[New shoot]

I’ve been watching a few ‘beat inflation’ YouTube channels recently and an American one I like has a $5 pantry challenge she does each week.  On top of her main shopping, $5 is set aside for buying supplies to store for a rainy day when funds are short.  It is all long life foods like beans, rice and pasta, packet mixes or cans.

It made me think about the stores I have and how they help out so much with making meals.  I do the same and buy a couple of bits each week to stash.

I have a lot of spices and seasoning liquids (for want of a better term) like soy sauce.  I have pasta, rice and pulses I buy in big bags.  Cans of tomatoes, cooked beans and a few proteins like tuna.  I dry herbs from the garden and surplus fruit and veg I can’t fit in the freezer.

Today the slow cooker is full as I saw chicken on offer in Tesco yesterday.  It cost me £6 for 1kg of boneless, skinless thigh meat.  I had onion and garlic, plus fresh ginger and chilli from the freezer, that latter 2 I use frozen with a micro plane grater. 

Some tinned tomatoes, dried cubed tomatoes and spices from my store, plus some mung dhal to disintegrate into the sauce and thicken it were added, plus some peeled cubed potatoes that I brought in from the shed a few days ago and needed to be used before they go soft.

The place smells lovely and I have enough for several meals for us both.  I have managed to keep our food bill down quite well so far and OH hasn’t noticed.  I heard him saying to someone the other day that ‘we have not really economised that much and are managing to still eat good meals’ 

[wighty]

We also try not to waste food, today for lunch I reheated the left over bit of jacket potato that I couldn't eat last night and finished off the tuna that we'd opened.  A bit more cheese grated over the top  and I was happy. Paul always heads for the reduced section in any supermarket we go to and sometimes I get a bit annoyed that we end up with six packs of sausages for example.  I can only eat two and Paul four so we divide all the packs up into what we know we can eat and freeze.  Sometimes when our shop is not as profitable we live on these.
Most weeks we don't have a food waste bag to put out for the dustmen.  The little corner shop at the end of the road is really good for bread as I like brown and it appears nobody else does as I buy  loaves for 13p.

[mumofstig]

Last Autumn when it looked as if prices would go sky high because of shortages (which never really materialised, the shortages, that is) I started to stock up more than I used to, on tinned/dry stuff.
I've got coffee, tea bags, dried fruit, tinned ham, corned beef, saveloys, that sort of thing, plus tinned beans, toms and  plus dried pulses, rice, pasta and instant mash.
It might get monotonous, but I certainly wouldn't starve if the weather stopped supermarket deliveries for a while 
Not forgetting all the flours, yeast, sugar and dried fruit in there, as well 
My only problem would be a long power cut, as the bungalow is all electric 

[New shoot]

It might get monotonous, but I certainly wouldn't starve if the weather stopped supermarket deliveries for a while 

I must admit whenever they started talking about shortages (Brexit/Covid/Ukraine … it hasn’t stoped has it), the only things I made sure I stocked up on was the stuff like soy sauce, curry spices and the like. 

I had my stash of long shelf life stuff anyway, but it does help lift the bulk foods out of monotony and into gourmet. That works for me if you are forced to rely on them because of media scaremongering or lack of cash

[snowdrops]

Yes I keep stocked up well, baked beans & tomatoes, flour, pasta, rice & I’ve  just taken an order of 25kg of granulated sugar ready for preserving next year when I saw it on reductions after Black Friday. Then of course all of the jams,chutneys & pasatta & anything else I’ve canned. I’ve got quite a few bottles of soy sauce,chilli, etc, mustards. We could live for quite a while on it all. Plus I’ve put away a few jars of dried beans up this year just in case.