Seeing this thread revived has been a good opportunity to reflect on this past year of pandemic, which should give me insight into preparing in the future.
I donated most of the canned meat items months ago, when I realized we didn't need them and weren't going to eat them, but even more than that, that they bothered my allergies. I kept the canned tuna for one son, and the corned beef hash for the other, but the Spam and canned chicken went to the food bank. Going forward, even in a pandemic I won't be stocking up on canned meat foods. We had plenty of meat in the freezer, and while certain cuts may have had shortages, meat remained available. I was always able to order grass-fed ground beef from a small in-state rancher.
I stocked up on more canned tomato and canned bean products than I needed, but we are getting through them. In the future, however, I'll keep far less of these on hand. It doesn't make sense to keep so much on hand that I can't eat. Even in the pandemic I found myself making dried beans, and we never had a true shortage -- I just had to change where I get pinto beans and that had been an issue pre-pandemic because my Costco stopped carrying dried beans in October 2019. I'll be going though the pantry again and pulling out the tomato products and bean varieties I don't think we'll eat any time soon -- we'll donate them.
We went through all of the canned fruit and jarred applesauce I stocked up on last March, and then some. It was useful to learn that we can use these items to stretch out grocery shopping. Now that supplies are better I'm able to buy peaches canned in juice, which I think is better when a kid eats an entire can in one sitting. In terms of overall preparedness I can see it good to keep these on hand. They also keep people happy when I want to wait another week before getting groceries.
I ended up detesting the dried cream powder and dried butter powder I bought. I already knew I liked Peak dried milk, so I'll keep that in rotation.
I unfortunately found that I can't keep bulk grains on hand if I don't have freezer space to put the grain in for a week before putting into buckets. We lost quite a bit due to tiny bugs, which clearly arrived in some Bob's Red Mill gluten free flour, and then again more recently we lost a bucket of rice. This used to happen back in the aughts, before I got wise to freezing the bags in the outside deep freeze for at least a week.
There was so much shifting around and making space for the extra food, and now that we're out the other side I want it gone. I really don't want to keep so much in bulk! The plan is to eat through what we have and then buy in smaller quantities. I've come to see every square foot of our house as valuable, and I need to reclaim the areas overtaken with food, which then pushed some kitchen items into other areas. I also really want things to be more simple.
Like many, we've seen our electricity usage increase, in part because everyone is home now and DH is working from home with a setup that involves a laptop that connects to his office computer remotely as well as two additional monitors. But I think the big increase came from plugging in our extra refrigerator to hold more perishables so we could stretch out the shopping. I finally got that emptied and unplugged again a week ago. We're paying 4-5¢ more per kWh (depending which tier we're in) compared to a year ago -- they changed things up and the people who end up in high usage charge are dinged less but the rest of us pay more. The refrigerator definitely adds to our usage. None of us is thrilled with the fridge gymnastics required to fit everything into the smaller house fridge (previous owners did the kitchen in a manner that limits how wide and how tall a fridge we can fit in the kitchen), but I'm determined.
This Lent I decided we'd do a pantry/freezer challenge. We aren't buying any meat, potatoes, or vegetables other than salad vegetables. We're eating the meat from the freezer, dried rice and frozen squash for our side starches, and frozen vegetables. I'll buy salad vegetables and a moderate amount of fresh fruit, but even that has to be supplement with the frozen fruit we have. Even if meat were to go on a great sale pre-Easter, I just don't have any room to freeze it.
But keeping a chest freezer crammed full of meat isn't my goal, either. I want to simplify how we eat and only use the top freezer in the house -- by the end of the year I hope to have the chest freezer empty (it's a smaller one, 8.7 cubic feet). I won't get rid of it right away, but I hope I can eventually.
Perhaps it's odd, but my experience with food during the pandemic really shifted my thinking. Or maybe it's the experience of the pandemic itself. I'm becoming more of a food minimalist. We've already decided that once we get through the meat in the freezer we're going to simplify our meat purchases, and most of the time we'll eat grass-fed ground beef and organic chicken, with plenty of meatless meals in the week. It feels like a good compromise between eating lots of meat because the boys like it, and being fully plant based which my body doesn't do well with at all. I'm not likely to buy anything in 25# bags any more. My goal is feed all 4 of us for less than the USDA monthly thrifty plan ($735 for us) while buying food that is organic, grass-fed, and not packaged in plastic (as much as possible). My monthly average for the past year (all pandemic) is $1250 per month, but that includes way too much stocking up, dog food, toiletries, cleaners, paper products, and a significant amount of donated food, as well as the price of an Instacart membership, the Instacart markups, and tipping, which I tend to be generous with. Looking at my numbers, I think I can feed us for less than $735 per month, and that goal is for after we get through the excess food -- until then I want to spend less.