How Long Could You Make It, Food-wise, If the Grocery Stores Were Closed?

Probably about a week's worth or so. It wouldn't be 3 square meals, but we'd make do. I don't really like to stockpile.

We keep a lot of kashi foods (cereal bars, granola bars, hot cereal, dry cereals, etc) and nuts on hand all the time (peanuts and almonds in particular). Plus a few boxes of Zone bars (daily snack or breakfast replacement for my husband and kids, so when they go on sale like last week, I'll buy 8 boxes at a time)... so we COULD get by for several days.. not more than 5 or 6 probably though. I usually have a good stock of canned tuna and peanut butter also---we eat a lot of all of these things on a regular basis. There are probably 8-10 large cans of soup. None of us would be very happy about it... but we could live off of all those items for several days. I try to keep a decent amount of frozen stuff too, but if the power went... that wouldn't be any good.
We also keep several cases of bottled water (individual bottles, not gallon jugs) in the garage.

We'd have food for a few days.....We could make it stretch if we had to, but we may end up considering cookies and crackers a meal then......:)

Are you kidding me? If the Chinese food delivery guy got a flat tire, we'd starve then and there.

We have a year supply of food. And we have about 3 months worth of water maybe?

I'm LDS, and it's been in our teachings forever that it's important to be prepared. We are counseled to have a year supply of food for our family, as well as a 72-hour pack for our family (multiple packs for larger families) so that if there was a disaster, we would be able to grab our packs and go and be supplied with things we need for three days.

For the first five years, or so, of our marriage, we weren't prepared like this. We decided it was really important that we do it, so with our tax returns one year, we got everything we needed. A lot of it is wheat and beans and powdered milk and oil and honey and rice and dried fruits and stuff like that (that's not everything - we have plenty to make meals with). We also have some equipment in case there was no power, we would be able to cook still.

That probably makes me sound crazy (haha!). I'm not a hoarder at all. Our house is very clean, neat, and organized without over flowing stuff. We keep the food storage in a small room. It's packed in there pretty good! We are very organized with it. If we use something out of it (which is part of the idea, we rotate through the food), we have a list that we mark and then buy and replace those items.

Anyway, I think it's a really important thing to be prepared for. It could be if hubby lost his job, we'd have food. Or if the world exploded, we'd have food:-)

If the power fails, three days tops.

I could go for a year without having the to go to the grocery store as long as I had electricity and water. Now the menu might be be rather boring after about 6 to 8 months, but I'm a pretty good cook and I think we would do ok.

Why so much? I had 8 kids and bought to feed 8 kids. Its a hard habit to break. And like Karen mentioned, when I buy rice (or anything else) I look for the best possible deal. Often that is in a 50 lb bag. When I went to a store the other day they had toilet paper in their ad and on a pretty good sale. But some one had torn three packages of toilet paper apart and each package had one or two rolls missing. The store marked it down and marked it down below their sale price. I bought all three packages for $1.25 each. So I got 10 double rolls for $1.25. I'm always on the look out for really good deals.

My kids call my pantry "grandpa's grocery". I have 4 kids with family in California and I could probably feed all 5 families for 6 months if I had to. But I have enough seeds and know how to garden, so we could go for a long time as long as the water didn't get turned off.

Good question. I'm surprised at the number of people that said they couldn't go a month.

Good luck to you and yours.

If I'm not picky about what I eat, probably 6 mos to a year. I was a food hoarder for many years. Once I started having to throw canned food out I realized what i was doing and stopped most of my buying. Finally, I try to purchase just what I need for that week but I have shelves of canned goods still in my basement as well as a freezer full.

I grew up in the 50's outside the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state. Our community was focused on preparation for a nuclear war or accident. My parents purchased canned food by the case. They did a better job than I with eating it up while still staying supplied.

Probably 7 to 10 days from my pantry, maybe longer....even thought the perishable stuff would be gone quickly, I've got a lot f dry goods on hand. Would they be gourmet meals? No...but we could get by if we had to.

