How to Stockpile Food for a Year: What You Need to Prep
We are discussing prepping food, stocking up on food, and how to stockpile food for a year. You probably already have three months' worth of food supply for all of you who might be prepping for a while.
Three months is kind of a benchmark and an excellent place to be. However, in many, as we call it, extreme situations to have a year of food is what we stream as a prep stream to get to.
So how much actual food do you need for the year? It's challenging to work out because situations are different, and what you eat, how you eat, and how much you eat are all very dependent on your family and, of course, the size of your family.
This list is based on a family of three, two adults and one child, in our case, a small child, who doesn't eat a lot. We are covering lunches, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but this is a very basic line of things.
What we're buying
We're basing ourselves on eating porridge with honey and then having toast for breakfast. For lunch, we have vegetarian pasta dishes twice a week.
We have the rice which we're going to be having two times a week, we have mashed potatoes two times a week, and we're having another day, one day a week of substitute where there's going to be couscous or any other beans and grains that you have.
For pasta, we are going with two weekly dishes. This will make this eight per month. I have broken it up to having a sauce for your pasta. So we're going to go four days out of the month using the already ready-made jar, and then the other four, other canned ingredients for pasta.
We're having rice with ready meat, so you can have beef and onion and a bit of rice, that kind of thing.
Then we're moving on; we have the grains, which you can be able to make soups, again including your canned meat if you want to, or you can keep them vegetarian, and of course, the mashed potatoes and the meals with mashed potatoes will be served on the side like making your pie with a bit of potato on top.
How much pasta, rice, oats, and sauces to buy
Don't forget if you are family or, more obviously, more people, you must multiply this by an appropriate amount. So for the pasta, I will call it three people included in the chart, so for the pasta, we need 45 pounds for a year which is not that bad.
Canned tomatoes we need 48 cans of tomatoes, and we will need 48 of the ready-made sauces; again, you can, of course, make them to what they are. We need 26 pounds of rice, and I have 53 pounds of oats. Again we are talking about three people eating, and our little girl loves oats.
If we can buy bread, that's great; if we don't, then 26 pounds of flour will be just a bare minimum for us to make either toast to substitute the porridge or toast to substitute lunch. I included lunch, half of them being baked beans and toast and half of them being soups.
So next thing brings me to, after the flour, we will need 1 1/4 pounds of yeast if we're making our bread and about 2 1/4 pounds of milk powder. If you make bread in a bread machine, we require some milk powder in some recipes.
Soups and meats
For soups, we need 180 of them. This is again halved with the baked beans for the space, and to break this out a little bit and again 180 pieces of soups, or you can buy powdered soup and beans at 240. We're talking about having one each as a person for lunch or if you want to have this for dinner as a substitute.
Then we're talking about meats and proteins and fish. For a family of 3, you'll want 264 tins, and this is the most expensive thing to have to be able to stock up.
I have salmon as a choice, and I've got corned beef, but we are talking just the plain recipes again, not doing anything extravagant, so a bit of corned beef, a bit of mashed potatoes, and a few canned carrots.
I have split this into having roughly 120 cans of tuna and 144 cans of something other than meat protein because tuna is the cheapest.
Variety
However, we are discussing a year, and variety is the key. When we are stuck and can only eat what we have in our pantry, it's so important to have a variety. We want to diversify a little bit because we can prepare now. So having some options is great.
Grains
Then we're talking about grains. I've got 22 pounds of grains. It's probably a bit too much, but we're talking about spreading this between different options of grains so you can have some split peas, make a soup, have beans, and make yourself some veggie burgers; there are many options.
So 22 pounds for me, I think, is a good starting point but do make them a different grain.
Canned vegetables
We need 264 cans of carrots and mixed vegetables. The pasta dishes don't require many tinned vegetables. We are talking about just having those on the side of your corned beef and a bit of mashed potatoes.
I worked out the average cost of the things to buy, and it costs about $1,250 to be able to buy this standard amount of food to last this entire year.
How to stockpile food for a year
Hopefully, this is a helpful resource for stockpiling food for a year. You'll need to adjust for your family's size and tastes, but it gives you an idea of how much you need to buy and how much you need to spend.
Have you started stockpiling? Share your plan in the comments below.
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