Food items to add to your regular supermarket visit!
Mar 6, 2016 23:47:30 GMT 10
SA Hunter, myrrph, and 2 more like this
Post by Ammo9 on Mar 6, 2016 23:47:30 GMT 10
Below is a list of relatively cheap food items, which when purchased regularly will most likely go unnoticed on your spending however will quickly accumulate into a stockpile of highly valuable items in a disaster situation!
(Please note, all below pricing is off the Coles website and most items are the Coles generic branding for cost purposes)
1. Salt.
Google uses for salt, there are hundreds. Never goes off
$1/kg for table salt, $2.20/2kg for cooking salt. The table salt has an anticaking agent in it. There is also iodised salt for $1/500g. I think a selection of each type would be a good idea. So maybe cycle through these three and get a different one each trip.
2. Rice.
Good carbs with a little protein thrown in, don't expect to get your protein requirement sorted from rice alone though. White rice will store longer than brown rice.
$3.50/2kg or $1.80/1kg for Long grain white rice
3. Milk Powder or UHT milk.
Not the longest storing food, but fat, protein and calcium are all good additions to any survival diet.
$5.69/1kg for either full-fat or light powdered milk, in liquid form they're both also $0.90/1L.
Maybe one week get a bag of powder and the next get a couple bottles of liquid.
Sidenote: I'm led to believe that the light version will store longer than the fullfat, anyone confirm this?
4. Sugar.
Dense, quick energy. Never goes off.
I'm told that junkies who use all their money for drugs and forget or can't afford to eat are advised to buy milk and sugar ($1.25 for 1L of milk and $1 for 1kg of sugar, pour some sugar into the milk and drink that... it'll fend off starvation as well as muscle and bone degradation at the least)
$1/kg or $1.80/2kg
5. Canned anything
Be it tuna, chicken, spam, corned beef, fruit salad, diced tomatoes, creamed corn... it'll all last a long time, and will at the least add variety and vitamins as well as balance out the bulk-carbs from above in your post-apocalyptic diet.
Tuna cans are down to $0.80/95g, veges can be had usually between $0.80 and $1.50 for the small cans depending what you buy, beans around the same, fruits are usually a little more than veges.
Try putting $5 into one type of canned item, making use of any specials that pop up and cycle through meats, veges, fruits and beans in a similar rotation to the types of salt.
In summary, the most expensive form of the above list would be...
2kg of Salt (cooking) = $2.20
2kg of Long grain rice = $3.50
1kg of powdered milk = $5.69
2kg of white sugar = $1.80
Assorted cans = $5.00
Total cost on top of regular shop = $18.19
Substitute a litre of UHT milk instead of a kilogram of milk powder and that's down to $13.40
Substitute the 2kg bags of each item for 1kg bags (and liquid milk not powdered) and that's only $9.70
So for $9.70 you'd get 1kg table salt, 1kg long grain white rice, 1L UHT milk, 1kg of white sugar and $5.00 of whatever cans you can find on special (6 cans of Coles 95g tuna would be $4.80, 6 cans of 400g Coles 4 bean mix would be $4.50, 5 cans of Coles 420g creamed corn would be $4.75, you get the idea)
Even going the small side, that's looking fairly good on the old cost-benefit for $9.70 if you ask me.
And yes, if you continue this without variation for an extended period of time you're gonna end up with a truckload of sugar and salt which is fine, rice which is also fine in my books and long life milk which doesn't have a super long shelf life. So be smart, when you're starting to get more than you can feasibly use start rotating it into your regular milk usage and replace as it gets used to keep it in date.
The cans you can always keep buying, just change up what you get to add variety and cover your bases. Eventually you'll reach a point where you don't want to get any more sugar or salt cause they're taking up too much space... that's fine. I'm not holding a gun to your head telling you to keep buying, these are just ideas. Following this, I think is a good thing to do for at least 6 months though and that'll build your stocks surprisingly quickly if you're consistent with it. If you do only 1 shop a week where you include these items, that's 26-52kg of salt, sugar, rice and 120+ assorted cans and probably more milk than you'll want.
