Preparedness Foods from Your Local Grocery Store

Decades ago you could tell the "real" (read wealthy) backpackers by the kind of food they brought. A week's worth of Mountain House stuffed in their pack meant they had spent some serious cash before they hit the trail. On the opposite end of the spectrum was a kid I headed up a mountain with who brought a week's worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches squished into his pack and that was it. These days, your local grocery store can provide all kinds of vacuum-packed, pre-packaged food that can sustain you for a week-long pack trip all the way up to a year's worth of sheltering in place. Here's some items that I regularly pick up at my local grocery store that have a long shelf life, are light weight, and require minimal cooking if any (this means these foods can be used at home during a disaster or you could toss them into a pack and carry them away if you needed to evacuate):

• beef jerky
• nuts
• dried fruit (raisins, dried apples, dried cranberries, etc)
• tuna in a foil pouch
• dried soup mix (ie: cup a soup)
• tea
• powered milk
• powdered drink mixes
• hot chocolate mix
• bullion cubes
• instant gravy mixes
• minute rice
• instant noodles with sauce mix
• jello
• pudding mix
• granola bars
• energy bars
• instant oatmeal
• spices
• dried vegetables (mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes
• quick cooking pasta (couscous, etc)
• candy (M&Ms, etc)
• fruit leather
• pancake mix
• Bisquick
• Parmesan cheese
• cereal
• peanut butter
• instant coffee
• instant potatoes
• butter buds
• packaged curry mix

Note that there are lots more options if weight, cost, or cooking time are not an issue. In addition, if you are looking at long term--five years or more--food storage, you will want to move to the next level such as nitrogen storage, MREs, etc.