My wife and I are still sitting up on our little hill and watching the world go bye. Every 10 days or two weeks she'll make a run to the grocery store for fresh veg...
... but it may fire up again in the fall...
... What would I do differently if anything? Would I get more freeze dried stuff? We haven't used any so far. Would I get more canned stuff? We haven't used any of that either. I'm thinking that it would just be more of the same, fill the freezers with more meat and frozen veg, sit back and enjoy.
Would any of you guys do anything differently on the second go around?
Darn good question.
I'd probably buy a 3rd freezer and pack it
But I would probably throw in a bunch of dozen pizza. Some frozen oriental foods. Some frozen prepared meals of some sort. I'm not complaining about having a freezer packed with meat, but sometimes I like to go to a restaurant and get stuff we don't normally cook. Having a 3rd freezer, and packing it with stuff that we enjoy but perhaps don't know how to make, or just to add more variety, etc, that would be great.
CANNED FOOD: We use very little canned food, but we do use some. I think I'd probably buy more canned stewed tomatoes, canned beans for chili, and of course Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash! We have more cans of sweet corn than I can eat. Plenty of green beans but more people eat green beans here than canned corn. So 2 cases of canned corn should have been 1 case. I did buy a few cans of several types of things like Chef-boy-r-dee Mini Ravioli, Beefaroni, etc. Most of that remains untouched, but every once in a while I've found an eaten can in the trash. I might have added to that trash once or twice too. Canned SOUPS are sitting on our shelves, we mostly use those for casseroles, might be time to make some?
FRUIT: I like fruit in my oatmeal. But I don't need fresh fruit. I'm happy with freeze dried strawberries, bananas, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. They can be used in smoothies and even in vanilla ice cream to make flavored ice cream. Some stuff is available as Dehydrated, other stuff as Freeze Dried. Freeze dried is crazy expensive by comparison, but it tastes better and reconstitutes better, if budget is no object, I'd buy bulk freeze dried berries, apple slices, banana chips. I'd buy dried apricots, mangos.
Probably going to run out of maple syrup. So I'd buy more pure maple syrup. I'm eating a lot more oatmeal lately. I like a shot of syrup in my oatmeal to give it a bit of flavor, along with the fruit.
PACKAGED SIDE DISHES: 1- POTATOES, We have boxes of Scalloped Potatoes (and other varieties). Basically just boxes of cheese mix + flavor mix + dried potatoes. In normal times we eat a box of those a month. I'm finding they are over-loads of cheese. We have some boxes of stuff that contains NO CHEESE, they are more like a skillet fried potato mix. I prefer those. Probably get fewer of the cheesy type, more of the skillet type. 2- RICE, again we normally eat rice dishes periodically, I prefer red beans & rice, or Cajun Dirty Rice, even Rice-a-Roni is OK. I think we've made it once since we've been locked down. Got lots of it. 3 - CAULIFLOWER 'rice' is more popular because its lower calorie and low carb (
Melen is diabetic) but its difficult in normal times to find shelf stable packages. We have a bunch of frozen cauliflower (
I broke down heads, individually froze the pieces, and then vacuum packed the pieces) but it seems like we use this more than either rice or potatoes so I'd probably have more.
BREAD MIX has been a blessing. Not only does homemade bread taste really good, and make the house smell great, it just makes us happy. I bought 4 or 5 different varieties of and bought several boxes of each mix (
probably 36 total boxes). We also have various things like 1 pound bags of flax, pumpkin, poppy, etc seeds that we can use to modify the bread mixes. These are things we normally have in the pantry, but not normally in such large quantities.
NUT BUTTERS: I didn't realize my daughter eats so much peanut butter. I buy the natural stuff. 1 jar will last us a full year. Melen has been locked in the house for over a month and we are now on our 3rd and last jar of peanut butter. She also eats Almond and Cashew butter, but I didn't have any of those so I guess that explains why the P.B. is moving faster. Realize she has been away from home since starting college so I didn't realize some of the foods she is eating.
I still have a few dozen eggs, and a can of powdered eggs. I guess the powdered eggs are overkill. They will be used for baking/cooking.
We ran out of lactose free milk. We started in on the 'shelf stable' milk. It comes in 8oz containers. We have 23 of those 8-oz containers. They are not lactose free so I'm using Lactaid if I have things with milk. I would source a lactose free version of the shelf stable stuff. It is available, but difficult to find in normal circumstances.
We also have a #10 can of powdered milk that is unopened. It works fine for baking, cooking, etc. We will save the 8-oz shelf stable milk for when we really need milk for drinking?
SNACK FOODS: Dark Chocolate, small portion snacks, lower calorie snacks. I'm happy to snack on sardines, Spam, smoked oysters, etc. I normally have a half dozen cans of each in the house. I have sardines and Spam but no smoked oysters. I also like to snack on pickles. I had several jars that we canned ourselves, and I bought a half dozen jars at the store, but currently I'm probably down to the last 3 or 4 jars. I do like pickles. I bought a couple cases of individual serve bags of low calorie pop-corn and a couple boxes of OREO "2 packs" and both of those snacks have helped ... but Melen baked scratch made chocolate chip cookies last evening.
I would have more PUZZLES in the house. I don't make them but the girls do.
We found 2 plastic bins of YARN in our pile of craft supplies. That has occupied hours of the girls time and has been a blessing for them.