When I first got serious about building up a real pantry, I wasn’t thinking about world events or internet theories. I was thinkin’ about the ice storm of ’87. Power lines down, roads iced over, and me standin’ in the kitchen with a can of cranberry sauce and half a loaf of bread. Darlene was pregnant with Wendy back then. We ended up cookin’ on the woodstove, rationing peanut butter, and learnin’ real fast what we didn’t want to do next time.

That was the first time I thought, Maybe we oughta keep more than just tomorrow’s dinner on hand. Back then I didn’t call it prepping. I called it bein’ ready.

So I cleaned out the old shelves in the basement, hammered together a few more out of scrap pine, and started stashin’ away what I figured we’d actually eat. No astronaut ice cream. No powdered beet juice. Just food that’d keep us fed and sane if the store lights ever went dark again.

Don’t Stock What You Won’t Eat

Here’s the biggest mistake I see folks make when they first get goin’. They watch a video or read a list and head out to buy 300 pounds of wheat berries when they don’t even own a grain mill. Or they load up on twenty-dollar freeze-dried stew that tastes like wet cardboard with a side of regret.

I keep things simple. I stock what we eat already. Pinto beans, rice, peanut butter, oats, canned peaches, Darlene’s favorite tomato paste, and coffee. Lord, don’t forget the coffee. I’ve got instant jars, whole beans, and some vacuum-sealed bricks that could probably survive a tornado.

And you’d better believe I’ve got Grandma Alice’s green beans canned up in quart jars. She taught me how to pressure can 'em right after Darlene and I got married. Snapped fresh, packed tight, and a little bacon grease in each jar. Charlotte calls them the “crunchy beans” when we send ‘em out to Oregon.

How I Organize the Shelves

Now I ain’t the most organized fella in the world, but when it comes to food, I’ve got a system that works. I keep like with like. Beans with beans. Cans with cans. Dry goods like flour and sugar in big ol’ food-grade buckets with gamma seal lids. I write the purchase date on everything with a big black Sharpie.

We’ve got a first-in-first-out rule around here. That means the older stuff goes in front and gets used first. I check expiration dates about every other month, usually while I’m down there sneakin’ a spoonful of peanut butter.

We also keep a running inventory notebook. Just a little spiral-bound deal I leave by the pantry door. Nothing fancy. Just chicken scratch notes like “2 cans mushroom soup used in Sunday casserole” or “refill oats next Aldi run.”

Let the Kids Learn the System

When Wendy and Steve came out last summer with the kids, I had Luke help me restack the soup shelf. He’s nine but sharp as a tack. I showed him how to check the labels, stack with labels facing out, and rotate the older cans forward. He took to it fast. Said it was like a grocery store in Grandpa’s basement.

That’s what I want to leave ‘em with. Not just the food, but the know-how. The mindset. You don’t need to panic if you’ve got pancakes in the pantry and the water's still runnin’.

Charlotte helped me write labels for the freeze-dried fruit buckets too. Her handwriting’s a little sideways, but that just makes ‘em sweeter. I keep ‘em on the top shelf where the mice can’t reach.

What I’d Tell My Younger Self

If I could go back to the day I stood in that icy kitchen with a can of cranberry sauce and no plan, I’d tell myself a few things. First, don’t wait for a storm to get ready. Second, your wife’s gonna want real meals, not just protein bars and jerky. And third, you don’t need to do it all in one weekend.

Start with seven days. Build out meals you’d actually eat. Get some water stored, even if it’s just milk jugs filled from the tap. And if you can, learn how to cook from scratch. A bag of beans don’t mean much if you don’t know how to soften 'em without turning ‘em into gravel stew.

Next time, I’ll talk about water storage, the good, the bad, and the moldy. And I’ll tell you what happened when I tried to purify a pond with nothing but a sock and a prayer. But for now, just look in your pantry and ask yourself one question.

Could you eat for a week without the store?

That’s where it all begins.

This one’s a go-to when the lights go out and the weather’s turned mean. We’ve made this over the woodstove, on the propane camp stove, even once on a flat rock over a firepit when the barbecue grill blew into the neighbor’s pasture. It’s filling, cheap, and tastes even better the second day.

Darlene says: “If you can boil water and stir with a spoon, you can make this. Don’t overthink it.”

Ingredients for the Beans:

Instructions for the Beans:

Ingredients for the Skillet Cornbread:

Instructions for the Cornbread:

We eat the beans in bowls with cornbread crumbled on top. Sometimes I add hot sauce. Darlene adds honey.

Wendy says this is what she makes when they lose power out in Oregon, though she adds kale, which I’ve chosen to forgive her for.

