Most people like to eat. It's a human experience we all enjoy and also need to live. In this article we talk in depth about ensuring a steady food supply to ride small disruptions in life.
Resources to help with designing your Short-Term Food Plan:
- One-Month Food Stash for Less Than $150
- Free Family Preparedness Workbook with Printouts, Examples and Worksheets
What is Short-Term Food Storage?
If you look at the foods you have in your pantry, such as canned green beans and a half-open box of pasta. You will find that most expiration dates are in the 1-4 years range. This is what I mean by "short-term" food storage.
These foods can be stored in the event fresh food is not available, but will not last for decades.
Eventually the natural order of things will come; oxygen will invade, and your foods will start to break down. Storing canned goods in dark, cool places can extend it's printed shelf-life; but not enough to be considered long-term.
We will consider Short-term foods, those which have a shelf-life of 1-4 years, sitting in a room temperature cabinet. We don't include items that need to be frozen or require refrigeration.
Why Short-Term Food Storage?
#1 Minor Supply Disruptions
There are a multitude of cases that could cause supply disruptions. It is healthy to buy fresh veggies at the store every week, but any number of problems could disrupt your ability to do so.
- Store re-supply transportation issues
- Power outage anywhere along the supply chain
- Local store power outages
- Personal job loss and income shortage
- Lack of reliable transportation to the store
- Extreme weather conditions (snow storm, hurricane, tornado, etc)
- Union/worker strikes
#2 Easy to buy/obtain
Short-term food items are relatively easy to obtain. Canned goods, dry beans, rice, pasta, tomato sauce, soup are all standard goods you can find at grocery stores, convenience stores, some gas stations, etc.
You don't have to seek out a source for bulk +30 lbs of beans or +5 lb tub of oil. Short-term foods can be stocked normally as part of your family's normal grocery shop. It should just neatly fit right into your established habits.
#3 Store in original packaging
Short-term food items can be stored in their original packaging. Canned goods stay in their cans. Pasta can stay in it's cardboard box and rice can stay in it's plastic bag. For a few years, given a pest-free cabinet these foods will be just fine.
Over decades, oxygen and moisture will degrade the food but this is not the case for a few years. All short-term foods can be stocked away just as they are, plain and simple.
#4 Insurance
We view short-term food supply, like all our preparedness supplies as insurance. We buy an extra canned good today when we have access and can afford it. When we are low on cash, can't get to the store, or the store is closed we have that insurance in the pantry.
Unlike typical insurance, we don't have to make a claim and wait weeks to see the payout. Our food is a way to set our minds at ease, that we can handle small disruptions of food supply without drastically changing our family's eating habits.
What to Store for the Short-Term
Store what you currently eat. In general, we recommend storing what you typically eat in a normal week. (Unless of course you eat frozen TV diner for every meal.) Some items to get you started:
- Oatmeal + jam/honey
- Protein powder
- Cereal (+ powdered milk)
- Instant coffee (+powdered creamer, + sugar)
- Mac + cheese
- Pasta
- Pasta sauce (cheese sauce, tomato sauce, pesto sauce, etc)
- Rice/orzo
- Box items (instant mashed potatoes, stuffing, hamburger helper, falafel mix, matzo balls, etc)
- Pouch items (pasta sides, rice sides, flavored oatmeal, etc)
- Nuts (peanuts, almonds, trail mix, etc)
- Dry beans (pinto, black, lentil, split peas, etc)
- Canned good (beans, corn, peas, green beans, lentils, baked beans, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beets, cooking greens, etc)
- Cooking Oil (olice oil, coconut oil, vegetable oil, etc)
- Spices (salt, pepper, pre-mixed spice packets, etc)
- Drinks (Gatorade mix, juice boxes, water flavor like Mio, etc)
After your next grocery shop, look at your cart. How much of it came from the inside aisles of the grocery store? These items typically have the shelf-life we are looking for.
(The outside sections of grocery stores tend to have the perishable items; meats, cheese, produce, bread, etc.)
Do not store what your family does not eat. If you do not like it now, you won't magically like it when you need it. Sure you will eat if if you are hungry enough, but why not stock what you family does like to eat.
