Housewife manuals and home economic teachers used to preach the benefits of having a 'paper cupboard' -- a back corner of your kitchen cabinets that you'd fill with tinned and dried goods that required no cooking or minimal preparation in event of emergency. You'd tape butcher paper over the corner after added things like emergency candles and matches, creating a false wall so that you would not accidentally use up your stash. Once a year you'd rip the paper down, have a fake hurricane party roasting marshmallows over the candle, and re-stock the paper cupboard. Unless, of course, a real disaster had occurred in the mean time.
I don't have an official paper cupboard, but I often ponder the appropriate definition and scale of home food security. It's reasonable to think ahead to likely potential disasters like massive storms, power outages, or an economic crisis that creates a run on banks and supermarkets. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to dig a full-scale bomb shelter out back and stock it with a year's worth of provisions. I'm not saying that folks who do that are unreasonable, and there may come a day when I say gee, weren't they the smart ones. But it's a question of weighing the odds of circumstances occurring where that would be necessary against the time, money and effort that would have to be transferred from other things in life to do it.
I think every New Englander has a stash of emergency candles and matches, and we've got oil lamps as well, though we should probably make a point of storing up more lamp oil. The new-fangled version of emergency candles are these nightlights that you leave plugged in to an outlet, and when the power goes off, their flashlight beam automatically comes on. Then you can pull it out of the wall and use it as a regular flashlight. This has been of use to me on several occasions.
A wood stove is invaluable in an emergency. It provides heat and you can cook on it and dry your clothes around it, and it will burn just about anything. I'm not worried about storing only foods that can be eaten uncooked in my emergency stash, because I can cook just about anything on the wood stove. If you don't have a wood stove, a Coleman camp stove is the next best thing. You can take it camping or to tailgate parties, but if you keep your fuel supplies well-stocked, you can also get through a week's power outage with hot soup and baked beans every day. For less that $100, it's a fine investment. Even with the wood stove, we have a few of these as well as small backpacking stoves.
I figure water is the most critical thing to ensure you have enough of in an emergency. I'm fortunate enough to live in an area that has an abundance of water running in the stream beds even in the dry season of late August, and even more fortunate to have discovered that the town water in my area flows into my sink taps even when the power is out due to some fluke of gravity feed in the system. But a big storm, earthquake, deep freeze or nuclear fallout might well make those water sources unusable for a bit, or at least make it unattractive to go out in a minus-zero blizzard to lug in snow to melt and filter for water.
I gathered up plastic milk jugs for a while (I rarely buy these myself as I hate plastic, but plenty of other folks were happy to give me some), washed them out well, and filled them with the beautiful water from the spring up the road that has a bit of a local following. Not quite a fountain of youth but people say good things about it. I put all these milk jugs in the bottom of my 14 cubic foot chest freezer (picked up for free three years ago courtesy of FreeCycle , a resource I highly recommend). Then I laid some pegboard over the milk jugs to create a new false bottom for the freezer. I figure this does triple duty: I save on electricity by having the freezer fuller; it will help keep my frozen goods frozen longer in a power outage; and it serves as an emergency water supply. There are over 20 gallons of frozen water in there. After that, I'll have to lug snow.
Next there's food. Fortunately, I don't have to do a lot of tweaking of my larder for emergency preparation. I can all of our salsa, chutney, spaghetti sauce, relishes, pickles, sauerkraut, applesauce, jams and jellies, and stock for making chili, so there is always a good supply of these. If disaster strikes in May or early June, we might be a bit low as it's the time of year I'm running out the old supplies in preparation for the new round of canning in the coming weeks. But except for running out of the odd favorite or two (pickled beets, the black bean salsa) there's always at least a couple weeks of food in the pantry.
In addition to the canned goods, my larder is well stocked with dried staples bought in bulk at the natural food co-op. These include:
--Grains. Several types of brown rice, along with quick-cook grains like bulghur, quinoa and couscous. These latter can actually be softened up just by soaking if for some reason I run out of books and junk mail to keep the wood stove going. I also always have a huge jar of popcorn on hand.
--Beans. Several types of beans, split peas and lentils. I've been experimenting towards the direction of growing these myself but haven't yet reached the point of being able to produce any real quantity of them in my limited growing space. Beans and water simmering on the wood stove can be easily morphed into chili, baked beans, or soup depending on what else I dump into it.
