Stockpiling Food

[11522914]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort I started stockpiling food on sale / clearance based on the advice in The Tightwad Gazette. Where else can you make 50 - 75% return on your money?

+1. I bought a freezer years ago to stockpile sale items. Meat, desserts, vegetables, basically anything that can be frozen.

I also buy lots of can goods when on sale. I mainly shop at Aldi's so no sales there but I keep an eye out on loss leader sales with the big grocery chains and can always beat Aldi's on some items.

[Koolau]

The Islands supposedly have no more than a 7-day supply of food at any given time. Every hurricane (or Tsunami warning) empties store shelves in hours. We keep several weeks of food on hand just in case. I try to keep it organized by date but DW simply makes things fit when we buy anything. So we occasionally end up eating expired food. Not dangerous (unless swollen can) but the taste suffers.

I think it's wise to stock pile at least a modest amount of food. We never know what might interrupt supplies. YMMV

[SecondAttempt]

We don't stockpile for survival reasons but we live in a relatively remote area in Hawaii, 1 hour round trip from the nearest grocery store. We keep a well stocked pantry primarily because it is a pain to have to go get something you need for dinner if you don't have it. We have a large pantry so the list is broad and I won't cover here in any detail. We also could theoretically have a hurricane so we stock up just in case. THeoretically because the Florida models fail to account for a huge mountain interrupting the circulation so the NHC predictions are always wrong and my particular area has never been hit.

But we were reminded in December by a minor wind storm that took out power for 4+ days. We went to a hotel in town for respite after a couple of nights. It could have been much worse if there were lots of tree falls across the highway!

So keeping most staples on hand plus canned beans, meats (chicken and spam), etc. Also keep a broad supply of stuff like envelopes, screen clips, batteries, light bulbs, etc., not because they are critical but because they are often needed and a pain to get to when needed. Basically, we are our own store for things we need.

[SecondAttempt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koolau The Islands supposedly have no more than a 7-day supply of food at any given time. Every hurricane (or Tsunami warning) empties store shelves in hours. We keep several weeks of food on hand just in case. I try to keep it organized by date but DW simply makes things fit when we buy anything. So we occasionally end up eating expired food. Not dangerous (unless swollen can) but the taste suffers. I think it's wise to stock pile at least a modest amount of food. We never know what might interrupt supplies. YMMV

But you are on Oahu and have it so much better than us! I remember my first hurricane scare here and seeing video from Costco with families buying a whole cart (6-8 50 lb bags) of rice! I mean, how big is your family or how long do you think this will last?

I don't think my island girl partner is capable of going to a grocery store without buying a 5 lb bag of rice and a half dozen packages of saimin (ramen for most people).

[skyking1]

We don't have a stockpile but the RV has a pantry of canned goods in it that I rotate through.

[SecondAttempt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 11522914 +1. I bought a freezer years ago to stockpile sale items. Meat, desserts, vegetables, basically anything that can be frozen. I also buy lots of can goods when on sale. I mainly shop at Aldi's so no sales there but I keep an eye out on loss leader sales with the big grocery chains and can always beat Aldi's on some items.

I wish I could own a freezer. Our most frequent issue is long power outage!

[folivier]

We'd always have a week or so of crackers and spam since we live in hurricane country. But after Katrina wiping out our supply line and then Rita hitting to the west of us shortly after any fresh food became very hard to find for almost 3 weeks+. Since then we have a supply of freeze dried long storage food that should last us a month or longer.
We also have very close friends that are Mormons and they taught us quite a few good lessons.

[Bamaman]

We really don't stockpile, but I do keep a pantry with just about anything I need to cook at any given time. With inflation, we seldom eat steak--leaning more toward more ground beef, chicken and pork. I'm no longer in to luxury meals--simply put.

I shop the bargains and sales at groceries, and buy what's on sale that we use. And my shopping starts at Aldi's.

There's just so much room to keep food and groceries. Get too many items and I overlook what items are in storage--and they go bad or get too aged.

[CincyDave]

I stockpile mainly meat when there is a really good sale and glad I have with current prices. Currently have 3 whole packer briskets, 3 pork butts, 4 slabs of baby backs, a beef tenderloin, couple of whole chickens, a whole turkey, about a dozen packs of bacon (we go through a lot), a tri-tip and lots of stuff from the garden. Hope the power never goes out, although I do have a generator. Bring on the apocalypse!

[disneysteve]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort I started stockpiling food on sale / clearance based on the advice in The Tightwad Gazette.

I haven’t heard anyone mention Tightwad Gazette in ages. I loved that newsletter. I was upset when Amy decided to stop it. She printed a number of my letters and tips over the years.

We don’t stockpile food but we do buy some things in bulk and cook some things in larger batches so our pantry, basement, and extra freezer could keep us fed for a while if necessary.

[TrvlBug]

We live in earthquake country so stockpile basics as well as water for about 4+ weeks. Most of the canned stuff we do not eat on a regular basis as I try to keep to whole foods rather than processed, so I donate lots of canned goods on a yearly or semi annual basis for the dried fruit, to a local charity.

