Survival foods, or Stocking up before the Revolution Comes

[politicat]

I'm morbid. Blame it on Reagan, but I grew up with Reagan and Bush always salivating to push the red button and call Moscow and laugh. (Never expected it could get worse, but....)

I grew up making these elaborate plans for what I would do when the whistle came down. I'm a military brat and an officer's kid, so I knew that we'd have access to a fallout shelter and most of our houses had a rudimentary one in the basement that only required some reinforcement and provisioning (which I know now would not have been very possible without at least a week's notice...). For me, FEMA and emergency management was a normal way of life (Father was an engineer for the Navy, then went into command after he got his MBA); floods, fires, earthquakes, disasters.... at least once a year.

So... I came across one of my noteplans today, a text document that has been salvaged from computer to computer for almost 20 years (I remember writing it on a TI 94 A in basic originally.... and transferring it to the PC on a 5 and a quarter in floppy disk... a REALLY floppy disk.) It was the ten foods I would make sure were in the shelter before we sealed ourselves in.

My ten year old self wanted:
Hersheys with almonds
canned flour (I assume for bread, pasta, etc.... though the other needed ingredients are
missing.)
canned cheese (I'm thinking I meant K rat cheddar sauce, which was pretty good,
considering, and made a decent quesadilla or grilled cheese.)
tuna fish
dill pickles
mayo
apples
tortillas
salsa
beans (though there's a note: not if Daddy is in the shelter.)

So Here's the scenario: you get advance knowledge through some channel that The End of the World As We know it is coming in 3 weeks, and no one else is going to know. You can get to a safe haven where you'll survive, and it's already stocked with basic necessities (basic food, water, power) to keep you going for a couple years while the planet goes bonkers. You've got three weeks to gather up those things you don't want to live without. What do you take? Don't worry about storage, assume it magically will be fine.

What do you have to have?

[politicat]

1. So at 29, how my tastes have changed....

While I still love a good tuna salad sandwich, that's no longer on the list. I'm really going with luxury foods, since basic foods (like brown rice, beans, wheat and salt) are supplied in the scenario.

1. Tea, several kilos. At minimum one 2 kg box of Taj Mahal CTC Assam, because it pretty much cannot be screwed up, no matter what you do to it. With more time to wait for shipping, then a box of lemon myrtle-formosa oolong tea, a box of mint, a box of Margaret's Hope First flush Darjeeling.

2. Cameo apples. (Some things never change. I could, and did, live on apples, bagels with Cream cheese, lettuce and iced tea for about 6 months while I was extricating myself from my first LTR and finishing grad school...)

3. Toblerone or Dagoba or Lindt chocolate. (See, chocolate is still important, but not first on the list, and my tastes have improved... some.)

4. Arizona oranges. (If you don't know, I can't explain. They're just different.)

5. The spice rack. (Yes, I know it's technically many things, but it's also a single entity, and man cannot live by curry alone.)

6. The potted herb garden. (see note above.) (Which is one pot, to be fair.)

7. Sushi grade fish.

8. Lettuce

9. Yukon gold potatoes

10. A wheel of extra sharp cheddar. It's not my single favorite cheese, but it's the most versatile of the ones I like enough to keep always on hand.

Those would keep me reasonably sane. (Ignore the peanut gallery....)

[Warpy]

2. I live about a mile from an air base

so my idea is to hear the alert, set up a comfy chair in the back yard, and wait for the show. I don't intend to live through it, and I want it to be as quick as possible.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Yeah .... I'm with you .......

I been fightin' shit for way too long, it seems. I'll continue to fight for most stuff I b'leeve in, but this one .... more than I wanna fight. I'm closer to the end than the beginning. I'm okay with that.

But I wanna have a bottle of one really great, break-the-bank wine, a great meal, a few daisies in a bud vase, and have it all happen as I sip the last of my after dinner espresso ......

[politicat]

5. Same question: You got three weeks - how do you live it up?

EOM

[Stinky The Clown]

7. I've been musing over this for the last few days

I'm not ignoring your question ... I just have no honest answer. I could do one of my usual smartass things, but I think you were looking for more substance.

I'm still musing.

[politicat]

8. S'ok. It kind of is a deep, philosophical question.....

[politicat]

4. Okay, so what do you do in those three weeks?

You've got three weeks till the end of the world.... what do you do??

[wildeyed]

6. My kids are so little.

It would really be about them and taking care of them. I don't think I would care much about what we were eating as long as we had something.

Sorry to be a downer, but there it is.

[demnan]

9. Rice and my rice cooker

I can do without a lot of things but I can't do without my Basmati rice. Throw in a couple of jars of Penzey's Maharaja curry powder and I'll be . . . just fine. I'll grow my veggies.

[bluedonkey]

10. My first thought,too

My rice and rice cooker!
Enough flour to bake bread.
My spice rack.To hold me over til my garden is established.
The end is near:I have to learn how to grow rice!!!

On the other hand,I don't think I want to live through it.I feel tired lately.