One of our main leaders at church has taught in may talks for us to be prepared and I have listened but not done a very good job of acting on the good advice.

I have a favorite book that helped me to decide what I needed. The authors name is Peggy Layton. She is down to earth, doesn't list tons of things not ever needed. She has you keep track of what you use then has a plan for 30 days, 2 months, 6 months, then even a year to store the items YOU use, not what some survivalist might use.

For instance, I don't use powdered milk. But if the stores were closed I might have to get used to it. The leader of the church that did the teachings taught us that when we suddenly start using different foods that our systems can get very very messed up and we can get sick. So I started integrating some powdered milk into our diets. Not a lot because I get WIC but some.

I also don't buy up a bunch of wheat. I cannot make bread, I can't make homemade cookies or biscuits either. I have had women stand over me and watch me make their recipes and they don't work. It's a weird thing I guess but it's true. So, I need to have different kinds of bread mixes and Bisquick so if I need to make something like that I have a way.

Here is a link to Peggy's site, she has many many books but this one is my favorite one. You can get it on inner-library loan because I know we have it in my library. I know it is in more too.

http://peggylayton.net/
Here's the one to the actual book, it is avail. on Amazon too.
http://peggylayton.net/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=prodshow...

My husband and I could live off of noodles for probably 2 weeks! For whatever reason, I keep thinking we don't have spaghetti and have boxes of the stuff. 2 weeks of nothing but noodles, but if you factor in the other food we have int he freezer and in the pantry, we could probably go 3 or 4 weeks. We have enough formula for our son for about 3.5 weeks and I make lots of baby food, so even if it isn't made at the moment, I have frozen veggies to hold him over for 2-3 weeks.

We could probably make it a couple of weeks. Sometimes I have more rice, beans, and pasta on hand, and then we could make it a month probably, but I'm running low right now. I really want to see Contagion! :)

I could live for around three months on what we have in this house, maybe longer. I keep trying to deplete our food but dammit you can't when you buy bulk.

My daughter calls our basement shelves the food pantry. :-/

Probably 2 months if we were careful. I have a ton of canned soup I got on sale and really haven't even put a dent in it. This is assuming I have water and electricity, otherwise we might be down to a month. Hopefully I'll never have to put that to the test!

Depends on how many of our neighbors we were feeding! We could probably feed our block for a week or two. If we were just feeding ourselves, we could probably go for about six months, depending on how recently we had stocked the pantry. On any given type of food (canned salmon, rice, etc), I stock more than the average grocery store.

This isn't "hoarded" food or "emergency" food. I just hate running out of things. So when I buy rice, I buy 50 pounds and I know I won't have to do it again for six months. It saves a lot of time and money in grocery shopping to buy in bulk and keep a functional pantry. I repack everything into 1/2 gallon jars and restock when we're down to only a couple gallons worth of bulk grains/beans. The jars from the "old" batch go on top and everything stays current.

We also do a lot of our own preserving. Most things come ripe once a year. So we always have a year's worth of frozen blueberries or blackberry jam or whatever.

I've always lived this way. When you've lived with the convenience of a pantry, the idea of purchasing food for just a week is....weird. It's actually been a problem when buying food for camping because I truly have no idea how to purchase food for a week.

Thanks for asking this. The answers you're getting are....disturbing.

I have no food in storage. We could probably live for about 2 weeks on what I have in the house...maybe 3.
L.

Maybe a week now. But I've been trying to make a plan for years to stock up on the freeze dried food. In fact, I just started buying some with the intentions of using it in my everyday cooking. But as I find places to put stuff, I plan on buying more.

6 months to a year depending on how much rationing we did...

Do I have a rifle and ammo? Or some bits of string? A shovel (pit traps) even? In either case I could hunt/fish (nets, ideally...not sportfish) rather indefinitely.

OTW.... our 'larder' is pretty bare. A week, maybe, in the case of lesser emergency.

