The UK government is finally starting to put together advice for households to stock up on food supplies, which should be announced as part of a campaign soon (I’ll add a link here when the official advice is released). According to the environment secretary Angela Eagle earlier this week: We’re about to experience probably the largest El Niño that has ever been seen, and that will lead to drier summers, wetter winters, with more extreme storms in this country. … If you’ve got a store of a bit of food that can keep you going for a while before the emergency services can get to you, you’re going to be a lot better off than if you haven’t. So some of it is that kind of preparation for just being a bit more resilient. Tracy Durnell, who lives in the Pacific Northwest region of the US, recently blogged about her own emergency food supply in a piece aptly titled My emergency food supply is extra normal food, which is exactly the approach I’ve been taking. Potential causes of disruption in the Pacific Northwest are earthquakes, winter storm power outages, and water main breaks. Well, here in the UK we certainly get water main breaks, especially as the infrastructure hasn’t been properly maintained since the water industry was privatised by the Conservative government back in 1989. There have been hints that the new PM wants to re-nationalise the water industry, but I’ll only believe it when it happens. Earthquakes and winter storm power outages are fortunately far less of a threat here, though (well, maybe storm power outages, but I don’t think we get storms anywhere near as violent as they do in the PNW). However we do have our own local issues: the UK relies on overseas imports for more than a third of its food making supplies here particularly vulnerable to disruption. Empty or significantly understocked supermarket shelves are unfortunately familiar in recent memory due to various causes: the food distribution and staffing disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic; the stupid decision to leave the EU, which added completely-foreseeable layers of disruption and bureaucracy to food imports; heatwaves and other effects of climate crisis in the UK and Europe causing poor harvests and burnt crops (and, as mentioned above, we have El Niño on the horizon to exacerbate this even further next year); whatever stupid war or tariff or insane announcement that Donald Trump has made, which hurts the US, then ripples out across the world to hurt the rest of us (or vice versa). So this is a guide to how I’ve prepared to get through any temporary UK food shortage of a few days, maybe up to 3–4 weeks at the very most. I’m not prepping for the end of civilisation, here. Note: I’ve quoted “Best Before” dates a lot below, which are more focused on food quality than “Use By” dates, which are more focused on whether something remains edible. So some leeway can be gained by eating food after the “Best Before” date has expired (but before any “Use By” date has passed). Water Water is the highest priority. I’ve got six 5-litre bottles of supermarket-own-brand still water at the back of my pantry for emergencies. Having gone through a couple of days a few years ago of being cut-off from the water supply due to a mains leak I am all too aware of how much water I can get through in a normal day, even when being frugal with my usage. I’d love to store more water, but I just don’t have the space. This is probably the weakest point in my supplies. Soya milk, vegan butter, and vegan cheese One of the advantages of being a vegan and paid-up member of the Tofu Eating Wokerati™ is that the shelf-life of many plant-based essentials can be longer than their dairy-based alternatives. That’s not true for everything, especially when refrigerated or otherwise stored correctly, but dairy products definitely have a tendency to go rancid faster when exposed to warmer weather, which could be a factor if a temporary food shortage is exacerbated by power cuts affecting fridges and freezers. Unsealed “unsweetened soya drink” (which everyone—apart from the dairy industry lobbyists, and the government representatives that they have successfully got in their pockets—calls “soya milk”) tends to last for up to a year in a cool cupboard. Apparently specially-treated Long-Life cow’s milk has a shelf-life comparable to soya milk stored in the same conditions, but none of my dairy-eating friends like to drink it because they tell me it doesn’t taste nice, whereas soya milk is one of my day-to-day essentials and after over thirty years of drinking it I can confidently say that I like the flavour (at least of the brand I buy). “Flora Salted Block” (which everyone—apart from the dairy industry lobbyists etc—calls “vegan butter”) lasts for several months in the fridge, according to its “Best Before” date. Products such as “Applewood Plant Based Vegan Block” (which everyone—apart from the dairy industry lobbyists etc etc—calls “vegan cheese”) seems to last for months sealed and tastes pretty nice. There’s been something of a revolution in vegan cheese over the past few years. A few years ago they were, without exception, absolutely foul. Nowadays they’re much better. I’ve got a sealed block in my fridge which has a “Best Before” date of January 2027, and I’ve had that block for a couple of months. Similarly Vegan Mayo seems to have a “Best Before” date of about 6 months in the future, judging by the bottles I have in stock, so I tend to keep 2–3 bottles in my pantry. I also usually have about six 300g blocks of tofu in the fridge. These are all things that I eat or drink regularly anyway, so given their long shelf-lives my approach has been to have several months supply in at any one time, something I built up over several months of regular shopping trips. I restock any used ones in my weekly groceries shop, and I put the ones with the furthest-future “Best Before” dates to the bottom of the pile in the fridge (or back of line on the pantry shelf) so that I naturally use the ones that need eating first without having to check all the dates. Soups, beans, and pulses I tend to stock up on canned soup in the autumn and winter, as I regularly heat up a can of it for my lunch during the colder months if I can’t be bothered to make my own soup from fresh ingredients, but I’m thinking of stocking up early this year, just in case. The “Best Before” dates of the soup cans left over from last winter are still 2028 or, at the earliest, late 2027, so this is one area where it’s hard to go wrong. I buy supermarket-own-brand or branded soups that just happen to be vegan, nothing expensive. The same goes for cans of beans and lentils - I’ve got multiple cans of chickpeas, black beans, borlotti beans, butter beans, green lentils, pinto beans, red kidney beans, and so on, some with 2028 “Best Before” dates. Again, these are all things that I eat regularly