Gunner Quinn
(Continued from Part 4. This concludes the article.)
Canned Vegetables – 52 15-oz Cans
For variety with meals.
Peanut Butter – 12 40-oz jars
Twelve jars of peanut butter sounds like a boat load to some people but again, our daily menus after the SHTF will change greatly from what they are now with so many processed and or refrigerated/frozen foods.
Of course, peanut butter will work as a food-storage item for some people but not others. With the same money you can get another 48 cans of canned tuna and/or chicken, or other food items, but all will have fewer calories per pound than peanut butter.
With 2,675 calories per pound peanut butter takes up less storage room calorie-wise than other foods, plus it has good nutritional value. Peanut butter goes best with the fresh bread we’ll be baking or can be eaten straight out of the jar when the Mr. Planters run out.
Do an Internet search on peanut butter recipes and you’ll find all kinds of interesting ways to use it in cooking. If you have cocoa powder in your cupboard you can combine the two to make Reece’s-Cup-tasting baked items such as brownies and cakes. I use peanut butter as a thickener in hummus when I don’t have tahini.
Ramen Noodles – 104 packets
Yes, they’re made from sawdust, newt tails, recycled microplastics, and chemicals still unknown to science, but they won’t give you gastrointestinal cancer or epilepsy by eating them twice a week for a year. At 30 cents each and 370 calories (1,973/lb), they’re inexpensive and provide a quick-cooking meal after hauling water from the creek all day. If cooking fuel is short don’t simmer, just add hot water and let them sit. By the time they cool down enough to eat, they’ll be fully cooked. I generally make “Roman” noodles by tossing the flavoring pack and adding Italian spices and garlic. I’ll have to get my RDA of monosodium glutamate elsewhere.
Coffee and Tea
I don’t have these on the JIT list but for those who wouldn’t want to face life without them, don’t forget to add it. Shelf life can be almost indefinite with an oxygen absorber added.
Making Your Own List
Now, tweak my list to make your own. Procrastination is your enemy here so don’t put it off or get discouraged by all the hard-core prepper equipment and techniques. This is a JIT food-storage list, not a 30-year program so again, use situational operating procedures.
A JIT food-storage shopping list needs to be prepared ahead of time so it’s ready to take to the store as soon you think things are beginning to heat up enough to make you nervous. As mentioned, you don’t want to be in panic mode trying to make decisions while standing in the store aisle so this list is important. Planning your list can be a fun project and perhaps get you thinking a little more about prepping on a larger scale. If you’re proficient with spreadsheets, making your own list is even easier.
When making your own list, remember that any food-storage program must be based foremost on calories. If we have a balanced diet but it only adds up to 1,000 calories per day, we’ll have to dig in to tomorrow’s food to supply enough calories for today. We’ll have to forget the food pyramid and think more in terms of survival and what our ancestors used for food on a daily basis. A full year’s worth of 2,500 calories per day comes out to 900,000 calories so round it off to a million and be sure your total JIT list adds up to something close to that. For a one-month JIT food supply, plan on 80,000 calories per month.
Don’t Get Caught Up in the Details – I can’t stress enough when you’re making your JIT shopping list to avoid getting caught up in too many details and overwhelming yourself. Been there, done that when I first started storing food way back when. Keep it simple if you feel that happening. Procrastination is your enemy so it’s important to keep it simple so you can get your list finished. Keep it simple. It can be overwhelming to look at the long lists of food and equipment, and how many dozen buckets you’ll need of this and that. If you’re a JIT shopper ignore all that! Keep it simple. Do yourself a favor before you start and take your or my list to Walmart just to help you get an idea of how much space 60 lbs of beans (3 large bags) takes up and what 50 lbs of sugar looks like (2 large bags). It’s not much! If you can visualize it at Walmart then do that instead of letting lists on the internet overwhelm you. And they will. Keep it simple. You’ll be more encouraged looking at the actual items in the grocery store than you will reading lists on the internet making it sound like you’re going to need a forklift to move it all around. After you feel comfortable there in the Walmart aisle, then tweak my list to match your tastes and budget. And in case I haven’t mentioned it, keep it simple!
Start Out Easy – At the very least, for your JIT list figure out how much you need in the way of beans and grains. That’s the easiest part. On my list, they account for 85% of the calories.
Your Current Foods – take a look through your kitchen cabinets and pantry as a reminder to see what you’re already buying, then add some of those foods to your list that don’t require refrigeration. Make a list of what’s storable in freezer bags or mylar bags and what’s in cans or plastic containers that don’t need repackaging.
