Store cupboard planning for Brexit – Emergency stores

Posted on 13 December, 2019 Updated on 13 December, 2019

Following on from the previous post, this is a straightforward plan of what you might need to have in stock to feed one person for two weeks, so that meals are reasonably varied and everyone stays as healthy as possible. Brace yourself, it’s quite a lot, particularly when you multiply the list by the number of people in your household. The list is adapted from the official emergency food supplies list – the ‘hamster purchase list’, as it is nicknamed – issued by the German Government for its own population (who are luckier than those of us in the UK as they normally have cellars to house all the stuff). You need to budget £55-£65 per person, depending on whether you can get economies of scale from buying for larger numbers together, and the quality of food you choose, so a family of four using some basic brands and a few more expensive favourites here and there could expect to pay £150-170 for a two-week supply, in normal supermarkets.

Carbohydrates

1kg long life brown bread (or bread mix so you can make it yourself)

This can be bought canned for 3.95 euros for 500g from https://shop.conserva.de/en/canned-bread/749-dosen-bistro-mixed-wheat-bread-320g-5060428432864.html

400g French toasts or Krisprolls

These can be bought in Tesco for £1.29 for 200g https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/266291362 or £1.49 for 225g https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254592139 (Krisprolls)

1 kg crispbread or vacuum-packed bread

500g pasta

250g rice

750g oats

1 kg fresh or canned potatoes

Vegetables

800g canned beans

These can be baked or green beans

800g canned peas and/or carrots

700g each of red cabbage and sauerkraut in a jar

If you don’t like red cabbage, get extra beans, peas and carrots instead. But the cabbage has masses of vitamins.

400g asparagus in a jar

Cheaper in Germany, admittedly, but if you can afford it, this adds variety to meals

400g canned sweetcorn

400g canned mushrooms

400g gherkins in a jar

Again, a German favourite but very useful if you can acquire a taste for them. Otherwise choose another pickle you prefer.

400g cooked or pickled beetroot in a jar

500g fresh onions (because they keep well)

Fruit and nuts

700g canned cherries or fruit pie filling

250g canned pears

250g canned apricots

350g canned mandarins

350g canned pineapple

200g raisins or sultanas

200g shelled nuts or nut butter

250g dried prunes or figs

610g approximately of fresh applies, pears, bananas and oranges

Drinks

28 litres of water or another way of preparing fresh drinking water if power supplies are interrupted at pumping stations.

You can buy 5l still water packs at Tesco for £1.10 https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/266291362

1 x Jif lemon juice or similar

250g coffee

125g tea

Milk and milk products

3 litres long life milk or milk substitute

You can buy normal UHT-treated milk or alternatively powdered milk such as Marvel, or emergency milk for 8.85 euros from Convar https://shop.conserva.de/en/milk-products/774-ef-basic-organic-whole-milk-powder-350g-yields-3-liter-de-oeko-039–5060428433328.html

700g hard cheese

You can buy something like cheddar or parmesan, wrap it in greaseproof paper and put it somewhere cool, or you can buy canned cheese for 4.79 euros from Convar (it tastes good, I have tried it) https://shop.conserva.de/en/canned-cheese/592-dosen-bistro-gouda-250g-5060428432345.html

Meat, fish and eggs

150g canned tuna

100g canned sardines

100g herring fillets (more popular in Germany but still probably acceptable to the British palate)

250g canned corned beef or ham

300g canned or tinned hot dogs

300g sandwich paste or pate in tins or jars

360g canned stewing steak, chilli or similar

10 eggs, or alternatively you can buy egg powder from Convar for 6.58 euros https://shop.conserva.de/en/119-powdered-whole-eggs

Fat and oil

250g of butter or margarine. You can buy canned Ghee in most supermarkets, or powdered butter from Convar that will probably outlive most of us at 24.50 euros for 500g. https://shop.conserva.de/en/butter-powder/594-butter-powder-650g-4015753702015.html

300g sunflower, maize or light olive oil

To the above list you can add chocolate, cakes, children’s snacks etc as required, if you have the space. Convar do lots of canned cakes which are delicious (yes, we took another fall for the team and taste tested them for you!). It’s also possible to buy packets of jelly, dried rice pudding, semolina, custard power, jam, honey and so on, to add something sweet to the diet for morale-boosting purposes. Army 24 hour ration packs often have a muesli bar and boiled sweets in them for this purpose (and it is also a compact form of calories). I would also add a 500g bag of granulated sugar to the list, for the same reason.

Please note: All Convar prices are without VAT. They have not sponsored this post, we just like them because their products are excellent and for survival food the prices are competitive. At the moment they are manufactured in the UK. I know, irony, right?

Store cupboard planning for Brexit – Longer term plan (three months)

Posted on 12 December, 2019 Updated on 13 December, 2019

In this post I try to identify the foods that we are used to using frequently, or having in our store cupboards as useful gourmet additions to our normal cuisine, and list them so that you can stock up in advance of them becoming difficult or more expensive to obtain. There may be problems either for customs delay reasons, tariffs, disruption to the manufacturing supply chain in the UK, or because there’s trouble finding pickers in the UK.

Fish or lobster soup (Baxters is good)

Preserved lemons

Marmalade and marmalade ingredients

Coconut milk

Bread mix (our wheat travels around half a dozen countries before ending up as a loaf in the supermarket)

Fast acting yeast

Cooked peppers in jars

Olives in packets, tins and jars

Tinned chopped plum tomatoes

Tomato paste

Passata

Tomato ketchup

Herbs and spices

Very lazy garlic in jars

Very lazy ginger in jars

Anchovies and anchovy paste

Pulses: canned kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas, black-eyed beans, borlotti beans

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Dried porcini mushrooms

Canned mangoes

Gourmet dried pasta

Stuffed vine leaves and other meze

Polenta

Sea salt and black peppercorns

Tinned salmon

Pine nuts

Nut butters

Frozen mediterranean vegetables

Frozen seafood, especially things like monkfish, sea bass, squid, etc

Frozen fruits and smoothies mixes