--Sweeteners, oils and vinegar. I always have sugar, brown sugar, honey and molasses on hand, and of course a big jug of maple syrup. Canola and olive oil along with peanut and sesame oil. A wardrobe of vinegars including white, cider, balsamic, red wine, and rice. Honey and olive oil seem the hardest to keep stocked up. I try to follow the old rule of buying two, then buying a replacement when the first one is empty, but depending on weekly finances that doesn't always work.
--Flour and baking supplies. We buy our white flour in a 50 pound sack and keep it in a big plastic tote. I also always have whole wheat and rye flour and cornmeal. For the last year, the cornmeal has been my own home-grown. It's amazing how much cornmeal you can get from a small plot of heirloom dent corn. My whole wheat flour is grown and milled here in my county, and I'm partial to King Arthur unbleached white flour, which is at least sourced in my region and sold through a Vermont company. I do have to make conscious note to keep the baking soda, baking powder, and cornstarch well supplied. One thing that helps both in baking and keeping track of this is that I keep all three of these, as well as meringue powder and cream of tartar, in one big rectangular Tupperware container on the shelf of my little baking cart. This makes finding them to bake supremely simple, and I can make note of what's running low any time I open the container. I do try earnestly to keep doubles of all these on hand. I've also always got yeast and a sourdough starter going. Bread, tortillas, biscuits, pitas and pancakes can all be cooked up on the wood stove.
--Herbs and spices. My dad made me a beautiful spice shelf years ago, from a limb of a black walnut tree that had fallen down at my great grandparent's farm. It is stuffed full of herbs and spices in alphabetical order--but don't be impressed, it's the one and only place in my house that is organized. Any jar that runs low I set on top of my bread box on the counter so I can easily note it next time I run to the co-op, or next time I'm stocking the dehydrator with herbs from the garden.
--Coffee and tea. For a caffeine addict like me, my biggest fear is running out of coffee. We usually have enough of the good stuff to get us through, but I confess that I do stash a jar of instant coffee way up on the top shelf of the pantry in a back corner where I will forget about it until I am in a desperate caffeine-starved state. I have thought about filling one of those milk jugs in the chest freezer with coffee instead of water, just in case. We also have a large stash of black and herb teas, and a whole shelf of jars of dried herb teas from the garden.
--Dairy and Eggs. We buy cases of butter and cheddar and monterey jack cheese from a Vermont manufacturer when they have an annual caseload sale, and stick them in the chest freezer. Freezing does not seem to do them any harm, although the cheese can sometimes get crumbly when it thaws. Since I mostly grate it into sauce or over nachos, this works fine for me. I grab some canned condensed milk and sweetened condensed milk when it's on sale at the supermarket now and again and try to keep a couple cans of each on hand, as well as a box of powdered milk packets. I use the canned milk in baking a few things (like pumpkin pie) so it's handy anyway. As for the powdered milk...let's be honest, it's to put in my coffee in case the power is out and I'm snowed in and can't go get milk. I have my priorities. A couple aseptic packaging boxes of soy milk are also there in a pinch. I've also got chickens, and several dozen eggs in the fridge with more coming daily. I suppose if things got terribly desperate, the chickens could be renamed Stew...
--Veggies. I've got tons of veggies, all the time. From May to November, there's plenty fresh in the garden. From November to about February, there are plenty of winter squash, celeriac, carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips and other root crops stored in crates. And all year round there is an ample stash of veggies in the freezer, from beet greens to green beans to cubed butternut squash, broccoli and cauliflower, and chopped tomatoes. I slice, bread and fry eggplant and freeze it in freezer bags so they can be pulled out and layered for eggplant parm. Huge vats of borscht, lentil soup, corn chowder and a variety of mixed veggie soups are frozen in pint, quart and half gallon containers so we can pull them out for individual meals or an impromptu dinner party. If the power goes out, we'll eat a lot of veggies but it will be several long weeks before they'd start to go bad. I've also got canned and frozen fruit, from berries to apple pie filling and halved pears, along with apple rings dried in the dehydrator when they are in season.
The irony is, this isn't a special stash of food for emergencies -- this is just the ordinary inventory of my larder. No processed, refined, packaged goods. Not much that's going to go bad, other than the milk in the fridge and veggies that are always being replenished. I'm not worried about running out of chips or cookies or lunchmeat, as I never have those things anyway.
Food security at home for me is not so much a matter of special emergency planning as it is a consistent peace of mind, knowing that whatever happens in the world, from a personal financial disaster to a massive natural disaster, food will not be a worry for me for quite some time. My pantry shelves are full of real, nourishing food that will sustain me and my family, and probably several neighbors, through whatever befalls. If, when a crisis hits, it looks like it's going to last more than the month or so it'll take for me to eat through my larder, then I'll rethink what can be planted in the short term and ponder rationing out the supplies on hand so that they'll last several months instead of dining in elegance for three full meals a day.
