How I Determined What to Buy to Stock-Up for the Next Several Weeks

In mid-February, I began to see that the US might be hit hard with the coronavirus, too. I made my grocery list for the month of March and planned to buy as much as I could from that list by the end of February. As March neared, it began to look like we'd need as much as a 6 or 8-week supply. That's when I made the decision to use April's money as well as March's. So how does a person make a grocery list that covers 8 weeks?

This is how I approached it. I divided the foods that we eat into 6 categories: 1) fruits and vegetables, 2) meats and other proteins (includes eggs, nuts, and bean products), 3) grains and starches, 4) dairy products, 5) fats, and 6) extras. Then I inventoried everything that we had within those categories, guestimated amounts that we use in a month and multiplied by 2, then I decided how much was needed to fill out each group to get us through 8 weeks. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you may remember taking inventory and placing orders to reach your "fill-to" amounts of each ingredient. This is a lot like how I approached making this shopping list.

For fruits and vegetables, I took into consideration that I have a garden that begins to produce as early as mid-March. With that in mind, I inventoried all of our canned, frozen, dried, and fresh produce. Raisins and juice count.

For meats and other proteins, I could see that I have a lot of dried beans, a whole ham, a few cans of tuna fish, a bit of chicken, and a few dozen eggs. If need be, we could get by for a few months on the dried beans as protein, but I knew we'd want some variety as well as the nutrients that meat provides.

With the grains and starches, I knew that we had several pounds each of rolled oats, steel cut oats, barley, corn meal, all-purpose flour, and whole wheat flour. I would want to add some potatoes and brown rice to our starchy foods.

Although dairy products contribute protein to meals, I put them into a separate category, as dairy products contribute to calcium and vitamin D at levels that many other foods do not. I still had a couple of gallons of milk in the freezer and a couple of pounds of cheese. I knew I'd need to add significantly to the dairy supply in our house.

With regards to fats, I considered vegetable/olive oil, butter, solid shortening, and saved meat fat. I could see that our vegetable oil would run low, so that went on my list.

The extras included sugar (definitely a necessity when thinking about how to prepare garden-grown rhubarb, which may be our only fruit for a couple of weeks in late April/early May), spices, baking ingredients (like baking soda), vinegar, soy sauce and gelatin.

To determine amounts, I calculated and counted. I know that our family goes through about 1 gallon of vegetable oil every 4 or 5 weeks, so buying one more gallon would get us through 8 weeks. However, I don't buy oil by the gallon, but in large 35-lb boxes (about 7 gallons). So that's what I bought. 

I added 1 bag of potatoes and a 50-lb bag of brown rice for our starchy foods. (Remember, I buy food in institutional sizes to get the lowest price per pound. 50 pounds of rice will last 6 months for us.) 

For meat, I bought a 10-lb chub of 80/20 ground beef, a 10-lb bag of chicken leg quarters, and 4 dozen chicken hot dogs. There's not a lot of variety in the cuts of meat, but I can vary how it's prepared to add interest. I also bought a 5-dozen box of eggs for protein. 

The fruits and vegetables are perhaps the hardest category for me to estimate need. I thought about what amounts of fresh, frozen, dried, canned, and juiced produce we could possibly use in a month and doubled it. So I bought a lot of frozen juice concentrate (orange, apple, grape) as frozen juice concentrate takes up very little freezer storage space, keeps much longer than fresh fruit, but delivers more vitamin C than most canned or dried fruit. I also bought about 11 pounds of fresh apples, 2 dozen bananas, and some cans of pineapple chunks for fruit. For vegetables, I tried to hit the various nutrients that vegetables can provide, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, beta carotene, indoles (cancer fighters found in cabbage family), lycopene, sulfur compounds, and lutein. I also wanted to focus on long-keepers. I bought several heads of cabbage, a jumbo bag of carrots, several bunches of celery, jumbo bag of onions, a few heads of garlic, 6 pounds of frozen spinach, and 10 pounds of frozen peas. I already had about a dozen cans each of green beans and corn, a couple of #10 cans of whole tomatoes and tomato paste, and about a dozen cans of pumpkin. If this sounds like a lot of produce, I admit, my family plows through fruits and vegetables like you wouldn't believe. 

The one "extra" ingredient that I knew we'd run out of was sugar. So, I bought sugar as I normally do, in a 50-lb sack.

I spent all of March's and April's grocery budget plus all of Easter's special grocery allowance. 

I know, hot dogs are not the greatest food. However, to keep our spirits up and make the isolation feel less confining, we plan on having cookouts whenever the weather is nice. We also have my daughters' birthday this month and two other birthdays next month to celebrate. We'll do cookouts or burgers for each of those occasions.

As you already know, I tend to cook from scratch, making fairly basic meals. I actually think it is less daunting to put together a list of basic ingredients to last 8 weeks than to think of the individual meals that I would make for 8 weeks and form a shopping list from that 8-week menu plan. But that's just how I shop and cook.

Anyways, we're prepared, here. And if the virus is mediated well-enough and all of my preparations aren't needed, then I don't need to grocery shop for at least 2 months.