With so many people in South Florida struggling to make ends meet, the last thing you want to do is waste money on food you’ll never eat if we don’t have a major storm — and maybe even if we do.
When you do your pre-hurricane shopping, keep in mind the types of food your family will eat. If you don’t like canned tuna, you may not be willing to eat it just because the power is out.
Consider shifting your summer shopping strategy to keep potential storms in mind:
• Keep on hand a good stock of nonperishable food you normally eat: granola bars, cereal, peanut butter, nuts, individually packaged fruits, crackers, etc. Don’t just set them aside. Eat from your stash and keep replenishing, buying a little more than you would normally.
• Buy food that can be kept for a number of days without refrigeration, such as apples, salsa, carrots, oranges, mangoes and hard cheese. Again, eat that food as you go but keep your stash replenished.
• Don’t stock up on meat, milk, yogurt, frozen foods and other items that spoil quickly once the power is out. Buy just as much as you need until the next time you visit the supermarket. Yes, you may miss a few good deals, but paying a few extra dollars for meat when it’s not on sale is preferable to having to discard $20 worth if the power goes out and your stash spoils. Summer is a good time to “eat down your freezer.”
• Consider things you normally don’t eat or don’t buy but like. For example, I rarely buy peanut butter, but I like it well enough. If I buy a jar and don’t ever open it, I can donate it at the end of storm season. Or make peanut butter fudge. You might put in this category single-serving packages or cans of fruit, jarred pasta sauce or pesto, instant soups, dried fruit, packaged rice mixes (some of these are precooked), canned tuna or chicken and canned vegetables or fruit.
• Buy some treats for yourself. This one is tough, because if I buy chocolate, it will never last until the next storm. Normally, I deal with that issue by not buying it. But when you hit Day 7 of no air conditioning, no TV and no Internet, you are going to need chocolate.
• Watch for sales on individual bottles of water, juice boxes and other drinks. If you don’t use them during hurricane season, start using them afterward.
Don’t forget about utensils. We thought we were prepared for a power failure after Hurricane Wilma because we had a gas stove and could easily make coffee with a Melita filter — except the coffee needed to be ground. We used a mortar and pestle, but after that we made sure to buy a bag of ground coffee if a storm was approaching and then used it, storm or not. Instant coffee and tea bags are also useful.
If you have a gas stove, be sure you have matches to light it. Other useful utensils are a manual can opener, a corkscrew, a bottle opener and paper and plastic disposable plates, bowls and utensils. Save up the plastic utensils you get with takeout but don’t use. If you don’t have a gas stove, consider a grill, especially if it’s something you’d use anyway.
Emergency management officials advise having enough nonperishable foods to feed your family for at least three days. Focus especially on nourishing foods. You’ll need sustenance to clean up the yard.