I could live off my fat for a while so it would be a great weight loss plan. Guess Im glad I just bought a whole lamb for our son for Chirstmas! Its in my freezer and Id think it would last my husband and myself a while. I have a pantry full, beans, chili, soups, fruits, rice mixes, cakes, flour(a bag in the freezer too) pancake mix, jellies, syrups, and stuff like baking soda and yeast and pectin. (ssshhh Poptarts) I can make jelly for the 4-6 loaves of bread I could bake with the flour. Oh a big jar of peanutbutter too! I have a few cans of chicken, tuna, and bunch of Top Ramen extra mayo, catsup, bbq sauce. I just made my first batch of pickles so theres 9 pints of those too. In the fridge Im almost out of milk, but have 3 dozen eggs, and several packs of cheese and lunchmeats.I have a nice supply of veggies but not a lot that will last long. There are a couple big boxes of cereal on the counter. Schwans will stop by tomorrow and I will get more meal items and then Id guess we could last about 3 months or longer if we were really careful. My biggest concern if the stores close, or whatever, is insulin for our daughter. Her insurance wont let her have more than she is supposed to use in 30 days at one time. So she never has back up or extra.

I would also say 7 to 10 or 14 days..

FYI, I was a grocery store when the computers all went down.. after five minutes.. everyone that was in line, got all of their groceries bagged up at no charge. The only exception was alcohol.

This happened a few times that week. It was a new store and they did the same thing each time.

About 7 days. Are you people serious? I should add that I don't live in a very disaster-prone area (upper midwest), and we eat so much fresh produce that it is hard to stock up. I don't buy much processed stuff. I do have over 50 jars of homemade jam ;) You've all got me thinking, but I just don't see me storing that much food. I guess we'll be the first to go when the doom and gloom hits.

I don't have any food in storage, but I suppose with the stuff that's hanging around in the cupboard that I was going to one day use to make a special recipe (you know the type of stuff - tinned sauerkraut and water chestnuts etc. Bleugggh), we might last uncomfortably for two weeks. Perhaps.

Depends if you mean eating normally, or surviving, since there's a big difference. Eating normally, a week or so and the milk and bread would be gone and I'd be lost ;-) We could, if we rationed carefully, survive much longer than that on what is in the cupboards right now, but I don't even want to think about that... Many people in the world right now survive on a bowl of rice a day...

I have plenty in our freezer, for us to last a couple weeks. The cupboard...we could last a few days. I don't have food in storage, for an extended period of time. I simply don't have room and extra money to buy it.

At least a year if not more of food, we cycle through it regularly so that we don't waste.

We just saw Contagion and my husband leaned over me and said "Aren't you glad we are more prepared than those people? Could you imagine?"

By a quick glance of my pantry we could probably eat for about 2 weeks as long as we had a can opener.

great question.... we are a family of five, 3 kids under 10, and we could probably do 3 or 4 mos foodwise if we were really careful. prob 2 or 3 mos foodwise without electricity. though we just got a generator :) . we probably have a couple of months at absolute most of water right now. i should get some more. i have a go bag, i have everything i would need in the car too, including water, i also have a shelter in place bag, including plastic for the windows and stuff like that. ax. rope, tarps, extra meds and glasses... i have an emergency radio with crank/solar charge and a charger for my phone...radio shack has them. it was my lifeline in the recent hurricane. you should have all these things too, everyone should. first aid to stay and to go, stuff like that. you can get a list, there are lots, try ready.gov..... the only thing i really would love to get is a little boat somehow. i live on long island, we arent going anywhere on the roads if something really goes down. i think you should be as prepared as you can. in the hurricane we were fine, but lots of our friends and family were without power for over a week. thank goodness it was mild weather. and that also means no hot water and all your food in the fridge and freezer goes bad. ...and that was just a little hurricane..... i guess its different if you live someplace where you could get out. we have nukes all around us too. i really dont feel i can trust the powers that be to take care of us. though i do think they try really hard, its just too out of control.... so, why not be ready, take care of yourselves,,esp if you have kids. hmmmm i think contagion is the last thing i need to see haha
oh i just saw you are in boca, i know im preaching to the choir.... you must have everything already....