Learning from Covid, I have extended the time to 6+ months on non-food items such as paper goods, OTC and 'regular' meds, vitamins and such.

[pacergal]

Not a big stockpile anymore. Do have enough to probably last a week or so from pantry and fridge/freezer, plus about a week+ of freeze dried, water and emergency cook stove for disaster prep.
Probably will bulk up a bit on staples with winter coming.

[ncbill]

Large (15 cuft.) chest freezer here which helps with the free food (e.g. berries) or discounted (bulk purchases, split with other families) food we buy.

Wish we had room for another one.

[copyright1997reloaded]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Car-Guy We typically have enough food on hand to last ~2 months. However, I know I can come here for bacon anytime. Although it's a little hard to swallow at times.

These are in my food store, just in case: https://www.costco.com/ProductDispla...=http%3ALogoff

Since everything tastes better with bacon (TM), I will use them up in things like split pea soup (substitute for ham) when I think the stock is getting a bit "dated".

[daylatedollarshort]

Quote:

Originally Posted by disneysteve I haven’t heard anyone mention Tightwad Gazette in ages. I loved that newsletter. I was upset when Amy decided to stop it. She printed a number of my letters and tips over the years.

I have some books by her that I bought at library used book sales. Some of it is no longer relevant or healthy by today's standards, but many of the tips, like her calculations, are still really helpful - keeping a price book, stocking up freezer and pantry items when they are on sale or clearance, and cooking from your stockpiles and the current week's bargains. I also bought cooking without recipe books that just have basic patterns, so I can make meals from what we have on hand. Amy and the pattern recipe books have saved us a lot of money over the years.

[BrianB]

We just bought (another) hog. It's been almost exactly one year since our last purchase.

We buy from a family farm about 1.5 hrs away from us that is a "farrow-to-freezer" operation. They breed & raise their own animals, and have USDA certified processing and packaging. Everything is packaged & labelled just as we want it. Chops, shoulder, bacon, hams, ribs and ground pork. We even get the jowls & hocks smoked. (If you've never had smoked jowls you are missing out. It's better-than-bacon bacon!)

Price went up a little bit, from $1.40 to $1.45 / lb of live weight including processing. Our 282# hog provided about 190# of meat so about $2.15 / lb of finished product. Last year's came in at about $2.10 / lb.

A whole hog nearly fills our 7 cubic foot freezer. The pies are a bonus: We get 2 qts of high-quality lard that we give to my MIL. In return we get ready to bake pies with real lard crusts. Delicious!

BrianB

[rodi]

No extra/chest freezer. But our fridge/freezer in our kitchen was bought when we had the boys under roof. It tends to be well stocked...

As far as dry goods stored - that varies by where we are in the cycle... I don't buy another costco big bag of pinto beans till I'm down to 3-4 cups worth. Same with flour, rice. tp, papertowels

I tend to have backup multiple bags of my favorite almond granola - costco took it off the shelves for a few months and I *almost* had enough to span that gap. Same with coffee - try to have a few extra bags of coffee. TP and paper towels I buy when the giant block from costco is getting small... maybe one small block of tp left will trigger a purchase. Same with paper towels - when I only have 1-2 backup rolls, time to buy another huge block from costco.

We have a lot of canned goods - but not hoarding... I shop at costco so when I buy diced tomatos - I get a box, not a single can. Same with refried beans, tomato paste, etc.

[Sanstar]

We keep ahead of what for us are essentials: coffee, TP, peanut butter, flour, oils, beans and rice. Bread has gotten so ridiculously high, I’ve been bulk buying flour and making it. Thinking about stocking up on marinara sauce, salsa and ketchup with the current crop situation.

[jollystomper]

Before I retired we stockpiled too much. We had kids at home, DW was good at finding sales and using coupons, so we had a lot... too much. We did not do a good job of rotating through them. When I retired I decided to go through what we had, and about of third of it was very old (we are talking about "use by" dates from 15-20 years ago).

To pass time during the pandemic I started tracking our usage patterns for some items, to get a better handle on what made sense to stockpile and for how long. Now I know, for example, the Costco TP package will last us 4 months. so we always keep 2 unopened on hand. For our major non-perishable goods we have about 1-2 months supply.

Being on a well with an electric pump, we have learned to stock up on water. We have enough water on hand to flush our toilets and do basic washing (it pays to have lived for a time in places where clean water was a scare commodity ) for several days.

We are cautious about stocking up on refrigerated/freezer goods until we get a generator. He had had several friends have to either toss out their refrigerated goods or find others with power to store them when their homes had extended outages.

[Sunset]

We just have a large amount in the pantry which is really the basement. We have worked down the size of our pile as I don't want things to expire.

Within the last year or so, we lost the entire freezer of food, so I'm not big on storing too much in the freezer anymore.
Mostly it's canned vegies, canned chicken, rice, dried beans, nuts, TP, etc...

Still, when I see bargains I stock up. This week it was 99 cent pork from Jewel-Osco , I bought a 19 lb pack. Will freeze some of it.