoon of Kallo low salt vegetarian gravy powder, third of a stock cube of Knorr Zero salt vegetarian. I also add about 1/4 of a teaspoon of normal Bisto but only because I'm using some up, won't be buying any more. I reckon this contains about 0.79g, so is still high, but it's quite a big portion of gravy, enough to smother a big pile of veg and I have that with Quorn or some kind of vegetarian thing like Plant Pioneers.

[GillyBee]

Cooking from scratch is the only real way to control what is in your food. Our household needs to avoid wheat, gluten, corn and all derivatives as well as controlling salt.
The one silver lining is that I only need to store base ingredients to get a huge range of meals.

[Frnc]

Cooking from scratch is the only real way to control what is in your food. Our household needs to avoid wheat, gluten, corn and all derivatives as well as controlling salt.
The one silver lining is that I only need to store base ingredients to get a huge range of meals.

Living with 2 lodgers means limited time in the kitchen at peak time. I could cook during the afternoon I suppose. Might try doing it a bit more. I used to make a curry, but not done it for ages. I make my own pasta sauce, and also baked beans, because the beans in ready made tins all seem to be high oxalate beans.

[GillyBee]

Living with 2 lodgers means limited time in the kitchen at peak time. I could cook during the afternoon I suppose. Might try doing it a bit more. I used to make a curry, but not done it for ages. I make my own pasta sauce, and also baked beans, because the beans in ready made tins all seem to be high oxalate beans.

I think you have two options. One is to concentrate on meals that can be ready from scratch in 30 mins or less. The other is to batch cook, possibly using a slow cooker so that you are able to prep earlier in the day and then freeze 2 or 3 portions for a quick microwave meal at another time.

[Frnc]

Living with 2 lodgers means limited time in the kitchen at peak time. I could cook during the afternoon I suppose. Might try doing it a bit more. I used to make a curry, but not done it for ages. I make my own pasta sauce, and also baked beans, because the beans in ready made tins all seem to be high oxalate beans.

I think you have two options. One is to concentrate on meals that can be ready from scratch in 30 mins or less. The other is to batch cook, possibly using a slow cooker so that you are able to prep earlier in the day and then freeze 2 or 3 portions for a quick microwave meal at another time.

Yep, exactly. Thinking about it, I do eat a lot of fresh veg, if frozen counts. I have peas, sweetcorn and cauliflower almost every day. Broccoli and carrots occasionally. Home made baked beans occasionally. Pasta with home made pasta sauce and peas now and then. Frozen salmon should count. The processed stuff I eat is Quorn and Plant Pioneers, and stuff like cheese, bread, and flavoured yoghurt. For breakfast now it's winter I'm having porridge, which is pretty natural. I also eat eggs, fried in one cal, so pretty natural.

Anyway, I'll give it some thought. Either quick meals or batch cooks. The main thing I've done is curry, which I batch cook (I also freeze the baked beans and pasta sauce). It's ok, not as nice as the Spice Taylor chickpea curry I buy, which is long life. I have to keep spices to a minimum due to oxalates.

[GillyBee]

Batch cook and freeze works for chilli, Bolognese sauce, stew/casserole, soup and some part mades like homemade burgers, meatballs etc.
I feel like I am in a house share with 2 adult sons at home who have chosen to cook for themselves most days so I feel your pain.

[Frnc]

Batch cook and freeze works for chilli, Bolognese sauce, stew/casserole, soup and some part mades like homemade burgers, meatballs etc.
I feel like I am in a house share with 2 adult sons at home who have chosen to cook for themselves most days so I feel your pain.

Stocked up on some prep food - pasta, tuna, tomato puree, butter beans, long life (ish, about 3 months). Enough for a couple of weeks.

I can use the puree to batch cook pasta sauce and baked beans. I don't eat meat except fish.

Am trying to use up my dried egg. I forgot and bought eggs a couple of times.

[Britcit]

I'd say we have about 3 months of food on hand.
a lot of meat sits in our 2 large chest freezers. If there was a long term loss of power this would be eaten first, but we could keep the freezers frozen with our small generator for 2-3 weeks with fuel we have on hand.
If we still had power the meat (and frozen veg) would be served alongside the long term storage stuff to create a menu.

Worst case scenario is we eat meat for 2 - 3 weeks and then pasta, tinned, dried ect for a few months.
All this could be supplemented mostly by fishing (I can see the sea from my chair right now lol) and some hunting (rabbit, geese).

Rotation is not my strong suit. I'm guilty of storing stuff and then forgetting it. The frozen is used and replenished each year as we buy a number of butchered sheep every year and always have 'leftovers'. Tinned, pasta and dried peas\beans\lentils always go out of date. When I spot stuff out of date, I put together a few meals and we eat it. Luckily Mrs B is happy for me to do all the cooking at home so didn't worry about how old the food is.

Water for us won't be an issue as we live by a loch. We keep about 150 - 200 litres in the garage to cover short term problems like the mains being fixed. Longer term, I can haul water from the loch or even dig a.small well in the garden. ( I did that a few years back to water the garden before I bought a 50mtr hose).

[GillyBee]

Am trying to use up my dried egg. I forgot and bought eggs a couple of times.

It does seem to make good pancakes. We used ours up pretty fast once I turned it into an "instant pancake mix" by blending it with flour and dried milk and leaving it in a tub in the kitchen for the sons to raid.