I'm not giving an actual list but rather, I'm describing my thought process. My premise was to assemble several months worth of varied long life foods that can get rotated into normal diet.... Cheaply.
There is an approach that says "Store what you eat and eat what you store". I only partly subscribe to that. That's all about rotating your stockpile into your regular diet. It ignores certain compromises.
When I started to build my stock of mostly food, I went for max bang for my buck and based it on a few realities:-
- We need about 2,000 calories per person per day
- Everything needs long shelf life.
- We need to be self sufficient in water, which is potentially bulky
- We need MANY gestures towards normality in our diet. And treats.
- We need to be rotating what we stock into our staple diet and that might mean changing our staple diet.
- Some compromises will be needed. E.g. we might not be able to stock a years worth of fresh eggs or milk.
Step 1: White calories. This is the foundation layer.
Base level for calorie contribution towards 2000kCal/person/day, which ultimately comprised:-
- Dried pasta
- Rice
- Dried mashed potatoes
- Cooking oil
- Flour
- Oats
- White Sugar
Step 2: Flavour.
Now, you would soon want to kill yourself if that was all you had, so next came 'Flavour'. The Flavour that turned rice or spuds or pasta into a meal. I looked at what was simple, normal fare for the purpose and a few candidates leapt out:-
- Tomatoes, tinned, pureed, jarred.
- Cooking sauces such as sweet and sour, bolognese, curry. (Note often tomato based)
- Baked beans and to a lesser extent tinned spaghetti. (Yes. more tomatoes).
- Tinned meat in gravy
- Herbs and spices
- LOTS of dried Onions and garlic
- Stock cubes and sachets.
Step 3: Normalcy
For morale and some normality. Light meals that are familiar fare to your family. Zombie apocalypse will be miserable if we start to argue with picky eaters. Think student or pauper food. Something you can say is one light lunch per day. We are aiming for normality here. Not kCalories or price
Candidates mostly came as cans that could be eaten as-is.
- Chunky soups of every flavour
- Tinned breakfasts etc
- Rice Pudding
- Chocolate
- Tea
- Coffee
- Beer
- Wine
- and dare I say it, pot noodles.
For tea or coffee or alcohol . Stockpiling these is a no-brainer. Easy to estimate how many portions you need. : Estimate the quantity, shop around and stock up. Compromise for convenience by buying the best instant coffee rather than fresh ground. If you take milk, find good powdered milk and stock enough. I found a few good brands and stocked that. If you like alcohol. Stock some. If you don't, then still stock some..
Step 4: Meat and protein.
- Peanut Butter
- Tinned Fish
- Bacon Grill
- Minced Beef in Gravy
Many preppers store lots and lots of dried pulses, chickpeas, lentils etc. I do too, BUT. you need to know how to cook and use them. Find out and try some recipes before going nuts on pulses. Similar with flour. If you stock it, use it. Consider meat substitutes like soya mince or jackfruit.
OK. time to mention
Step 0: Water
This is a tricky topic in that we are so used to having fresh drinking water on tap 24/7. We have to envisage that suddenly going offline...... And in the blink of an eye, all that dried pasta, mash and rice is just dust. But face it, we might have a years supply of food, but who can realistically store away a years worth of water: Can't be done. But we are preppers and we live in rainy Britain. My approach, and yours might differ, is to take a graded approach: Store enough fresh bottled water for a few weeks while you regroup. Say 50L per person if you have the space. That will get you over a brief outage and buffer you in case of zombie apocalypse. Store some impure water, such as water butts collecting from the roof. Even a garden fishpond or hot tub. Meanwhile, consider how and where you might harvest long term water and make it safe. Expect zombie apocalypse to happen in the middle of a heatwave, but stock three essentials: Personal water straws: A load of water purifying tablets and a means of getting impure water to your home. That may be as simple as a few collapsible 5L water bottles from poundland.
Taking water as a done deal, for now, onto
Step 5.vegetables and vitamins
So far, we have looked at minimal survival food. But we would soon be ill without vegetables and fruits and here we need to compromise.
A few dozen tins of peas, green beans, sweetcorn, etc can give you survival levels of fibre and vitamins. If you are used to lots of lovely fresh salads, then brace yourself for desperate times! Buy a few dozen tins of the best variety you can afford. Include tinned fruits, again with variety. Might as well get them in syrup to maximise calories too. And while you are in the tinned food isle, get some custard, riced pudding etc too.
But these are dietary rubbish, so, get a generous supply of multi-vitamins.
Tinned food is expensive and mostly water. This is where a dehydrator comes in. In my opinion a primary investment. You can dehydrate a 40p Kilo of fresh carrots into a small jam jar and set that aside for years. Buy yellow sticker peppers, tomatoes, fresh veg of most sorts and dehydrate to minimise volume and maximise shelf life. A shelf of jars of dried veg is priceless. But then, you need to adopt them into daily diet.
Oh. Speaking of regular diet..... I never mentioned the so called MRE ready meals, so beloved of survivalists. Very much overpriced. If you can't find better and cheaper equivalents in Tesco, then you haven't looked in all the isles.
Nor did I mention freezers and frozen food. By all means stock up your freezers. but anticipate the risk of power outages.
Above, I've laid the foundation to the making of a food list, I might post my list later if anyone's interested.
When that is in place, just augment it. Add a few jars of jam. Beer kits, Tins of pop, Trifle kits, sachets of casserole mix, whatever takes your fancy. Work towards your stockpile being the place you go to do your weekly shopping, and your regular weekly shopping becomes about replenishing your 'shop'
I hope this post helps in some way.
* Use the Calorie values on the packets or web sites to determine kCal/Kilo. But that can be tricky for dried goods.. Use the price/Kilo from the shelf labels in supermarkets but beware some are £/Kilo and some are £/100g
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