I saw that movie the day it came out! Makes you think, huh? LOL

If we had water and power, but just could not leave the house...we could go a very very long time(6mos-year I imagine), still have clean clothes and decent , if not smaller, rationed, boring meals to eat. Right now ,my biggest concern would be water. Its not something I have on hand but plan to change that.

I used to be great about having the "Go" packs for my family, and another for my daycare, should something happen during working hours and a bug-out ASAP with other peoples kids in tow be required. Its something I need to deal with as I do worry about stuff like this (tornado, etc more than anything). We do have a place to attempt to go to (out of the Twin Cities metro area if it were a target of some kind). But the rest is not so well laid out.

We hardly ever eat processed food and my vegetable garden doesn't have any veggies yet, so I'd say just about a week. There was a REALLY good deal on the Hebrew National hot dogs (yeah, I know...processed) we eat at the commissary, my husband just brought back an ENTIRE SUITCASE full of only Clif bars from deployment from the USO a few months ago and I make a salad often that uses ramen noodles so that's porbably what we'd eat that week! I usually have to go to the grocery store every other or 3 days for our fruits and veggies!

Possibly a month or two.... I have a freezer packed FULL of food... meats, veggies, different things... some of it produce from my garden and peach tree... yum!

We have a lot of extra staples on hand all the time so we could probably be fine for about 3-4 months as long as our power was still working. We bought a case of soy milk (that doesnt have to be refriegerated til used) at Costco to have some on hand- two months before it expires, we will donate what's left to a food pantry and buy some more to keep on hand. We currently don't have any vegetables growing, but could put it a small plot of veggies, but of course this wouldn't provide immediate food. We also freeze plastic milk bottles with water. A full freezer stays colder longer than a sparsely packed freezer.

approx a month. that is if we still had running water and electricity.

it depends on if there was power... but if there was, we could probably go about 3 weeks... if we CAREFULLY rationed our food.

We store lots of pasta and we have enough basics (flour and water for dinner anyone?) to go for a while. If I had things my way we would have at least 30 days of fully stocked food and supplies.

-M.

Our pantry is pretty well stocked.
We could probably go 3 months on what we have.

I'm a bit of a food stocker...so a couple of months, maybe longer. It would be sad not to have dairy products, mainly milk and cheese.

I'm with Cara... must be an MN thing. That said - in winter I do tend to shop for a little bit longer, in case the weather is yucky.

J.

Honestly, I'm not even worried about it because of all the smaller markets out there. Plus, Target and Walmart often have huge grocery sections and Costco has everything. The only thing I always buy at Ralph's (aka Kroger) is bread because they sell my favorite brand.

Does Ramen noodles count? Then about a month...but it would suck.

About 2 months, we have food storage, but obviously it doesn't include fresh fruits and such. We don't eat a lot of processed food, but we do have a storage of grains and cooking items.

It's not just for doom and gloom disaster situations. When my husband lost his job and was unemployed for 6 months, our food storage kept us afloat.

Fun question. We're lucky - we are shareholders at a local farm with free u-pick for shareholders...so produce, dairy, and fruit-wise we'd be good all year. Meat would be another issue but we have a good bit frozen. I don't eat meat anyway and my husband could do without for awhile...so only using meat for the kids we could stretch it 3 months I bet.

Good question!!! Sorry - just now seeing it!!!

I believe about 3 to 6 months - I have an emergency camp stove should we lose electricity.

I would miss out on fresh veggies because we don't have a garden, but i do have applesauce and prunes (although I personally don't eat them) in our emergency kit.

Yep and toilet paper? Good to go!

Thanks for the good question!!

I could probably manage two weeks, but we wouldn't have much in the way of meat - we've had three power outages in the past year and a half that were long enough that I had to ditch everything in the fridge and freezer so I only buy meat for the week now,.