That will make the disruption to your life less stressful, and perhaps with less complaining from the family.
How Much to Short-Term Food to Store?
Start with 3 days
What does 3 days of food look like for your family? What does each person like it eat? For my family of 2, a single day could look something like this:
Breakfast: 1/2 cup oatmeal + 2 tbsp jam per person
Lunch: Protein bar + mixed nuts
Dinner: 2 cups of chili each (made from canned tomatoes, black beans, baked beans, corn + pre-mixed chili seasoning + optionally rice)
This chili recipe is difficult to scale for one day, and makes 6-8 servings, depending if we make 2 cups of rice (uncooked). While not optimal, we could make 1 batch of chili and reheat it for each meal.
This chili won't got bad if left out for a day, and recooked at each meal time (not optimal I know, but doable). If you have a wood stove, you could leave the chili simmering there. So three days for 2 people would look something like:
- 3 cups of oatmeal (+ water)
- 12 tbsp jam
- 6 protein bars + 6 servings of mixed nuts
- 1 can:
- corn
- baked beans
- black beans
- diced tomatoes
- 1 pre-mixed chili seasoning
- 2 cups rice
Then a Week
When you have 3 days worth of food for you family, double the amount to cover you for a week. What new recipes could you include so you don't get tired of the same foods?
What additional things would you desire? You can go 3 days without coffee, but after a week you may want a cup or two. Keep expanding your food supply to stretch for longer and longer periods of time.
Resources to help with planning:
- One-Month Food Stash for Less Than $150
- Free Family Preparedness Workbook with Printouts, Examples and Worksheets
Checking + Rotating your Short-Term Food Stores
Since these items have a shorter shelf-life they need to be rotated out with fresh supplies.
Luckily, if you did your homework, these canned goods are foods you family already eats. It's not just a matter of being sure to eat the old ones, AND replace them with new ones.
For us, we do a 6-month check to see if any items are missing. We often find that some one wanted corned-beef hash for breakfast, took a can but didn't write it down. So the next shopping trip, it wasn't replaced.
Magically, items disappear even in our 2-person household....I can only imagine what having children/teens in the mix would do to my organization.
Our method:
- Calendar marked: November + May
- My Google calendar tells me what to check each month. In November and May, I check my Short-Term food supply for items that may have gone missing. I don't have to remember, Google reminds me. If you use paper, mark the dates ahead of time.
- Cans labeled: Expiration Date
- On each can or box I have used a marker to clearly label the expiration date. This means I can quickly look over the items to see what is close to expiring.
- When you add the replaced items, take a moment to label the new items in a large font their expiration date.
- Replace what is Missing
- Make a list of missing items and set the list in a place you will remember to take to the grocery store.
- Eat what is about to Expire
- Remove items that are set to expire in the next 6-months from your supply and add them to your pantry.
- Add the removed items to your shopping list.
- Sit back and relax: You are all set for another 6-months.
See my whole 6-month Supply Rotation Calendar.
Cooking your Short-Term Food
Cooking your food should be very similar to how you normally cook. As they are foods you eat everyday, they should be easy for you to cook. Some meals, could even require no cooking at all.
Some meals may be fully cooked but just heated up. Meals that don't require heating or cooking will save on fuel, if you have to ration that as well.
Water: If your food requires water, then you will need to take that into consideration as well. Do you have a good supply of water or at least water filters to purify cooking water? Consider a simple Sawyer filter to clean potentially contaminated cooking water.
Power Outage: If there is a power outage, you will have to consider if your normal cooking situation will work: 8 Steps to Evaluating your Food Preparedness for Power Outages If you have an electric stove, and are concerned about losing power consider a propane camp stove or gas grill as a power-free alternative.
Short-Term Food Conclusion
It takes a little bit of planning to get into the habit of buying extra food as insurance. It also takes a little bit of time to check for missing items and make a list of what needs to be replaced.
Once you get into a rhythm it should be a quick part of your routine to ensure your family can ride small disruptions in life without forgoing your favorite foods.
Don't forget to store a can opener too!
Resources to help with planning:
