March 8, 2020

A Vegan Guide: How To Prepare Your Pantry For Coronavirus

Corona Crisis for Vegans

Coronavirus, Coronavirus, Coronavirus

If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard the word Coronavirus way to many times in the media lately. My favorite newspaper puts it quite eloquently: What we know and what we don’t know about Coronavirus … Followed by a long list of things, we don’t know (apparently).

I do know one thing and that is that I know a person who was put in quarantine for two weeks. Her co-worker got Coronavirus. And that was when it hit me and I went to the grocery store with lots of empty bags and bought a lot pantry preps.

Vegan Coronavirus Crisis Shopping

If you’re preparing for food supply shortages or a local lockdown, the good news is that it’s remarkably easy for vegans. The most convenient, inexpensive, and imperishable pantry items are nearly all vegan.

Stocking up on grocery is the way to go. First, it ensures you’ll have enough to eat if panic-buying leaves your local supermarket’s shelves bare. Second, it keeps you from making repeated visits to supermarkets, and thereby dramatically cuts your risk catching the virus. Government may not shut down supermarkets during a lockdown (when they should imho) to avoid widespread panic among their citizens. While food orders online save you the trip to the supermarket, they still mean that someone needs to pack and deliver your food. For the sake of everyone’s health, the least people engaged in any sort of business activity, the better.

When COVID-19 started to outbreak in Asia, I decided to buy a couple weeks’s worth of food for the family so I could keep clear of grocery stores. I aimed for lots calories and as much protein as cheaply as possible, using foods that don’t require refrigeration.

It’s not the worst idea to be prepared for the possibility of a COVID-19 outbreak in your community.
I find my Vegan Meal Prepper Pantry List sums of the food part perfectly.
Just make sure to double or even triple staple foods you go through quickly. For our house, I got a couple of extra loads of
1. millet, rice, spelt flour, wheat flours, oats
2. nuts, nuts, nuts and some more nuts. Keep in mind that nuts are amazingly versatile. You can grind them and have things like garbanzo flour or almond meal, too.
Seeds are awesome to make your own milk. They don’t take up less space than nuts and are also less expensive. If we were to stay in quarantine, we would drink sesame milk and sunflower seed milk everyday.
Get beans & legumes cooked in cans or jars. While we normally prefer to soak and cook dried beans and legumes, we opted for the cooked version this time. While for Coronavirus crisis it shouldn’t matter, it’s recommended to have already cooked staple foods for emergency situations. Imagine no electricity for days or poisoned tap water and dried beans will not help you feed your family.
Vegetables in jars and cans. Not my favorite items but if I wasn’t allowed to leave my house anymore, you would find new recipes on here using canned beetroot, corn, green beans, peas, artichokes and carrots on the blog soon.
Canned bread was a thing when I was little, but it looks like it ceased to exist. I stocked up my freezer with lots of these Sunflower Seed Toasties as well as bread from the bakery.
Food remedies. Stock up on whatever your sickbed foods are.
1. (Dried) ginger, dried curcuma, vegetable broth for colds and the flu.
2. Psyllium husk fibre, chia seeds, flaxseed for constipation.
3. Spirulina for iron deficiency (especially important if you’re pregnant)
Make sure you get all the important vitamins for vegans.
1. Stock up on vitamin B12 pills/toothpaste – whatever you typically use
2. Get Vitamin D drops/pills. Vitamin D is the sunlight vitamin. If you’re stuck in quarantine for god know how ever long, you might fall short on Vitamin D.
3. Vegemite is an excellent source of B-vitamins and a great bread spread that doesn’t spoil fast.