It was a Wednesday in late May, the kind of sticky Missouri evening where the sky gets that weird green tint and everything goes quiet like the world’s holdin’ its breath. Darlene had just finished makin’ fried pork chops and mashed taters when my weather radio started squawkin’. Tornado warning. Not watch, not maybe, but a full-blown get in the basement right now kind of alert.

I looked out the back window and saw the wind shift like a door slammed shut. The trees started bowin’ west, not east like they had been, and the birds vanished. That’s when I knew it wasn’t just TV drama. It was the real deal.

What We Did Right

First thing, we had a plan. I don’t mean a laminated checklist from the internet. I mean Darlene and I had gone over this a dozen times over Sunday coffee. We knew where to go, what to grab, and who was gettin’ what.

She went straight for the photo box and the important docs, already packed in a tote under the hall closet. I grabbed the emergency radio, the LED lanterns, and our little bin marked “Storm Kit” with snacks, batteries, and two old-fashioned ponchos.

Down in the basement, we’ve got a little area set aside for just this sort of thing. No frills. Just two old camp chairs, a battery fan, and a shelf with water, canned goods, and a deck of cards to keep the nerves from boilin’ over. We sat down there for thirty minutes with the radio spittin’ static between updates and the wind screamin’ like a banshee up top.

The twister touched down about a mile north of us, hopped a little ridge, then tore the siding clean off the Thompson place. A few outbuildings got flattened. One neighbor lost his chicken coop. Miraculously, no one got hurt.

What I’d Do Different

I had my go-bag packed, sure. Flashlight, cash, copies of IDs, water filter, the works. But you know what I forgot? Shoes. I had my beat-up house slippers on when we ran downstairs, and if we’d lost the roof or had to walk out through glass or splinters, I’d have been hobblin’ like a fool.

Now I keep an old pair of boots by the basement door, laced up and ready. Darlene’s got sneakers down there too.

Also, I realized I didn’t have enough water down in the basement itself. Plenty in the pantry, but upstairs where it wouldn’t have done us much good if the floor had come down. Since then, I’ve stashed a flat of water bottles down there and one of those five-gallon stackable jugs too.

What We Noticed Afterward

Folks were out walkin’ the road at dawn, checking on each other. Everyone lookin’ shaken and holdin’ coffee mugs like they were life jackets. That’s when it really hit me. Most of ‘em had no clue what to do next. They were thankful to be safe, but they didn’t have a flashlight between 'em, and no one could find their insurance papers.

The Thompsons had a gas leak and didn’t even know where their shutoff valve was. I helped Jim twist it shut with a crescent wrench from my truck, and I remember thinkin’, This is exactly why we prep. Not because we’re scared, but because we don’t want to be helpless.

One Odd Thing

Wendy called from Oregon the next day in tears. She’d seen the storm on the news and thought we’d been hit. I told her we were fine and tried to make a joke about storm-proof pork chops. She wasn’t amused. But after that, she finally put together a basic storm kit for their garage and had Steve bolt a shelf to the wall for supplies.

That tornado didn’t take our house. But it sure did open some eyes.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to use the bathroom during a power outage with no running water, but let me tell you, after three days of ice storm misery back in 2002, I swore I’d never rely on the city water line again for... well, business. That storm froze everything but my eyebrows. The pipes were useless, the neighbors were haulin’ snow into their bathtubs to melt for flushing, and Darlene was using our last bucket of rainwater just to keep the dog bowl full.

That’s when I knew. Every home needs a backup bathroom plan. So here’s my go-to DIY setup that’s easy, cheap, and best of all, it works.

What You’ll Need:

How to Build It:

Where We Keep Ours

We keep one set up and ready in the corner of the basement. Got another in the outbuilding where I do most of my reloading and garden tool work. When the grandkids are visiting and a storm’s blowin’ through, we turn it into a bit of a joke. “Who gets the throne tonight?” Luke thinks it’s hilarious. Charlotte once asked if we could paint it pink.

A Few Tips I’ve Learned the Hard Way

When We Actually Used It

We lost power for four days in 2017 after a windstorm knocked a line down clear across the county. Water pressure dropped, then quit altogether. Darlene gave me the look, and I went to the basement and set up the bucket. We never missed a beat. She lit a candle in there and put a little rug under the bucket to “make it feel civilized.” I called it the Porcelain Pretender.

Neighbors came by and asked to use it. I told ‘em sure, bring your own sawdust. One fella said it was the cleanest bathroom he’d used all week.

I don’t want to rely on city pipes, septic tanks, or good luck. A five-gallon bucket and a little know-how? That’s a throne fit for a prepared man.

Hey y’all, it’s Wendy. Yes, that Wendy. Daughter of Kyle and Darlene, proud Oregonian, wife to Steve, and mom to two muddy-footed, wild-hearted kiddos named Luke and Charlotte. And Jasper the lab, who sheds like he’s on a mission.