Just as long as I have my coffee...
I don't have an official paper cupboard, but I often ponder the appropriate definition and scale of home food security. It's reasonable to think ahead to likely potential disasters like massive storms, power outages, or an economic crisis that creates a run on banks and supermarkets. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to dig a full-scale bomb shelter out back and stock it with a year's worth of provisions. I'm not saying that folks who do that are unreasonable, and there may come a day when I say gee, weren't they the smart ones. But it's a question of weighing the odds of circumstances occurring where that would be necessary against the time, money and effort that would have to be transferred from other things in life to do it.
I think every New Englander has a stash of emergency candles and matches, and we've got oil lamps as well, though we should probably make a point of storing up more lamp oil. The new-fangled version of emergency candles are these nightlights that you leave plugged in to an outlet, and when the power goes off, their flashlight beam automatically comes on. Then you can pull it out of the wall and use it as a regular flashlight. This has been of use to me on several occasions.
A wood stove is invaluable in an emergency. It provides heat and you can cook on it and dry your clothes around it, and it will burn just about anything. I'm not worried about storing only foods that can be eaten uncooked in my emergency stash, because I can cook just about anything on the wood stove. If you don't have a wood stove, a Coleman camp stove is the next best thing. You can take it camping or to tailgate parties, but if you keep your fuel supplies well-stocked, you can also get through a week's power outage with hot soup and baked beans every day. For less that $100, it's a fine investment. Even with the wood stove, we have a few of these as well as small backpacking stoves.
I figure water is the most critical thing to ensure you have enough of in an emergency. I'm fortunate enough to live in an area that has an abundance of water running in the stream beds even in the dry season of late August, and even more fortunate to have discovered that the town water in my area flows into my sink taps even when the power is out due to some fluke of gravity feed in the system. But a big storm, earthquake, deep freeze or nuclear fallout might well make those water sources unusable for a bit, or at least make it unattractive to go out in a minus-zero blizzard to lug in snow to melt and filter for water.
I gathered up plastic milk jugs for a while (I rarely buy these myself as I hate plastic, but plenty of other folks were happy to give me some), washed them out well, and filled them with the beautiful water from the spring up the road that has a bit of a local following. Not quite a fountain of youth but people say good things about it. I put all these milk jugs in the bottom of my 14 cubic foot chest freezer (picked up for free three years ago courtesy of FreeCycle , a resource I highly recommend). Then I laid some pegboard over the milk jugs to create a new false bottom for the freezer. I figure this does triple duty: I save on electricity by having the freezer fuller; it will help keep my frozen goods frozen longer in a power outage; and it serves as an emergency water supply. There are over 20 gallons of frozen water in there. After that, I'll have to lug snow.
Next there's food. Fortunately, I don't have to do a lot of tweaking of my larder for emergency preparation. I can all of our salsa, chutney, spaghetti sauce, relishes, pickles, sauerkraut, applesauce, jams and jellies, and stock for making chili, so there is always a good supply of these. If disaster strikes in May or early June, we might be a bit low as it's the time of year I'm running out the old supplies in preparation for the new round of canning in the coming weeks. But except for running out of the odd favorite or two (pickled beets, the black bean salsa) there's always at least a couple weeks of food in the pantry.
In addition to the canned goods, my larder is well stocked with dried staples bought in bulk at the natural food co-op. These include:
--Grains. Several types of brown rice, along with quick-cook grains like bulghur, quinoa and couscous. These latter can actually be softened up just by soaking if for some reason I run out of books and junk mail to keep the wood stove going. I also always have a huge jar of popcorn on hand.
--Beans. Several types of beans, split peas and lentils. I've been experimenting towards the direction of growing these myself but haven't yet reached the point of being able to produce any real quantity of them in my limited growing space. Beans and water simmering on the wood stove can be easily morphed into chili, baked beans, or soup depending on what else I dump into it.
--Sweeteners, oils and vinegar. I always have sugar, brown sugar, honey and molasses on hand, and of course a big jug of maple syrup. Canola and olive oil along with peanut and sesame oil. A wardrobe of vinegars including white, cider, balsamic, red wine, and rice. Honey and olive oil seem the hardest to keep stocked up. I try to follow the old rule of buying two, then buying a replacement when the first one is empty, but depending on weekly finances that doesn't always work.
