Often times in natural disasters– even if you don’t lose power and water, finding fresh foods in the grocery stores can be tricky. During Hurricane Harvey’s recovery, I remember crying when we saw restaurants opening back up, because it meant food was more readily available. Between people panicking and buying all there is, stores losing food due to their own power outages, roads being blocked for incoming shipments, and more, food can become a major scarcity. Having it already stocked up in your home can not only keep you fed, but it can give you a peace of mind until things start to normalize. See my previous post for my experience going to the grocery store nearly two weeks post hurricane. Despite not getting everything that I wanted, we still had everything that we needed, so I wasn’t panicked.
Pantry
Here is what my pantry looks like on a normal basis (you know, when it isn’t in the garage).
For the canned items I use most, I keep a Costco sized box in my pantry. When it starts running low (2-3 cans left) I put it on my list to replenish. 
I keep these canned goods stocked. When I use one, I buy another on the next grocery trip. 
We went through most of our paper goods within the first couple of days of the hurricane. I could’ve washed dishes by hand, but I didn’t have enough dishes to feed nearly 30 people and that would’ve been a ton of dishes. So paper goods are a good thing to have on hand. 
In the back, bottom corner of my pantry I have a Costco sized bag of basmati rice, sushi rice, and flour. When they get low, I replenish. I use these bags to refill more manageable containers that are on higher shelves.
In this first photo you can see extra cans of protein shake, flavors for water (not a necessity, but makes staying hydrated on lukewarm tap water more palatable), food storage up at the top along with extras of sauces and condiments that we use on a normal basis. For most items in my pantry, I have a backup system. The only time I don’t is when it is something we’re trying for the first time or we don’t use it that often. I try to stay stocked up on pastas, rice, and flour as well as beans, canned veggies, etc. We have a shelf of freeze dried food on top (as well as some freeze dried food stored elsewhere) that we were probably going to have to use if we had lost all of our fridge and freezer food. Which leads me to the next point.
Cooking
You need to have contingencies if you lose power or water. We filled our bathtubs with water, which would’ve helped for a few days, but we would’ve started filling buckets and bowls or maybe even hunting for water down by the creek if we had had to lose water. Thank goodness we never did, but make sure you have a source or access to a source of water.
We did lose power. Day one the kids ate up fridge food to try and use what we had before it went bad, but also, I didn’t really have a way to cook, or so I thought. Max reminded me that we had a propane fire pit in the back. We skewered hotdogs for lunch. For dinner, our neighbor let us use his propane grill (ours is electric). We grilled up the rest of the fridge meat I had pulled out for future meals, not knowing they wouldn’t last till the day I’d saved them for. Saturday morning I was panicked (more on that story in previous post) until our dear friends leant us a generator. It was a game changer. Partly because it was the right thing to do and we love our friends and partly because we wanted to pay our generator friend’s kindness forward, we invited all of our friends to “bring what you have” and we’ll pool our energy and resources together to feed our families. They stored food in our freezers that I was fortunately able to give back to them when we all got our power back. We used up the fresh stuff first and pulled out a few things from the freezer to cook up. If we hadn’t had the generator, our backup plan was to use our butane camper stove and make a fire pit in the backyard with trees Andy fell on the first day to dry out for that very purpose (also some of them had been knocked over by the storm anyway).
Meal Planning
Sunday morning, the ladies and I gathered around, wrote down what food needed to be eaten first and made a plan based on what we had. For the most part I planned meals that were easy prep but could feed a crowd. We did get biscuits on the Traeger on day four or five. That was a treat! Meal planning is something I do every Sunday. This helps preventing food waste, helps me stay organized and does a little bit to help with decision overload as the week progresses and gets a little hectic. Since I already have this as part of my weekly routine, it didn’t add too much stress to do it in this crisis and it was even better because I had three women’s brains helping me make the decisions.
Panda Express
One of the first things we did when the power came back on and things started to normalize was treat ourselves to some takeout. After cooking for so many people, it was a very appreciated luxury. I was running errands and needed to feed Bev before her dance class, so I stopped at Panda Express on the way home. As I was ordering our food I remembered that the first meal out we had post Harvey was also Panda Express, so now we have a catastrophe tradition… not sure I like the fact that I have a tradition related to disasters, but this tradition was loved by all.
Another silver lining to all this, is with our garage being a temporary kitchen, when I moved it back into the house, Andy saw an opportunity to organize the garage.
