What an eight-hour power cut taught me about food stockpiling

Blue cheese and sardines can only get you so far. What you need in an emergency is a deep pantry • Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast I’m writing this from the North Sea coast, where I’m in a semi-enforced lockdown at my in-laws’ house. It’s only temporary.

Like most of the UK, storms Austen and Boelo hit us in quick succession, and we’ve been in and out of power cuts ever since. We were in the kitchen when the first storm hit and we slipped into an eight-hour power cut. Of course we didn’t know it would be eight hours at the time, so you can only imagine the panic-raid lunch of all the things we worried might go off: blue cheese and cold chicken on semi-defrosted bread; fridge-cold stewed apple with warming yoghurt; and, finally, a thumb of goat’s cheese…