When Dad asked if I’d write a little something for the newsletter, I laughed and said, “Sure, as long as I don’t have to talk about generators.” But then I thought about what I would want to say, and honestly, it’s this:

Growing up, I used to roll my eyes at all the prepping talk. Food buckets, fire drills, practice nights where we’d cook dinner without electricity just for fun. I’d go over to friends’ houses and they were watching TV or hanging out at the mall while I was learning how to siphon water from the rain barrel or label oxygen absorbers.

But then last winter, we got snowed in for nine days. Nine. Not a single plow came down our rural road. Steve’s truck got stuck on day two, and the grocery delivery app told us, “No available drivers.” I remember sitting at the kitchen table and thinking, Well, this is exactly what Dad always warned me about.

What Helped Us Through It

We had heat, thank goodness. Woodstove in the living room. And we had food, because I’d been slowly building a pantry over the last year, just like Dad said. Cans of soup, jars of my own chili beans, even shelf-stable milk that Charlotte said tasted “kinda like if milk took a nap.”

We also had light. A set of battery-powered puck lights that Steve stuck under the cabinets. One of those solar lanterns Dad mailed us last Christmas.

But the real MVP? That stupid little binder Dad made me when I moved out. The one labeled “Read This When Things Go Sideways.” I used to keep it under the sink, mostly out of guilt. But during that snowstorm, I pulled it out and found laminated pages on how to flush a toilet with snow, how to cook rice over a candle, and which neighbor has a chainsaw if we ever need to clear the drive.

What I’m Teaching the Kids

Charlotte now knows how to fill water jugs from the rain barrel. Luke can open a can with the hand-crank opener faster than I can. And we have a “storm box” in the hall closet with snacks, flashlights, walkie-talkies, and playing cards.

It’s not about fear. It’s about confidence. I want them to grow up like I did, knowing that we’ve got what we need and we know what to do.

Also, for the record, yes, I do can my own food now. I even tried Darlene’s green bean recipe last fall. They didn’t quite taste like hers, but Jasper seemed to approve when I dropped one on the floor.

What I Tell My Friends

When I talk to my friends about all this, I keep it simple. I say, “Don’t try to be perfect. Just think about what your family needs to get through a week without leaving the house.” I usually recommend they start with a pantry meal—something their kids will eat that doesn’t need the oven. One friend made a whole shelf called “snow snacks” and now her kids look forward to outages.

I still text Dad for advice. Last week I asked him if I could vacuum seal flour. He wrote back, “Yes, but only if you put a bay leaf in it or the bugs will treat it like a summer resort.”

So yeah. Turns out, my folks were right. But let’s keep that between us, okay? If he hears it from me, he’ll never let it go.

Alright, this week’s challenge is straight from my own playbook, and it’s one I give to folks who say, “I don’t know where to start.” Here’s where you start: build yourself one shelf that holds seven full days of meals. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks if you can swing it. No fridge, no freezer, no fancy gadgets. Just shelf-stable food your family will actually eat.

This ain’t theoretical. I want you to build it, stock it, label it, and take pride in it.

Step 1: Pick Your Spot
Could be a spare shelf in the pantry, a tote under the bed, or a set of stackable bins in the hall closet. Don’t get hung up on perfect. Just pick a spot and commit to it.

Step 2: Write Down Your Meals
Seven breakfasts
Seven lunches
Seven dinners
Snacks and drinks

Don’t overcomplicate. Here’s what my 7-day meal shelf looked like when I started mine:

Breakfasts:

Lunches:

Dinners:

Snacks:

Drinks:

Step 3: Buy What’s Missing
You probably already have half this stuff. Take stock, make a list, and next grocery run, fill in the blanks. Don’t break the bank. Just add a few extras each week until you’ve got your shelf full.

Step 4: Label and Rotate
Use a Sharpie and write the date you bought each item. This helps with rotation. Every time you use something off the shelf, replace it the next time you shop. First in, first out.

Step 5: Practice
Try livin’ off your shelf for one weekend. No cheating with the fridge. This is how you find out what works and what needs fixin’. If the kids refuse to eat something, swap it out. If you’re still hungry after dinner, add bigger portions.

Bonus Tip:
Wendy keeps her 7-day shelf in the garage and calls it “The Snow Shelf.” She even printed a little sign for it. Steve thought it was a joke at first. Then the power went out for 14 hours and guess who was eatin’ canned ravioli by lantern light and sayin’ thank you?

This challenge ain’t about stockpiling till your floorboards groan. It’s about being able to say, “We’re good for the week,” no matter what happens outside your front door.

So go build that shelf. Take a photo of it if you want. Darlene says I should start a scrapbook. I told her I’d think about it.