anyway, and their advantage over dried beans is, firstly, that they’re ready-soaked so are more convenient and, secondly, that most UK recipes specify to use one or two of the UK standard 400g tins of beans or pulses. Once again, I restock any used ones in my weekly groceries shop, and I put the ones with the furthest-future “Best Before” dates to the back of line on the pantry shelf. I do have dried packets of Yellow Mung Dal (aka Yellow Split Lentils) and Red Split Lentils because neither requires pre-soaking or lengthy cooking times, and I do love to make myself a big pot of dal. Rice and pasta Loads of both, always in stock. I tend to buy a four kilogram bag of Basmati Rice and transfer it as needed into a smaller mason jar, which is much easier to handle when measuring out portions for daily cooking (plus it’s cheaper per kilogram than the smaller packets). I’m thinking of doing the same for Jasmine Rice, which I’m also using frequently these days. For pasta I have large mason jars full of various types of pasta, and sealed packets of it at the back of my cupboard for topping up each mason jar as they are emptied. Bread and oil While I haven’t been doing it so much over the heatwaves we’ve been having here over the summer, I usually make my own bread from the autumn right through to the spring. I have a bread machine for when I’m feeling lazy, and the oven for when I’m feeling adventurous. As such, I keep several 1½ kilogram packets of bread flour in stock, along with at least one 1kg packet of sugar, and a couple of 100g tins of fast action yeast. The final ingredient for bread is some sort of fat, and the one I usually use is sunflower oil. I try to have one opened and one unopened 1-litre bottle of sunflower oil at any time - and the same goes for olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, and vegetable oil. I did try using a 5-litre bottle of vegetable oil, but found it very awkward to pour with enough care and precision. I’m thinking of doubling my reserves of some of my bottles of oil, so that I have at least three litres of vegetable oil and olive oil, which are the ones I use most of in my cooking. I also make sure I have a spare 750g bottle of table salt in addition to an open bottle on my counter, which brings me to: Herbs and spices Supermarket jars of herbs and spices—usually 30–50g—are okay if you’re only using them occasionally, but as a fan of Indian food I tend to use them a lot. So while I have some supermarket jars of herbs and spices that I only occasionally use, I tend to buy the larger packets of things I use regularly such as pepper corns, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, chilli powder, cumin seeds, dried curry leaves, dried bay leaves, sesame seeds, and oregano - all of which I typically get from the local Asian supermarket. Once open I decant the contents of each packet into a recycled jar to keep them as fresh as possible. I also have some herbs growing on my windowsills—at the moment they include mint, basil, chives, and parsley—but I’m limited for growing space in my flat, and I have no outside space (I’m on the waiting list for an allotment), so my plans for a full kitchen garden are still just plans. Vegetables and fruit This is when things become tricky. I have some frozen vegetables in my freezer - usually peas and spinach, and the obligatory oven chips and hash browns, but I guess they don’t really count. I usually have five or six onions, several bulbs of garlic, and—new additions this week, courtesy of my friends who have a glut on their allotment—one very large butternut squash and a big bag of apples. There are also at least twenty cans of chopped tomatoes in my cupboard at any time because they’re a standard part of many recipes I cook, along with two or three packets of tomato passata, some jars of vegan pesto, and jars of chutney, pickled onions, and black olives. Other stuff I keep about 4–6 months' supply of toilet roll; spare boxes of paracetamol, ibuprofen, and cold & flu drinks; a first aid kit full of plasters, bandages, etc; one spare bottle of both washing-up and laundry washing liquid and kitchen/bathroom cleaning fluids. I also have packets of stuffing, biscuits, crackers, cereal bars,and crisps that have a long shelf-life. And plenty of coffee, tea, wine, and beer of course! And when I cook meals—which, in recipes, are typically to serve four people—I freeze the other three portions, so that I usually have about two weeks' supply of “ready cooked” meals that I just need to heat up in the microwave and cook some rice with. What about the cost of all of this? I didn’t buy all this in one massive shop. I’ve slowly built up my food supplies over the course of several months, taking careful advantage of temporary discounts, BOGOF and “buy three from this range, get the cheapest free” offers - which I also keep a look out for when shopping to maintain and replenish my pantry. And to stress once again, these are the things I eat and drink as part of my normal diet, not special “emergency supplies” that are kept in the back of a cupboard until they inevitably go off. My aim has to be to increase the number of weeks supply of regular food that keeps well that I have in my kitchen. What if the power gets cut as well? Well, I’d be eating cold canned food, and any food in my (in this scenario) non-functioning fridge and freezer before it goes off. That’s probably two weeks of food that is not particularly appetising, but I wouldn’t be going hungry. As I said at the beginning, this is more of a guide to how I’d get through a temporary UK food shortage of a few days, maybe up to 3–4 weeks - I’m not prepping for the end of civilisation. I live in a second-floor flat in a Victorian-era property with no open space, and it’s rented so I can’t fit any solar panels to the roof. I don’t even have a balcony that I could add one of the newly-legal (in the UK) plug-in balcony solar panels to. Theoretically I could get myself an emergency butane/propane camping stove, but that doesn’t seem very ecologically sound, and from a safety perspective I don’t really like the idea of a large pressurised can of explosive gas being stored at the back of a cupboard in my flat. Searching the internet tells me that there are some “solar cookers” on the market, but I think more investigation would be required before I decide whether they’ll work in typical UK amounts of sunlight. That said, I think landlords in the UK should be made to fit all properties with solar panels and heat exchangers over the next ten years to help with the country’s energy resilience and independence. If that happened then at least there’d be some electricity for me to keep cold food cold, to make cold food hot when required, and to heat my flat in the colder months. You can email me at lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk with a comment or response.