Your current foods are the easiest to stock up on now. Since you’ll be eating them in the future anyway you’re not really spending extra money. If use-by dates concern you and you don’t want to be eating “old food” all the time, check the dates, many of them have use-by dates two or three years after the buy date. You won’t be able to tell if you’re eating a package bought yesterday or a year ago.
Buy Basics, Plan Meals Later – Don’t complicate things by trying to plan meals, then basing your shopping-list quantities on that. Stock up the basics and work out the meals later. Just be sure you have enough calories.
For those wait-and-see preppers with more money to spend, check basic prepping food lists to see what you can afford to add to your shopping list. However you do it, be sure that your shopping list is completed as soon as possible. It can always be tweaked later but have something for right now.
Trial Run at the Grocery Store
When your list is complete, go to your favorite grocery store and do a trial run with your list and a clipboard in hand. Make notes on availability and any other ideas you get while looking at the food shelves. There’s no need to put anything in your cart. Write down next to each item on the list how much of what you need is actually on hand. You may need to visit more than one grocery store to buy everything on your list in a day or two. If the world is still up and running when you’re ready to buy, if you prefer you can order it all on Walmart’s website and pick it up the next day. No need for multiple visits or trips to other stores.
When I went to Walmart on my trial run they had four 20-lb bags of rice and three 20-lb bags of pinto beans. There were a lot of 1 lb bags of both rice and beans. The 1-lb bags of beans give you more variety to be eating after the SHTF if that suits you better. The second time I did a trial run was very early on a Saturday morning and they had no rice or beans in the larger bags but enough of the smaller ones to supply my JIT list.
Near my local Walmart, there are some chain grocery stores. When I did my first trial-run field trip, I was able to get everything I needed on list between the several stores.
If I end up on a real JIT shopping trip to stock up for feeding my neighbors, I have other Walmarts within two hours I can use if I can’t find enough at my local Walmart and grocery stores. We need to have those sorts of backup plans if we think we’re ever going to need to put our JIT shopping list to use.
A Feed-the-Neighbors Version JIT List
If you’re already a well-stocked prepper who perhaps hasn’t taken the neighbors into account, this list as it is makes a good inexpensive food supply to portion out to them when they come knocking on your door. Some or all of the items on this list can be purchased for handouts, or you can keep it to the most basic survival foods like beans and rice. In my neck of the woods the majority of the people have propane stoves so even in a grid-down or supply-chain crisis, they’ll still be able to cook with just the beans and grains on this shopping list.
Conclusion
No matter what kind of preppers we are when it comes to a JIT food-storage program, whether for ourselves or as handouts for our unprepared friends and neighbors, we’ll have a shopping list made ahead of time which will allow us a less stressful way to make our purchases on a moment’s notice if we decide rapidly-changing world events necessitate it. Trying to make a list at the last minute as supply lines are shutting down or the quarantine police are telling everyone to go home until further notice, is a bad idea and will result in both a lot of stress and an inferior food-storage program.
If you haven’t stored food because the probability of ever needing it wasn’t worth the trouble or expense to stock up, that’s understandable. This JIT program will prepare you for the day when things in the world look dicey enough that the consequences of not being prepared override the cost of getting prepared.
For those who’ve procrastinated because food storage seems too complicated, Method 1 of this last-minute food-storage program will allow you to keep it the simplest. If you have $70-$100 for Method 2 “insurance,” it’s also fairly simple since mylar bags are merely glorified ziplock-type bags which are then heat-sealed to make them airtight. If you can’t afford insurance then Method 1 will be good enough. And often, good enough is good enough. At any rate, as a bare minimum if time is short just before the masses wake up, buy the food and freezer bags and worry about what to do with it when you get home.
Hopefully, we’ll never need our food storage. But today’s current events which are getting more unbelievable by the day are what inspired me to not only take a hard look at my own supplies but to figure my unprepared neighbors into the equation. I also wrote it for those wait-to-see preppers who haven’t started storing food yet.
We can’t let normalcy bias keep us in our comfort zone. Watch for whatever’s coming next, recognize it before the masses do, and then take your JIT shopping list to town and start buying food whether it’s enough for a month or two or for a year.
If you like planning things at the kitchen table, then once you get your food shopping list put together perhaps you can continue the fun by putting together your JIT non-perishables shopping list. And just maybe, start buying those this week since you’ll be using them in the future anyway.
The downside to a wait-and-see strategy is risking the possibility that if your timing is off, you’ll be at the Walmart slugfest or the Amazon “none currently in stock” woulda-coulda-shoulda remorse-fest.
Now, get planning your shopping list!
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