Category: Food & Cooking
By the second evening of a power cut, the novelty of eating biscuits for dinner will probably have worn off. Someone will want a proper meal. The children may be asking for their usual breakfast. And whoever normally does the cooking will be looking through the cupboards, trying to make something work.
A little planning now can make those moments much easier.
You can put together three days of meals using ordinary supermarket food, with enough variety to keep everyone reasonably happy. The useful question is: what would your household actually eat if you couldn’t cook or rely on the fridge?
Here’s a practical starting point.
Choose food that is ready when you need it
For this plan, every ingredient should be safe to store at room temperature before opening, and suitable to eat without cooking.
Check the packaging. A product being in a tin or pouch doesn’t automatically mean you can eat it cold. If the instructions require cooking, choose something else for this part of your supplies.
Cooked tinned beans, lentils, fish and meat can give you plenty of options. Crackers, crispbread and oatcakes provide something substantial alongside them. Norway’s civil protection agency suggests crispbread with long-lasting toppings and salads made from cooked tinned pulses as meals that need no heat. DSB guidance
Dry pasta and rice can stay in your wider food reserve, but these meals need to work without a saucepan.
A simple three-day menu
Use this as a menu for adults and older children, then adjust it to your household’s usual appetites and dietary needs. Choose ready-to-eat versions of the foods listed.
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Evening meal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Breakfast cereal with a small carton of UHT milk or a suitable long-life alternative, plus tinned fruit. | Crispbread with tinned mackerel or another fish you enjoy, with sweetcorn alongside. | Chickpea salad with tinned vegetables, a little olive oil and dried herbs. Serve with crackers. |
| Day 2 | Oatcakes with a suitable nut or seed butter, plus fruit and a small long-life milk drink. | Tinned cooked meat with crispbread and vegetables. For a meat-free option, mash ready-to-eat beans with a little oil and seasoning to make a spread. | Cooked tinned lentils mixed with tuna and sweetcorn, with crackers or oatcakes alongside. |
| Day 3 | Breakfast cereal with long-life milk or a suitable alternative, plus tinned or dried fruit. | Crispbread with a suitable cupboard-stored spread, plus a ready-to-eat bean salad. | Mixed-bean and vegetable salad with ready-to-eat tinned potatoes, a little oil and your preferred seasoning. |
Open the ingredients at mealtime and prepare only what you can eat then if you have no safe refrigeration.
The meals are deliberately simple. Most involve opening, draining and mixing. A little seasoning can make them much more enjoyable, so include flavours your household already likes.
Swap freely. If nobody eats mackerel now, an emergency is unlikely to change their minds. Repeating a favourite lunch is perfectly reasonable.
For balance, include starchy foods for energy, some protein, fruit or vegetables, and suitable dairy foods or alternatives across the day. Every individual meal doesn’t need to achieve a perfect balance. NHS Eatwell Guide
Turn the menu into a shopping list
Start with what you already have. Then fill the gaps in these groups:
- Breakfasts: cereal, oatcakes, suitable spreads and small cartons of long-life milk or an alternative.
- Lunches and dinners: crispbread or crackers, ready-to-eat tinned fish or meat, cooked beans, chickpeas and lentils.
- Fruit and vegetables: tinned fruit, suitable dried fruit, sweetcorn and other ready-to-eat tinned vegetables.
- Flavour: a little oil, dried herbs and cupboard-stored seasonings, following their storage instructions.
- Between meals: familiar snacks such as suitable cereal bars, biscuits or nuts for people who can safely eat them.
Add a manual tin opener, bowls, spoons and any other utensils these meals need. Try the opener on the tins you buy; finding that it’s awkward to use in poor light is useful information now.
Keep drinking water alongside the food, with additional safe water for cleaning hands and utensils. Meals that need no cooking still need clean preparation.
You can build this gradually during ordinary shopping. Finland’s preparedness guidance recommends keeping familiar foods and replacing them as you use them, so the reserve stays part of everyday life. 72 Hours guidance
Work out how much your household will eat
Three days means three breakfasts, three lunches and three evening meals per person, plus snacks and drinks.
For someone living alone, that’s nine individual meals. For four people, it’s 36.
Those numbers help organise the plan, but they don’t tell you how many tins to buy. Pack sizes vary, and a suggested serving on a label may be smaller than the portion someone normally eats.
Write down how much you would actually serve at each meal. Include the crackers, crispbread or potatoes alongside the toppings and salads. A small tin of fish shared between several people needs enough other food to make lunch satisfying.
If you have teenagers, account for their usual appetites. If someone needs help opening packaging or preparing food, choose products they can manage or make that help part of the household plan.
Think carefully about opened packs
A large carton of UHT milk keeps well in the cupboard while sealed. Once opened, its storage requirements change.
The same applies to many tins, pouches and spreads. Long-life before opening does not mean safe on the kitchen counter afterwards.
Follow the label. Official food safety guidance says unused contents from an opened tin should be transferred to a covered container and refrigerated. Food storage guidance
If safe refrigeration is unavailable, buy pack sizes your household can finish at one sitting. Smaller milk cartons and tins can be particularly useful for someone living alone. Larger households may comfortably finish a larger pack together.
Don’t build tomorrow’s lunch around leftovers that need chilling.
Make room for everyone’s needs
Check allergies and dietary requirements before buying, including ingredients in snack bars, spreads and mixed salads. Keep to established dietary advice for anyone whose health condition affects what they can eat.
Young children may need different textures and portions. Whole nuts must not be given to children under five because of the choking risk; nut butter should be spread thinly on food rather than offered on its own. NHS guidance for young children
Babies need their own feeding plan. For formula-fed babies, the UK government recommends ready-to-feed formula as an emergency option when boiling water may be difficult. You still need suitable, safely cleaned and sterilised feeding equipment. Plan this before a disruption, with your health visitor if needed. UK Prepare guidance and NHS sterilising guidance
Include three days of your pets’ usual food and their own water allowance too.
Try one meal before you buy three days’ worth
Choose a lunch from the plan and serve it on an ordinary day.
You’ll soon find out whether the portions are generous enough, whether the packaging is manageable, and whether anyone actually likes the bean salad. Change what doesn’t work.
Then keep a copy of your menu with the supplies. When the power is out and everyone is hungry, being able to point to dinner already planned is a small but welcome comfort.
