Kitchen

[chickenbutt]

A VERY long time. But the dog and bird would be in trouble. I have a lot of stuff vacuum-sealed and frozen in my freezers. Storing in that manner makes them last, pristinely, for years. Of course I use fresh foods too. The bird eats mostly fresh food.

I bet there's enough people food in my freezers and cabinets to last 6 to 12 months.

[Mominohio]

On 10/1/2014 PamelaSue72 said:

On 10/1/2014 Miss Brenda Starr said:

Probably several months, but I worry about my cat. This thread is a good wake-up call; I'm going to stock up on cat-food today.

We have six cats. I try to keep 100 cans of cat food on hand at all times, rotating as needed every week. Even at 100 cans, that would only last us a little over 3 weeks; the clan eats 28 cans of cat food weekly. We do supplement with dry kibble, but I would never feed the kids an all dry diet....and I don't think they'd eat all dry.

Many people who prepare overlook having enough pet foods on hand, and pet meds as well.

I used to do much better with that, but my dog is getting old, and I tend to not stock as much as I used to. I don't mean to be morbid, but I don't want to have to give away a lot of expensive dog food should he pass.

We have two cats, and so I do keep more cat food than dog, but I am going to have to get some more in for winter. I had lugging big bags of litter, pet food, or softener salt in during the winter months.

[goodstuff]

On 10/1/2014 chickenbutt said:

A VERY long time. But the dog and bird would be in trouble. I have a lot of stuff vacuum-sealed and frozen in my freezers. Storing in that manner makes them last, pristinely, for years. Of course I use fresh foods too. The bird eats mostly fresh food.

I bet there's enough people food in my freezers and cabinets to last 6 to 12 months.

I have a pretty good amount of food in my freezer and fridge, too. I'm guessing, though, that a significant national or natural disaster would likely disrupt electric power. So there goes that.........unless you have a generator and a LOT of stored fuel to keep it running long term.

I'm thinking I could eat or cook up what I could from the freezer and refrigerator before it spoiled, but after that we'd be limited to canned/dry foods.

[chickenbutt]

Oh no! I didn't know the power went out. I'm skrewed.

[AmyKnits2]

We could last six months fine although would miss fresh veggies and dairy. I have an upright freezer full, my refrigerator/freezer and a ton of items in my basement on shelving units. We have a generator so if we had enough gas to keep it going we'd be fine. I have quite a few canned veggies but usually don't use them except in pot pie or soups as I prefer fresh but during crunch time we could make do.

[cosmic1]

A couple weeks for me. I eat very little that is processed, so that covers my fridge and freezer. The cats only have a weeks worth of canned food, but could get by for a month with the dry stuff.

[DiAnne]

I do not stock pile food so I could probably last 2-3 weeks using what is in the fridge and freezer. We have occasional power outages so I do not pack freezer. With a power outage I am in trouble. I always stock bottled water but that is about it.

[Poodlepet2]

We are well stocked and have 1 1/2 freezers fully loaded and a pantry with plenty of vacuum sealed dry beans and grains as well as canned foods, such as beans and tomatoes. We live in Florida so during the summer we are worried about hurricanes. When Hurricane Charlie hit we had generators, but we lost our water supply- something I never thought about. Stores were closed for awhile as we're banks. We ended up travelling every day to get a decent meal and enjoy some air conditioning. I went to a dollar store and bought some disposable aluminum for cooking....but I think we need better preparation. I am not trying to be a fear monger, but hackers are doing a great job getting into all manners of stores, banks, hospitals.... what is to keep them from getting to power grids?. I don't want to have much more than what we've got now, but I think we could do better when it comes to water and foods that don't require a very long cooking time. Poodlepet

[HonnyBrown]

On 9/30/2014 celeste27 said:

I could probably live for 5 or 6 weeks on beans, rice, pasta, quinoa----but I wouldn't be happy!

Me too. I would be happy. DH would be miserable!

[Danky]

I have gotten a few nice tips from this thread.....I never thought about having extra dog/pet food and since I buy in great big bags anyway it would be wise to have 2-3 bags in waterproof containers stored in the barn. In the event of a power outage, everyone probably knows that the more you have in the freezer the longer it will stay frozen. Also , try to open the freezer as quickly and as infrequently as possible..........we were without power for over a week a few years ago and lost very little . The things that did thaw out , confined to our side by side, we're 100% covered by our homeowners policy....gave them a list of what had to be discarded ,with guesstimate prices ,and they sent us a check.