Stock cupboards do you stock up?

I have always kept a cupboard and have sufficient dry and tinned food to keep us going if absolutely necessary for at least a fortnight .

I started to do this last year when I couldn't get toilet rolls, pasta or tinned tomatoes. Now I top things up so if I always have a supply. I'm turning into my gran!

I have always had 'stock'! I batch cook and freeze stuff and I always have replacement waiting for items currently in using mayo, mustard. I always have tinned tomatoes, baked beans etc in the cupboard.

I think I really need to get out of the habit of catering for a big family.

I have always kept a large store of tinned/ dried goods and a full freezer.
In an emergency we could live for months without leaving the house.

Nope - there are shops everywhere here in London - and a wide choice of delivery services - so I keep the usual stocks in. Some things I buy in bulk anyway and our normal supplies would last for at least a couple of weeks.

Yes, I’ve got a full freezer, and rice, pasta and tins in reserve. Most importantly I’ve stocked up on my favourite coffee as I had a personal crisis in the last lockdown when it was out of stock for quite a few weeks. I’m now keeping enough to last me for a three month siege!

I am naturally a hoarder so I do stock up and like "kittylester" especially with loo rolls, pasta and tinned tomatoes. I do not like baked beans. I have a fridge/freezer and also a separate under the counter freezer, both are well stocked so I doubt if I will starve.

I never stocked up, no need for it, till last year when you couldn’t get toilet rolls for love or money! So I started a small cupboard of essentials which I keep topped up. It does wonders for my anxiety!

Since Brexit I have had what I call my Domesday Stash. Mainly tins and some dried things too.

Yes, I am a stocker, my mum and gran always were. My aunt did too but was really methodical and marked everything with a date. I just fill the cupboards DH says they will come off the wall. I stock cleaning products and loo rolls too.
Neither of my daughters is but one lives near shops and the others husband is. He puts it in the Wendy house in the garden,DH nearly had a fit last year when she saw what he had,
My DH is not a hoarder of food but is of clothes he finally got rid of a 40-year-old pair of fishing trousers the other day. I think we would be having fried Rohan if it was up to him.

When growing up there were many times when our cupboards were empty. My dad worked in a car factory they had lots of strikes and then three working days. My mum told us all to have cupboards stocked with dry and tinned goods. I always have but I check dates etc especially pasta flour etc.

I’m another one whose Mum always kept a well stocked larder as Dad was always being called out on strike, until one day mum snapped and told him enough was enough, he found another job but the ‘well stocked larder’ still carries on in me and my daughters.
When DD1 lived in London she had all the shops literally on her doorstep, it was a pain always being sent out to buy milk and bread, then an hour later out for something else that she had run out of. Now she is in the Countryside and has her larder too.

Yes, I always have a good stock of tinned/dried/bottled stuff and a full freezer.

The contents of your store cupboard depend on your circumstances, both physical and financial.

This country has unpredictable weather. Even if I lived just across the road from a shop, I wouldn't venture out on my 82-year-old feet for a loaf of bread in snow, ice, rain or strong winds - and all of those have happened in summer, let alone winter. When I do buy anything, I have to carry it home up a steep hill and get home exhausted. For the last year I have not shopped in person, except for sometimes bringing home a single item when I had gone out for some other reason.

Supermarkets deliver, but for most, the minimum order is more than I eat in total in groceries in a week, and there is a surcharge for smaller amounts, so I order once a month and store what isn't needed at once. I keep stocks of flour, both bread flour and plain and SR, so that I can always have fresh bread. I freeze milk and butter, and meat, and some ready meals. I have frozen and tinned vegetables and fruit to supplement the fresh ones in my delivery, tinned tomatoes, beans, evaporated milk, coffee, cocoa, cooking oil, jam and marmalade, and various othe things. I have toilet and kitchen rolls and plain candles. If I were snowed in I wouldn't starve - though I might have to eat a lot of it uncooked if the power went off. I am working on that!

I have read condemnations of people for stockpiling, but where do you draw the line between stockpiling and sensible preparedness? Probably at the point where people grab everything on the shelves in a crisis, because they had nothing in reserve before that.

Having previously lived in a rural area where getting snowed in during the winter wasn't unusual I have always kept a small stockpile. I usually have two of every essential in the cupboard, as I use one I buy a replacement. When the idiots were out panic buying I was able to stay away until they came to their senses!

To those who don't like baked beans - neither do I, but beans are a good and easy source of protein and they fill you up excellently on a cold day. I don't buy baked ones, I buy the tins of plain beans of all sorts in water you find on supermarket shelves.

If you cook sausages and cut them up, fry some chopped onions and add a tin of drained plain beans, a tin of tomatoes, a tin of sliced carrots and a quarter teaspoon or so of chilli powder and simmer it all for a while (or put it in a slow cooker) you get a meal that will feed a family (or be divided up into single servings and frozen for future use - it heats through in a couple of minutes and is better nutrition than most ready meals) Mince can replace the sausages.

I don’t have a big freezer or masses of cupboard space, but can usually find the wherewithal for several meals anyway. Rice, pasta, red lentils, tinned tomatoes and purée, baked beans are usually stocked up, and I almost always have cheese, potatoes, onions and stock cubes etc.

During the first lockdown when shelves were bare I quite enjoyed working out what meals, and how many, I could contrive with what we had. At least 7 main meals IIRC.

Loo rolls were never a problem - dh always buys those packs of 24 and keeps us well stocked up.

My occupation was a buyer and I always like to make sure I have at least one spare of everything in rather than waiting till I have run out to buy more.

Elegran I like your recipe. Not keen on tinned carrots nut chopped up fresh ones sautéed with the onion would probably do just as well.

But not nut

I always kept a well stocked cupboard. However,since the panic buying last year when I could get nothing GF and had to rely on what I already had, I since keep some extra GF flour and pasta and a few other things. I will never be in that situation again. I still have difficulty getting some GF items as it is, but it seems to be down to delivery issues. I think everyone should be prepared, moreso with the awful weather we have had lately.

The tinned ones are useful to have on hand for when the fresh ones have gone black and shrivelled overnight. Onions, on the other hand seem to keep almost for ever.

Jack Monroe has a good cookbook called Tin Can Cook, about making meals out of tinned things. Part of her motive was cheapness, but she has some tasty things.

We used to have friends who lived down a very steep and narrow lane in Devon. Despite having masses of cupboard and freezer space, I was astounded to learn that when they were snowed (and iced) in one year - very rare there - they had no freezer stock of bread or milk, and were left without both for a couple of days until a kind and stalwart neighbour from the other end of the lane made his way to them.

Apparently they didn’t know you could freeze milk, but then why they didn’t have some long life for emergencies….

Yes, we always have a stock of basics such as pasta and tinned tomatoes. Just in case we can’t get to a shop for any reason.