My possibly mildly unreasonable par level is already pretty comfortable for these situations, luckily.
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Same here. My parents give me a hard time for my stocked pantry, but it sure has come in handy a lot of times recently.
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Well now I want to see everyone’s pantries, lol. I’ve been rotating a lot of things out so my stock is somewhat diminished atm, hence the stock-up!
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I’ve always stocked up on things when they are on sale, but even that’s harder to find these days. My main store has always had sales like 2/$5 where you could buy 1 and pay $2.50, but now you actually have to buy 2 because 1 is full price. That makes me grumpy because I don’t always want 2 as a single person.
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Gah, same here! I feel like part of why my pantry/freezer is emptier than usual is the lack of sales. The sales I am seeing in the circulars are almost always wiped out by the time I get there since I do shopping on Friday or Saturday. But I figure filling the dead space now at full price will probably count as a future sale, haha.
And that is how you make an excuse to buy more spices.
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I keep a pretty full pantry, probably because for many years I couldn’t just run to the store to pick something up. (All those children and no car!)
It took me about a year to rebuild my basic stockpile after we moved, and I’m keeping a close eye on it these days. At this point I really am mostly buying the loss leaders in stockpiling quantities.
There are quite a few things I’m nervous about, and one of them is that my usually sanguine dd is also quite nervous. We are going to break dow and buy a water purifier, I think.
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Just a heads up, we decided this summer to get solar and after several meetings (initial consult, then they came back out to measure things, I forget if there was a third meeting) we were put on the books for … February. Which was four months out from when we signed paperwork. We aren’t in any particular rush but it was still kind of a surprise. They’re a good local company though, even if another solar installer was quicker I’d rather wait to use this company.
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Does your electricity come from a natural gas plant? Otherwise I’m not sure I see the connection… Like at my house, installing solar panels would not keep me from needing natural gas for my furnace and water heater (although going all-electric someday is the dream. Partly for environmental reasons and partly because my husband can’t smell natural gas. We have explosive gas detectors in the meantime but it still feels questionable).
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Thanks for the heads up. That means in our case, we should make a decision by the end of January. I know it’s too late for this winter. I’d like for all the snow to melt before starting any new work.
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Much of our electricity is from NG generators from what I understand. The price of electricity has gone up quite a bit this year. Here’s a list of Oct. price per kWH since 2019 (yes, I keep track of this)
2019: $0.21682
2020: $0.21558
2021: $0.23381
2022: $0.32190
Our heating and cooking are also natural gas, so if there are truly shortages, we’re still up a creek without a paddle. However, you take actions on the things you can control. But again, this is why we need to conduct a cost/benefit analysis.
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If you’re in the U.S. there should not be shortages of natural gas. There’s more in the ground than we can use for a long, long time. (Source: I used to work for a natural gas company and this was the least of the higher ups’ concerns, but I don’t have access to the presentation that had the specific years for future gas supply we have available to us.) The price will certainly go up over time though, especially as some companies shift towards using it instead of other fuel sources.
Now for eastern Europe with Russia’s shenanigans, that’s another story. That’s a pipeline/politics issue, though.
As for electricity, I think my local electric provider is like one third from natural gas? Not sure. But the price of natural gas definitely has a ripple effect.
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I heard on the news that the problem isn’t the lack of natural gas in absolute terms, but rather that the problem is a legal one. New England must ship in its natural gas, and the law dictates that only vessels registered in the US are allowed to transport natural gas domestically. I believe that was the gist of it. From time to time, that law is temporarily waived, but otherwise there are supposedly only a handful of vessels that are eligible to transport the gas. That is where the bottleneck comes from.
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there were several very good sales at the store today, but I didn’t feel I could take advantage of them because we’re about to be travelling. I know that I often keep things in the freezer for much longer than we’ll be gone for, but I’m in the ‘must use down the things’ mode, not the ‘stock up for winter’ mode. Apparently I can’t run both modes in parallel.
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maybe I’m just stressed about power outages and that’s why I want the freezer to be pretty lean.
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Where I am we still have coal generated electricity. We heat and cook with electricity. The power company is slowly introducing wind power. Plus, with a government subsidy, you can get solar. But that is still very expensive, even with the subsidy.
We have electric heat pumps for most of our heating and a/c needs. I use more small appliances than the stove for cooking. Our electricity has gone up 10% this month, but we were only spending $100/mth on it anyways. That extra $10 isn’t a deal breaker for us.
Groceries are another matter. I stocked up in September and early October. I am buying very little now. Our diet has definitely suffered. There are very few fruits we can afford. I am trying canned fruit, which is cheaper. But it’s packed in sugar, which is not good for either of us. The low sugar/no sugar stuff is packed with preservatives and mega expensive here.
I did buy 50 pounds of wild blueberries direct from the grower this summer. That saved us $2/pound. We paid $3/pound. Hubby eats apples, but for some reason only a particular, expensive, variety. He also eats bananas.
I eat anything like an orange, as long as there hasn’t been any grapefruit crossed with it, and grapes, preferably red (usually cheaper). Lately though, a bag of grapes has been over $10! We can’t eat the whole bag before it goes bad, so we’re taking the excess grapes out and putting them in other bags. They are sold by the pound, so it doesn’t really matter. Still, I’ve never had to be concerned about grapes going bad before. I know I can freeze them, but I never seem to think of it, and if I do, I forget they’re in the freezer!
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I definitely need to review our pantry and extra pantry. Its a mess and i know theres some stuff thats gone off, and I need snacks easier to view. I keep running out of things because I haven’t stocked up and yep, I’m expecting higher prices! We have had severe flooding in large amounts of our agricultural areas so I figure we are looking at food problems of one sort or another.
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Frozen grapes are soooo good. Like, even better than fresh ones.
Plant some raspberry canes. In two years you’ll have all the raspberries you can eat.
We’re putting in a lot of perennials - this year a hardy peach tree, asparagus, and raspberries. Next year a pear tree.
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If your diet is suffering and you’re having trouble affording fresh produce I really hope you consider picking up a box at your local food pantry as a supplement. I know it sucks to need help, but you don’t have to be at any certain level of poverty or on food stamps or anything like that to get some fresh food. There won’t be any questions asked even if you’re in a nice clean car, etc.
In a way you would be helping those people validate the work they are doing by showing that it’s an in demand service. It’s good to use those types of resources and it might allow you to have a bit more variety. <3 I hope I’m not overstepping. It sounds really hard to be so tight with food.
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Nice stuff, but too rich for my blood, but nice!
If you’ll eat tinned fruit, could you make some stewed apples and freeze them? They can be made without adding sugar, just a bit of water.
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