--Flour and baking supplies. We buy our white flour in a 50 pound sack and keep it in a big plastic tote. I also always have whole wheat and rye flour and cornmeal. For the last year, the cornmeal has been my own home-grown. It's amazing how much cornmeal you can get from a small plot of heirloom dent corn. My whole wheat flour is grown and milled here in my county, and I'm partial to King Arthur unbleached white flour, which is at least sourced in my region and sold through a Vermont company. I do have to make conscious note to keep the baking soda, baking powder, and cornstarch well supplied. One thing that helps both in baking and keeping track of this is that I keep all three of these, as well as meringue powder and cream of tartar, in one big rectangular Tupperware container on the shelf of my little baking cart. This makes finding them to bake supremely simple, and I can make note of what's running low any time I open the container. I do try earnestly to keep doubles of all these on hand. I've also always got yeast and a sourdough starter going. Bread, tortillas, biscuits, pitas and pancakes can all be cooked up on the wood stove.
--Herbs and spices. My dad made me a beautiful spice shelf years ago, from a limb of a black walnut tree that had fallen down at my great grandparent's farm. It is stuffed full of herbs and spices in alphabetical order--but don't be impressed, it's the one and only place in my house that is organized. Any jar that runs low I set on top of my bread box on the counter so I can easily note it next time I run to the co-op, or next time I'm stocking the dehydrator with herbs from the garden.
--Coffee and tea. For a caffeine addict like me, my biggest fear is running out of coffee. We usually have enough of the good stuff to get us through, but I confess that I do stash a jar of instant coffee way up on the top shelf of the pantry in a back corner where I will forget about it until I am in a desperate caffeine-starved state. I have thought about filling one of those milk jugs in the chest freezer with coffee instead of water, just in case. We also have a large stash of black and herb teas, and a whole shelf of jars of dried herb teas from the garden.
--Dairy and Eggs. We buy cases of butter and cheddar and monterey jack cheese from a Vermont manufacturer when they have an annual caseload sale, and stick them in the chest freezer. Freezing does not seem to do them any harm, although the cheese can sometimes get crumbly when it thaws. Since I mostly grate it into sauce or over nachos, this works fine for me. I grab some canned condensed milk and sweetened condensed milk when it's on sale at the supermarket now and again and try to keep a couple cans of each on hand, as well as a box of powdered milk packets. I use the canned milk in baking a few things (like pumpkin pie) so it's handy anyway. As for the powdered milk...let's be honest, it's to put in my coffee in case the power is out and I'm snowed in and can't go get milk. I have my priorities. A couple aseptic packaging boxes of soy milk are also there in a pinch. I've also got chickens, and several dozen eggs in the fridge with more coming daily. I suppose if things got terribly desperate, the chickens could be renamed Stew...
--Veggies. I've got tons of veggies, all the time. From May to November, there's plenty fresh in the garden. From November to about February, there are plenty of winter squash, celeriac, carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips and other root crops stored in crates. And all year round there is an ample stash of veggies in the freezer, from beet greens to green beans to cubed butternut squash, broccoli and cauliflower, and chopped tomatoes. I slice, bread and fry eggplant and freeze it in freezer bags so they can be pulled out and layered for eggplant parm. Huge vats of borscht, lentil soup, corn chowder and a variety of mixed veggie soups are frozen in pint, quart and half gallon containers so we can pull them out for individual meals or an impromptu dinner party. If the power goes out, we'll eat a lot of veggies but it will be several long weeks before they'd start to go bad. I've also got canned and frozen fruit, from berries to apple pie filling and halved pears, along with apple rings dried in the dehydrator when they are in season.
The irony is, this isn't a special stash of food for emergencies -- this is just the ordinary inventory of my larder. No processed, refined, packaged goods. Not much that's going to go bad, other than the milk in the fridge and veggies that are always being replenished. I'm not worried about running out of chips or cookies or lunchmeat, as I never have those things anyway.
Food security at home for me is not so much a matter of special emergency planning as it is a consistent peace of mind, knowing that whatever happens in the world, from a personal financial disaster to a massive natural disaster, food will not be a worry for me for quite some time. My pantry shelves are full of real, nourishing food that will sustain me and my family, and probably several neighbors, through whatever befalls. If, when a crisis hits, it looks like it's going to last more than the month or so it'll take for me to eat through my larder, then I'll rethink what can be planted in the short term and ponder rationing out the supplies on hand so that they'll last several months instead of dining in elegance for three full meals a day.
Just as long as I have my coffee...
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