These are my thoughts, and something I've been doing.
Anyone got some input? Things they'd add, subtract, another way of building up basic food item stores?
(Please note, all below pricing is off the Coles website and most items are the Coles generic branding for cost purposes)
1. Salt.
Google uses for salt, there are hundreds. Never goes off
$1/kg for table salt, $2.20/2kg for cooking salt. The table salt has an anticaking agent in it. There is also iodised salt for $1/500g. I think a selection of each type would be a good idea. So maybe cycle through these three and get a different one each trip.
2. Rice.
Good carbs with a little protein thrown in, don't expect to get your protein requirement sorted from rice alone though. White rice will store longer than brown rice.
$3.50/2kg or $1.80/1kg for Long grain white rice
3. Milk Powder or UHT milk.
Not the longest storing food, but fat, protein and calcium are all good additions to any survival diet.
$5.69/1kg for either full-fat or light powdered milk, in liquid form they're both also $0.90/1L.
Maybe one week get a bag of powder and the next get a couple bottles of liquid.
Sidenote: I'm led to believe that the light version will store longer than the fullfat, anyone confirm this?
4. Sugar.
Dense, quick energy. Never goes off.
I'm told that junkies who use all their money for drugs and forget or can't afford to eat are advised to buy milk and sugar ($1.25 for 1L of milk and $1 for 1kg of sugar, pour some sugar into the milk and drink that... it'll fend off starvation as well as muscle and bone degradation at the least)
$1/kg or $1.80/2kg
5. Canned anything
Be it tuna, chicken, spam, corned beef, fruit salad, diced tomatoes, creamed corn... it'll all last a long time, and will at the least add variety and vitamins as well as balance out the bulk-carbs from above in your post-apocalyptic diet.
Tuna cans are down to $0.80/95g, veges can be had usually between $0.80 and $1.50 for the small cans depending what you buy, beans around the same, fruits are usually a little more than veges.
Try putting $5 into one type of canned item, making use of any specials that pop up and cycle through meats, veges, fruits and beans in a similar rotation to the types of salt.
In summary, the most expensive form of the above list would be...
2kg of Salt (cooking) = $2.20
2kg of Long grain rice = $3.50
1kg of powdered milk = $5.69
2kg of white sugar = $1.80
Assorted cans = $5.00
Total cost on top of regular shop = $18.19
Substitute a litre of UHT milk instead of a kilogram of milk powder and that's down to $13.40
Substitute the 2kg bags of each item for 1kg bags (and liquid milk not powdered) and that's only $9.70
So for $9.70 you'd get 1kg table salt, 1kg long grain white rice, 1L UHT milk, 1kg of white sugar and $5.00 of whatever cans you can find on special (6 cans of Coles 95g tuna would be $4.80, 6 cans of 400g Coles 4 bean mix would be $4.50, 5 cans of Coles 420g creamed corn would be $4.75, you get the idea)
Even going the small side, that's looking fairly good on the old cost-benefit for $9.70 if you ask me.
And yes, if you continue this without variation for an extended period of time you're gonna end up with a truckload of sugar and salt which is fine, rice which is also fine in my books and long life milk which doesn't have a super long shelf life. So be smart, when you're starting to get more than you can feasibly use start rotating it into your regular milk usage and replace as it gets used to keep it in date.
The cans you can always keep buying, just change up what you get to add variety and cover your bases. Eventually you'll reach a point where you don't want to get any more sugar or salt cause they're taking up too much space... that's fine. I'm not holding a gun to your head telling you to keep buying, these are just ideas. Following this, I think is a good thing to do for at least 6 months though and that'll build your stocks surprisingly quickly if you're consistent with it. If you do only 1 shop a week where you include these items, that's 26-52kg of salt, sugar, rice and 120+ assorted cans and probably more milk than you'll want.
These are my thoughts, and something I've been doing.
Anyone got some input? Things they'd add, subtract, another way of building up basic food item stores?
