This is really basic - obviously,
you'll need to decide what you like to eat (or at least what you're willing to eat) - and work with it a little. At
this point, we're just trying to provide the cheapest possible options for storing food.
A month seems a reasonable minimum,
at least to start with. The just-on-time nature of food deliveries, the growing potential for disruptions, the possibility
of avian flu evolving into something which could trigger a pandemic - all of these things suggest that the prudent thing to
do is to have enough food on hand to get by for a at least a while.
This is very tentative - we intend
to work with it and expand on it as we go along.
Per Person Per Month:
grains--25 lbs
powdered milk--8.33
lbs
sugar/honey--8.33 lbs
beans/legumes--12.5 lbs
flour--8.33 lbs
oil--21.33 oz
salt--6.66 oz
baking powder--1.33
oz
Depending on what you buy and where,
we estimated this basic supply would cost around $32 with sugar or $43 with honey.
Per Person Per Year:
grains--300 lbs
powdered milk--100 lbs
sugar/honey--100 lbs
beans/legumes--150
lbs
flour--100 lbs
salt--5 lbs
baking powder--1 lb
We would personally add a can of
tomatoes and a couple of cans of tomato paste for each pound of legumes (or at least for each pound of beans). Remember,
though, in a worst case scenario, no power for an extended period of time during the winter could leave you with frozen and
ruptured cans.
Don't forget spices - this is a
really bland diet without them.
We would also include dried fruit,
vegetables, and meat.
This can be stored in anything -
we use old cat litter jugs (we bleach them, though that's probably not really necessary), plastic juice bottles, coffee cans
- the litter jugs are actually quite nice because they hold a lot, and you don't have to worry about the lid popping off like
you do with a coffee can.
Water is more problematic - 30 gallons per person is quite a bit, though you can buy 6 or 7 gallon water containers
where camping supplies are sold. Empty juice or wine jugs (I guess I just made an admission about my taste in wine)
work well, too. Add 1 tsp of bleach for each gallon of water, and change it regularly. If you have the room for
a 30 gallon supply, we really do recommend it - a power outage can stop the pumps, water supplies can be contaminated, a pandemic
will certainly mean that the waterworks is going to be short handed, and there's no way to predict the impact of that on water
quality or availability.