Food

Putting together a supply of food to help you through a crisis or emergency is easy to do. It just takes planning. In the USA or Canada you have easy access to bulk, dehydrated and freeze dried foods as well as pre-packaged emergency foods. In Scandinavia, we need to be a little more creative.

• The first thing you need to plan for is an immediate emergency. Start by putting aside three days of food to add to a 72 hour kit. This should be food that is easy to prepare and not heavy to carry if need be. Things like canned tuna, rose hip soup (nyponsoppa), energy bars, quick macaroni and ramen noodles. For many of us, we will be tempted to make a quick stop to the refrigerator for the cheese, pålägg and Polarbröd rågkaka, but the idea behind a 72 hour kit is to have food already in your kit that you can just grab and go.
• Start to build up a three-month supply of foods that you eat on a regular basis. You buy a little at a time and build up a supply. Use stores like Martin Olsson, Willy:s and Lidl that are not as expensive and have deals on larger sizes. Think about rice, pasta, pasta sauce, ingredients for pancakes, canned food, etc. Remember freezer items that can be bought when on special, like: falukorv, ground meat, chicken file, etc. We have about 5 kilos of ground meat flatly repackaged in freezer plastic bags in our freezer.
• After you have 3 months of food in your storage, you can begin to increase your food storage up to a year or more. This is made up of foods that have a long storage life. Grains, rice, beans, sugar, flour, dehydrated foods and freeze dried foods.