The article will help you learn about some tips and techniques that you need to know to prepare a good food stock list for two weeks for you and your family.
It’s challenging to do emergency preparedness and create a food stockpile; some may have experienced trouble getting started. However, building a two-week emergency food supply for yourself and your family is the ideal place to start and then expand from there.
Thinking about what to put in your emergency food kits would be your first challenge since you’ll never know what scenarios you would need to consider.
Will you have access to power? Can you cook if there’s no electricity? Will you be forced to flee? Should you have a separate stockpile for special dietary needs?
Because knowing the answers to all of these questions at once is impossible, you can only try your best and learn to overcome your mistakes as you gain more experience in stockpiling food.
This article will give you a shopping list of goods you can stock up on for a two-week emergency food stockpile to help you minimize some anticipated mistakes.
Let’s dig in.
What to Think About When Building a Two-Week Food Supply
When searching the internet for samples of two-week food supplies, you’ll come across various foods.
Although most are needed nutrients, some people would go for pre-made buckets of MREs that provide enough calories to feed their families. These are expensive, but they do the job. However, this is another way to do stocking food.
First, let’s look at what you can think about while putting together your emergency food supply.
Family Size
First, you should consider the size of your family. Adults aged 18 and above will require between 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day, whereas children need at least 1,000 calories.
This calorie count could be your starting guide to considering how much food your complete family needs each day when organizing your long term food storage.
Food Preferences
You now have the headcount and the calorie guide based on their age. As a next step, start thinking and anticipating what kind of food your family will enjoy eating.
You can still enjoy delicious food even if you’re in survival mode or living off-grid.
Making a stockpile of items you don’t consume won’t help you in an emergency. Although survival is the aim, stockpiling goods that you never eat, or that you hate will make an already tricky circumstance even more difficult for your family.
I recommend keeping calorie-dense items on hand and meals that your family appreciates. Don’t be scared to include some comfort foods. We all need comfort in an emergency.
Cooking Feasibility
Cooked foods are some more delicious food to consume, but it isn’t always possible to do so. With this in mind, I suggest that you store non-cooking items and those simple to reheat.
It’ll be great if you are in a perfect environment where you can at least have access to water and heat.
But you never know what kind of emergency you’ll have, so make sure you have the means to cook food in a crisis. It might be a grill, an oven, or a camp stove. Be creative and learn how to improvise as well as this will help you have a variety of cooking methods anywhere you go.
No Power, No Food?
Because many crises, such as a snowfall or a hurricane, include the loss of power, you should stock non-perishable items for your two-week emergency supply.
When the power goes out, start consuming as many perishable foods as possible and know how to store them well. You can use a canner to preserve goods with a barbecue, campfire, or gas stove.
Again, you can consume as much perishable food as possible before moving to non-perishable foods.
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Family Size 2-Week Food Supply
Depending on the number of family members, age range, and dietary needs, you can adjust prepper pantry amounts accordingly. Let’s start with a list of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that you can create with basic cooking skills.
Breakfast
As your family’s first meal of the day, you can stock up on some oatmeal packets, canned fruits, instant pancake mixes (on Amazon), and cereal with powdered milk.
You can prepare most of these morning food item ideas by adding hot water to a bowl. You and your family can also consume these as snacks.
Lunch
You can prepare some ramen noodles, canned food, and macaroni and cheese (on Amazon) for mid-day meals.
Canned goods have a wide variety that you can pair with rice if you can access safe-to-drink water, long-lasting heat, and a container where you can cook and store the cooked rice.
Dinner
At night, you and your family can enjoy alfredo (on Amazon), canned Meat with rice and canned vegetable, canned soup, and even some chicken fajitas with rice and dried beans.
In-Between Meals
Since living off-grid or where there isn’t much electricity, your and your family’s energy is highly utilized. That means consuming energy equates to consuming survival food to regain them.
So having available snacks would greatly help. Some of my suggestions are peanut butter crackers, peanut butter (on Amazon), and jelly on tortillas, granola bars, and applesauce.
These foods have the necessary sugar, carbohydrates, and calorie content that will surely replenish the energy you’ve used up.
Food Type and Quantity Suggestions
If you are lucky, cooking is feasible for where you are at or will be. You may want to stock up on cooking essentials like oil, spices, salt, and condiments. Having sugar, coffee (on Amazon), and tea could also come in handy for tastier food and beverages and staying aware.
Here is the list of the food suggestions with their corresponding suggested quantity, which can serve as your starting guide in preparing a 2-week food supply:
Plan and Have Fun
The foods provided here are just examples and suggestions. You are free to plan four or five dinner ideas that you may alternate for two weeks customized for your household.
Just keep in mind that this is for an emergency, so don’t expect anything spectacular. Your only objective is to have enough food supply to live and survive.
After making a list of meals to rotate, figure out what you’ll need to prepare for each of them numerous times and what to add to your food supply. Then, don’t also forget to store a good amount of water as each person needs one gallon of water every day.
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Last Words
It is quite a challenge to think about preparing food storage for a day, let alone planning for two weeks straight. The best advice is not to plan things on your own.
If you’re going on bugging out with your family, let everybody chip in with their ideas and suggestions to help you out in the planning process. Then, set everybody’s expectations by giving them an orientation on the situation they will be in for the next two weeks.
If you plan to go with your kids, you can also give them their respective tasks and responsibilities. You’ll be surprised how you depend on them, especially if in survival mode.
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For nearly a year, I’ve been quietly preparing for crises. “Do we really need all this extra stuff?” my wife would ask, laughing. After the covid19 struck, she isn’t laughing as much anymore.