Key Points:
- Comfort foods can help ease your stress during rough times
- While not considered “life sustaining” foods, we consider them “sanity-sustaining” foods. This is especially important if you have young children. A few normal foods or delicious snacks now and then can really help a difficult situation.
- Our advice to use what you store, and store what you eat applies to comfort foods as well. Try a new thing each week or month. Some of our ideas may not be your normal treats but they are great food storage items.
Comfort Food Ideas:
(Items with an * have recently been added to the list!)
- Home-made popcorn in a pot (recipe coming soon)
- Mashed potatoes with instant potatoes and GRAVY
- Hard Candy
- Chocolate
- Pudding (made using dry milk)
- Granola bars
- Fruit snacks for children
- Chicken noodle soup in a can (for if you get sick)
- Kool-aid
- Condiments (ketchup, mustard, bbq sauce, salsa, pickles – store a spare or two of each)
- Spices (inventory what spices you use and store an extra one or two of each)
- No-bake cookies ingredients (recipe coming soon)
- Rice Krispie Treats *
- Macaroni & cheese dinners *
- Chocolate and butterscotch baking chips for homemade cookies or snacking *
- Peppermint tea bags *
- Ovaltine *
- Danish dessert (w/frozen raspberries) *
- Busy Day Soup (this is a meal, but it’s dinner comfort food & easy to make) *
- Homemade peach pie *
- Homemade cinnamon rolls *
These are all just ideas- Obviously they aren’t all that healthy, necessary to sustain life, or totally “food storage” types of foods – but hey, everyone needs a little comfort food sometimes!
Do you have any more ideas to share? If so leave a comment below and we will add them to the list!
Tools From Our Sister Sites at FunWithFoodStorage.NET:
TheFoodStorageShopper.NET: Training Page on Buying Comfort Foods
Online Resources:
Food Storage Diva – Trick for storing comfort food items for longer term
Comfort Foods Article – Great ideas for comfort foods from Emergency Essentials
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Another comfort for children would be to have a few lightweight paperback books and coloring books and crayons packed in the 72 hour kit if you have one.
Favorites in my family: macaroni & cheese dinners, chocolate and butterscotch baking chips for homemade cookies- or just snacking out of the bag, peppermint tea bags, and Ovaltine.
I think this step is an important one. The last thing you want to do in an emergency is feed your kids food they have not tried and may not like. They want the ‘comfort’ of what they know and like.
Of course the more you expand your recipies and use your storage they more likely they WILL be used to these things.
For 72 hr kits I pack foods I KNOW they will want to eat.
And don’t we all feel that way?
I just treat this as part of storage, not extras.
Thank you for sharing your ideas! After looking at other food storage sites I’ve gotta tell you that your site is a breath of fresh air! Your tips are friendly and do-able.
My Comfort Food Suggestions
* Danish dessert (w/frozen raspberries)
* Milk Chocolate Chips
* Busy Day Soup (the recipe is at: http://www.eaglescoutscarves.com/camp_recipes/busydaysoup.htm) – while this is a meal – it’s dinner comfort food and easy to make.
PS – I saw your twitter note, that you’re LDS, but gearing your site for everyone. I’m not LDS. Thank you for including everyone!
[...] is definitely the ultimate Comfort Food. In times of love and romance such as Valentine’s Day, or in times of distress (whether it be [...]
I’ve a recipe for a really great chocolate cake that is made entirely from food storage items (no need for eggs or milk!)… it’s very hard to feel like you’re eating “storage” when there’s chocolate cake involved!
One of our favorite treats is a huge bowl of stove-popped popcorn drizzled with honey and sprinkled with salt. It’s just enough sweet and crunch and salt to satisfy most treat cravings.
I honestly put comfort food and comfort food skills fairly high up on the list. When we’ve been living off our storage, it was an incredible thing to know how to make a fantastic peach pie, for instance, or homemade cinnamon rolls.
I live on an island north of Seattle, and power outages are fairly frequent. Most are a few minutes or hours, but several years ago we were without power for three or four days during unseasonably cold weather, with snow on the ground. Believe me, this was proof that comfort food in an emergency is a necessity, not an optional luxury!
The comfort food I'm storing includes cooked, packaged bacon, spiced cider, olives, dried butter and, of course, chocolate.
Does anyone have any experience with the Saladmaster pans? I remember years ago attending a demonstration, and the part that appealed to me was the lady put half a box of cake mix in a pan, added a splash of water and nothing else and 5 minutes later a perfect cake layer came out. I am wondering if you can use them on a camping stove, seems like a nice thing to keep extra of would be packaged cake mix since I use it anyway and no eggs would be needed. I sure can't afford the set but was thinking maybe that one pan on ebay
I've never heard of them, I'll have to check it out!
I love bittersweet baking chocolate – I keep a stash in my bed room for emergency's. It's the only place my kids don't find it.
For some weird reason I find chips & salsa to be comfort food so I always have a stash of that around. Also, the salsa can be added to rice &/or canned chicken or beef for something different. I know store bought salsa is expensive – every time I make mine from scratch it's just aweful though.
We've been living off our food storage for over a year (layoff) & I don't even know how to eat “normally” anymore! This the first month in ages we have a budget surplus & all I can think of is squirreling away food.
I love the honey popcorn honey idea. Sounds great. Thanks for the tip.
Where can I purchase canned powdered milk? I live in the Northeast and its even difficult to find Carnation in the box.
Is Morning Moo an example of “Milk Alternative”? Would u recommend this to have on hand for drinking purposes?
Is it possible to find whole powdered milk?
I apologize for all the questions; however, food storage is unheard of in my area. I do not know a single person here who stock up on anything. I recently purcased 2 55-gal water barrels & my husband is concerned I have a mental disorder! lol
Morning Moo is a milk alternative. We don't really recommend it as it doesn't contain the same nutrients as regular powdered milk, and in an emergency situation you would want the NUTRIENTS more than the good flavor. If you family just loves the taste and wants to drink milk instead of water or something, then it's not a BAD thing to store. But we really like to stick with the regular stuff. If you want to purchase powdered milk in cans there are several places online or you could look for an LDS cannery in your area. Look through http://thefoodstorageshopper.net for some ideas on how to shop for it!
Morning Moo is a milk alternative. We don't really recommend it as it doesn't contain the same nutrients as regular powdered milk, and in an emergency situation you would want the NUTRIENTS more than the good flavor. If you family just loves the taste and wants to drink milk instead of water or something, then it's not a BAD thing to store. But we really like to stick with the regular stuff. If you want to purchase powdered milk in cans there are several places online or you could look for an LDS cannery in your area. Look through http://thefoodstorageshopper.net for some ideas on how to shop for it!
Do you have tips or recipes for pudding with powdered milk? I mixed up some regular Jello pudding using the rehydrated dried non-fat milk and it wasn't great. Would love tips!
I made pudding with my powdered milk and it turned out great! Maybe you could try different brands of milk. Or try using twice the amount of milk powder to make it a bit thicker and more like a 2% consistency instead of skim.