Meal Planning for a Nuclear Winter

'Rupert' is a prepper. He's a survivalist. I can’t tell you who Rupert is, only that we’re close, and that he has two machetes in his home in case of the collapse of law and order. We’ve had heated disputes about survivalism before; I’m suspicious of the YouTubers stirring up anxiety about the impending nuclear winter, or the electrical blackout we’ll have to face when a solar flare blitzes the National Grid. It’s not that this stuff couldn’t happen, I just don’t think society will benefit from panicking any more than we already are. Besides, the occasional overlap in survivalist and neo-Confederate thought makes me a bit queasy.

For months, Rupert has been urging me to fill my empty kitchen cupboards with preserved food, enough to get through the first days of disaster. I’ve resisted, out of nothing but an unwillingness to concede any ground to the survivalist movement. We have stubbornness in common, me and Rupert. Still, it’s a lot easier to argue against illegal weaponry than it is tinned milk, and I find myself thinking of the great Edinburgh winter of 2010/2011, trudging to Scotmid through knee-deep snow only to find bare shelves.

I wonder if my ancestors are watching me now, shaking their heads, as I fail to fulfil the basic survival requirement of planning for the lean months. Maybe it’s the first nip of frost in the air that nudges me over the edge, but I finally agree, and am faced with the question: How does one plan a meal for the (nuclear) winter?

Step 1: Carbs are your friends

Of all the starchy things you could base your meal on, rice has got to be the best. Half a cup of it will fill an empty belly, and if you need to make it stretch further, you can feed twice as many people with that amount by making congee (savoury rice porridge). Picking up a 10kg bag of rice from the Chinese supermarket in town, upon arriving home with dead arms half an hour later, I decide to do the rest of this stock-up with the help of home delivery and the internet (while they still exist).

Once I settle into the online shop, I realise I’m enjoying myself. I feel like I’m in an Enid Blyton book, packing my jam sandwiches and ‘lashings’ of ginger beer, ready for adventures. Cheery, apocalyptic adventures. Three kilos of pasta, 12 tins of legumes (black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas) and a bag of dry lentils all go in the basket – the kind of things you'd eat anyway over the course of a winter, to bulk out chilis and stews.

A quick note on bread: pfft. Don’t even bother. It’s bulky, will go mouldy before you can get through it, and the vacuum-sealed bake-at-home variety won’t be much use to you when your gas and electricity is cut off post-annihilation. In fact, now may be a good time to figure out what you’ll be cooking on once the grid is down. A camping stove is probably a good bet (don’t forget the extra gas canisters, oil and water).

Step 2: Friends are also your friends

Do you live in an expensive city? If so, it’s likely that you have extra people living in your cupboards/under the stairs/in between the walls to make rent affordable. The hard truth of the apocalypse is that, when the shit hits the fan, you’re going to have to feed these people too.

You might not feel like it, especially as they’re going to smirk at you when they see you hauling your tins of canned tomatoes up the stairs, but you will feed them. What good is surviving Armageddon if you haven’t got friends to help you hunt rats and burn chairs? All this is to say, while you might order enough to feed yourself for a few months, it will actually only be enough for a few weeks once you factor in all the pals you’d quite like as company in the dark days ahead.

Step 3: Fat

It is with great satisfaction that a kilo of peanut butter drops into the online basket. If you’ve ever taken a jar of peanut butter with you on a camping trip and felt the joy of dipping a finger into it after an unsatisfying dinner of dried soup mix, you’ll agree that this is indispensable.

A couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter is also a delicious way to transform a plain tomato-based, root veg stew into something more interesting. Cured meat like chorizo adds fat and flavour too. My computer is inhabited by a spirit and adds five bars of cheap, own-brand dark chocolate to my basket while I’m not looking.

Step 4: Fermentation

It’s tricky to take vegetables with you to the other side, and while you’ve seen The Martian and now know how to grow potatoes, it’s going to take a little while before your crops come through. In the meantime, why not consider what fermentation can do for you?

Sauerkraut and kimchi will keep forever if they’re sealed, and if you have a few tablespoons of salt, sugar and rice vinegar, you can turn your carrots and cucumbers into an approximation of Vietnamese pickled vegetables with the addition of some warm water and a few jars. Either way, you can save these sour garnishes for treat days, as a welcome break from flaccid tinned green beans (a necessary evil in apocalyptic times).

Step 5: Booze

Some preppers recommend keeping bottles of high-proof spirits in your store cupboard, to use as currency for trading with other survivors, as antiseptics for minor wounds, or just to liven up another damp evening in the bunker. If you think you can keep alcohol in the house without drinking it, this might be a prudent choice. If you’re not sure you can be trusted and don’t want to part with the money, you could also just wait until the next party you host and round up the dregs of the cheap vodka people bring over. Satisfying my inner miser, I choose the latter.

Early on Monday morning, the buzzer goes. Expecting it, I run down the stairs to meet the delivery man, and we haul the tins up together. I wonder if he thinks I’m crazy. Perhaps he gets this all the time. Side-eyeing him and looking for facial clues, the conclusion comes that, of course, he doesn’t care. He has places to get to and things to get done; the world carries on for another day. In the spirit of things, I pack the food away, immediately eat one of the bars of emergency chocolate, and carry on with my life while it's still there.

A Survival Recipe – Ginger & Shiitake Congee

Ingredients
Any rice except basmati, rinsed (½ cup per person ideally but a little goes a long way)
Water (2.5 cups per cup of rice)
Thumb of ginger, grated
Dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes
Century egg
Pork floss

Bring the water (and the mushroom liquid) to the boil in a heavy pot. Add rice, lower to a simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the mushrooms and ginger and simmer for a further 30 minutes. Serve with sesame oil and white pepper. For an extra traditional experience, hunt down century eggs and pork floss in your local Asian supermarket, both of which will keep nicely in a dry store cupboard as the apocalypse rages around you.