How long could you last ?

I probably am mildly lactose intolerant because milk and its close associates, yoghourt and cream make me feel sick, and, as a result, anything that tastes of milk has the same effec.

However, I do not like milkless tea. As a result I use skimmed UHT milk, for the simple reason that it is totally devoid of taste or smell, but still has the 'softening' effect of milk in tea and the like.

My daughter is at the other extreme she loves milk, preferably green top straight from the farm. I cannot even touch the bottle, because of the aroma, my stomach has an instant reaction.

I used to never like the taste of long life milk, but started buying it during the first lockdown. If I want fresh, then I buy semi-skimmed. But with the long life, I buy skimmed, and I really can’t tell the difference in tea now.

I can recommend fresh lactose free milk if you want milk that tastes exactly the same as ordinary milk but lasts a lot longer. Check the sell by dates, it’s usually a month ahead. Once opened it lasts longer than ordinary milk too, you do have to keep it in the fridge but it’s far nicer than long life milk, which I always think tastes a bit fishy.

Thanks Doodledog, then the thing we would want to make sure we didn't run out of would be coffee.

Long life milk is fine in tea/coffee and for baking etc. I don’t drink milk so can’t say if you can taste the difference that way.

I don’t mean that Puro stuff that used to come in long-necked bottles - I mean the milk in cartons from any supermarket.

If you have a dehydrator you can dry jars of veg. I have several jars containing mushrooms, spinach, kale and peppers but in reality this would only last a week if there was no actual fresh veg. The mushrooms were really handy recently as I needed some for a recipe and had run out. It is also considerably cheaper to create your own gourmet mix.

Need to get some sort of milk for the store cupboard, but it all seems to taste awful, any recommendations?

We'd certainly last a few weeks but it wouldn't be the healthiest of times. Plenty pasta.. plenty cereal but it would be awful without milk. Good for tinned foods but the freezer is small so we'd be out of meat and veg pretty quickly..

I think 3 months if I counted every tim and dried goods but there would be a dearth of fresh food after the first week. I have probably a month's supply of frozen veg and would have to get my fruit from tins if it was really sticking to everything in the cupboard. Could spin tinned fruit out about 3 weeks. Just thinking how awful it would be not to be able to get fresh food though 🤔

I could manage a month - you can freeze bread too. I would miss fresh fruit and veg though.

Same Blondiscot, we used to say the army could drop by and she could feed them!

We would have meat/fish from the freezer, and rice or pasta to last about a month probably. I don't keep much frozen veg or fruit because I find it frosts up within a short time.

If I could turn all the jars of condiments into a soup that would do for another week or two!

About 3 - 4 months as long as we didn’t expect to eat the same sort of meals as we do normally. My freezer has plenty of meat and frozen veg and portions of meals that I’ve cooked previously and frozen. But once they were gone it would have gone it would tinned soup, tinned beans etc. I have uht milk and could make soda bread I expect.

We used to joke that if there ever was a zombie apocalypse, we'd hole up at my in-laws' house, as my MiL used to stockpile enough food to feed half the village! Now that they are both housebound though, I do their shopping and they don't have nearly as much stuff hoarded away. I think we'd probably be ok for around a month, apart from milk and fresh fruit and veg. I have veg from the garden in the freezer and plenty of flour, so I could bake my own bread.

Have I dreamt this - is it Sweden where people are expected to have a certain quantity of food in the house - maybe a month's - so they can survive particularly harsh weather.

Georgesgran

Probably months - other than needing milk and the odd loaf.
DH died last year and I’m still working my way through the freezer! The tin cupboard is going down nicely though.

Georgesgran; I lost my husband in January, and cleared most of a cupboard of tinned and packet food that he liked and I didn't. The food bank were very grateful!

I would be OK for meat for about 10 days, but would soon run out of bread, butter and fresh veg! I buy fresh meat from our weekly market, portion it up and freeze it. As it's just me, it lasts quite a while, as I also have some vegetarian or neat free meals each week.
The cats would be OK for about a month!

A week. Only buy what we need on a weekly basis.

I could probably last a couple of months or so, that's if I don't die of boredom from the same meals: (assuming I can make some bread) beans on toast, mackerel on toast, red lentil and veg stew, PEK with everything, etc, etc.

Hmm tough one! Possibly a couple of weeks if we was really careful. Thankfully I do make some vegetarian stuff as we used to do meat free Monday's That would make the frozen fish and chicken fillets go a bit further

If we rationed it, probably 3 months

There is food in our freezer for a month or six weeks, plus tinned food, flour and extra cat food in the pantry.

But like everyone else, we would be out of dairy products such as yoghurt, cream and cheese in a week or so; coffee in the course of a month, and cat food at the outside in the course of three weeks.

Lathyrus

I could probably last three or four months on the fat I’ve already stored (sigh)

Me too! But storecupboard meals tend to have a lot of carbohydrates.

I found rice very useful in lockdown, easy to cook just as much as you need and risotto is great for spinning out leftovers.

Yes, it's the eggs, milk and bread I need to buy regularly. I do keep some bread in the freezer but it takes up a lot of room. I suppose I have oats and strong flour so I can make my favourite oat dough.
It is amazing how many meals for two you can get out of an extra large chicken! Though if I was cooking for one I think it would last too long. Off to make some bolognaise for the freezer today.

Unused capacity?
Fridge? (Or freezer) ?
That’s like leftover wine - I don’t understand the concept!

Someone mentioned cost of running fridge? I was taught to take up any unused capacity by filling with polystyrene blocks. Bit weird at first but used to itnnow.