"my Kids Can't Have Gluten So I Have To Get Whole Wheat Spaghetti For Them"

[Takala]

Now I hoard food - not in a bad way. I don't buy lots of snacks, but I have enough food to make it through about two weeks to a month if a disaster happened.

This isn't such a bad idea for people who have to have restricted diets for medical reasons. I learned this the hard way when we lost our electricity the better part of a week several winters ago, and there was not only significant flooding that limited road access, there was no electricity in many of the surrounding small towns - one assumes one can just drive somewhere and grocery shop.... not if there's no electricity, duh. I was damned lucky to find a functional gas station in a little patch of rural service area that hadn't lost power about 4 miles north of here, because if it had been known they were still open by the general public at large, they would have sold out quickly. I found ONE open grocery about 40 miles away, and they were scrambling to keep what food they had on the shelves. You should have seen the detours due to flooding.... try driving that with hundreds of other cars in pitch blackness. I had to stop at one point and get out with a flashlight and check what intersection I was at, to make absolutely sure I was not going to do something stupid. (the detour signs were taking us near river levees ) And the local news media was USELESS on covering this. That was the shocking part. It was as if it were not happening. None of the local radio stations are live content any more, all pre- recorded.

I follow the weather forecasts a lot more closely now. We purchased a generator (and have used it since then). I also drive my spouse a little batty sometimes with insisting we keep a lot of non perishable, back- up foods stocked in the pantry. This was when I also started experimenting with seeing if I could expand my diet if I had to, because it is more difficult to cook gluten free and grain free foods when you don't have electricity.