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.

Preparing for the Future

There is no greater challenge for the future than emergency preparedness in Sweden, Scandinavia and Europe. We are so used to the government doing everything for us, that we have not adequately taken care of ourselves in the area of emergency preparedness. We imagine we will always be taken care of. Those of you who lost your electricity during the winter storms this year know that that is not true. No one came knocking on your door with a generator, heater or food.

The near financial collapse of Greece has awakened us to the thought that a financial meltdown in our lifetime is a very real possibility. What other European countries are next? Spain, Italy, Ireland, Holland, Slovakia? Being on the kronor and not on the euro will not insulate us from the fallout. And there is no escaping how the continued escalation of debt in the USA and the potential collapse of the dollar will impact us.

The Swedish Preppers hope that we can be a catalyst to get you thinking, to get you motivated and preparing for whatever might come. We hope to give you input on resources, books, food storage, backyard farming, emergency preparedness supplies, camping gear and much more.

We wish you the best as you prepare for the future.