Why do people buy milk and bread is snow is predicted?

[prncess674]

ummm-quite frankly if I'm going to be stuck in my house for days forget the milk and bread...I'm stocking up on wine and cheese!

I live in a condo building and during the last "snowpocalypse" I assume everyone kept warm by drinking! We have recycle bins on each floor and they were literally overflowing with empty wine and beer bottles.

It works great! DS in lactose intolerant, so when I can find his milk on sale I stock up and freeze for later. I get milk in paper cartons, which expand just fine. If you get milk in a jug you will need to pour about a glass worth just to be safe (although some people say the plastic expands just fine. Make a note of how many days till the milk reaches the expiration date before you freeze it...that is how long you have to use it once you thaw it out. You will want to shake it up before you use it the first time after thawing.

I freeze unopened plastic jugs of milk. The jug starts to protrude, but after the milk is thawed it pops back into shape.

 

[dvcgirl]

Dh and I always chuckle about this....and it's true. People in NJ have always done this...they buy milk, bread and eggs.

We figure that everyone has a "french toast party" whenever it snows....

After the storm we had here the day after Christmas....the worst storm in years and years....now, if a flurry is predicted, the storms are slammed!

Crazy...

 

[jmpellet]

Shout out to the other poster from Southeastern MA!! I think its a Northeast thing just like the running "school's canceled in Foster-Gloucester." This is a town in western RI that would cancel nearly half the year (well it seemed like it) back in the 70s! Milk and Bread Alert -- they would say on the TV!

 

[mickey grandmom]

My mother always told me If you have bread,eggs,and milk you can always eat.
You can make a lot of different things with those staples.

 

[sissy_ib]

I posted this on another thread, but anyone living in north/central Alabama in 1993 remembers our blizzard. 18 inches doesn't sound like much, but we lost quite a number of trees, power was out for 7 days and a number of people froze to death. Roads were impassable for several days. We did run out of bread and milk during that time too.

Actually 18 inches does sound like a lot. That's a foot and a half of snow. In a place that probably doesn't have many snow plows or salt trucks. We laugh up north when the trucks come out before it starts to snow, but that is how we can function when we get snow and ice.

 

[EKW]

Um.if it's that cold out, you can just set the stuff from your fridge out in your garage, near the door. It's sure to be 41 or below unless you have a heated garage.

Why do they buy it? They don't want to risk getting in a car accident, or not having milk to give the kiddies, if they can't get out for a day or two.

Personally, when I lived in MO I tended to be shopping for cans of sterno and things you don't have to cook. Longest we went was 8 days without power during an ice storm in '02...and a week without water another time in '04 or '05.

SO glad to be back in Colorado where the infrastructure is designed to deal with the snow. In four years of being back here we haven't been without power once!!! I don't think we ever went 6 months in MO without the power being out for at least the afternoon or night!

 

[Elfstar]

I have a gas range in my kitchen so, even if the power goes out, I can cook as long as I have matches or a candle lighter. I made beef stroganoff in a power outage once for DH - boy, was he impressed! I also have a battery powered lantern as well as a propane one so I can see to function just about normally.

 

[Kycha]

Actually, I can give you a better reason. It started in the Northeast when they had some really really bad blizzards back in the 70's. I can name one storm in particular in 1978. So little snow was predicted that everyone went to work and school and basically went about life as usual. Things got bad and everyone headed right home. Well, the storms got so, so bad (in the storm I'm thinking of over 4ft of snow fell in our town) and lasted so long (3 days or so) that nothing could get in or out (the highways were parking lots with people freezing to death because they were snowed into their cars) and people who did get home were trapped in their homes for days - I can remember that after the storm stopped you were not allowed to drive for a week. People were skiing or walking to the stores to get food. Well, everyone ran out of milk and bread and eggs and... including the stores because nothing was moving. The big thing about this is that the storms were only predicted to last a little while with only a few inches of snow so now whenever snow comes people around here remember those storms and what happened and always make sure they are stocked up. IMO the remembered paranoia seems to have spread...

This!

Op, if you've ever walked 2+ miles through 2+ feet of snow to get to the grocery store, you'd understand why I stock up on perishables now. DH and I had to do this after a snow storm that caught us unprepared in PA in the 90's. We headed out to the store with a homemade sled made of plywood and 2x4's. There was so much snow, the plows/equipment couldn't keep up with it. Everybody had to walk in the road because people were having a difficult time digging out the sidewalks. The Governor called a state of emergency, so we couldn't drive even if we wanted to. The one convenience store in town was completely bare. We had no choice but walk to the nearest grocery store. Fortunately, because of the State of Emer, there wasn't a lot of traffice. We ended up ditching the homemade sled when we got to the store(it was really heavy) and bought a real sled. That made transporting everything so much easier.

Now I always have milk and bread on had in the freezer. You can also freeze Egg Beaters. As soon as I get some decent coupons, I'm gonna stock on those too.

 

[LCARDVERO]

Funny story about Blizzard of 1978. I live in Mass too and was in HS during the blizzard and made sure I got stuck at a friend's house. The National Guard would not let my father on the road to get me.
I hope he had his milk and bread!
lol

 

[momof1princess]

actually, in my little town in northeast alabama, during the blizzard of '93, we got WAY more than 18 inches. it was just short of being waist deep on my DH, and he's 5'11", so between 2 and 3 feet, i'd guess. we had no power for a week, no water for 5 days and no phone for 3 days. it was awful. i know those of you up north are probably used to that, but for us, it was a rarity, and we really weren't prepared. no one was. the state was really caught off guard.

 

[summerrluvv]

I do this because we drink a lot of milk and if we are snowed in, we can't get out to get it My kids also eat a lot of sandwiches

 

[Colleen27]

While I am no longer in Michigan, I did learn to drive on the snow and ice so I have no real fear of going out in what we get in Kentucky. One of the first bad snow storms we had here was no big deal to me but some idiot was driving the wrong way on the road I was driving on. This particular road is 2 lanes in each direction with the directions separated by a grass median. I was driving south on the southbound side and he was driving north on the southbound side. It has been funny watching some of the people drive here. Last school year we had a little bit of snow which made for some slick driving and people were still trying to wait and hit their brakes. I have to say I honestly hate driving here with some of these people.

I'm sure I'd feel the same way. Driving on snow and ice is a learned skill, and most southerners never have enough opportunity to learn to do it well. A friend of mine lives in the Atlanta area and the stories she tells about the drivers/road conditions after even a minor snowfall make me think if we ever moved south snow would rank right up there with New Years Eve on the list of times I stay home to avoid the other drivers!

 

[jmpellet]

Funny story about Blizzard of 1978. I live in Mass too and was in HS during the blizzard and made sure I got stuck at a friend's house. The National Guard would not let my father on the road to get me.
I hope he had his milk and bread!
lol

I could jump off the roof of my house into the drifts!!

 

[jcemom]

We have enough food in the pantry. We won't starve if we can't get out for a week. We might not love cold canned food, cereal, crackers and poptarts every day, lol. But we won't starve.

 

[FoundMyPrince]

The news reports are calling for 6+ inches of snow here tomorrow....that's a lot of snow for here (I haven't seen 18 inches since I was a little kid!!). I made an extra grocery run this afternoon...milk, eggs, bread (and a few other items). If we're stuck at home for a few days we wouldn't be able to get out to get extra milk for breakfast, we can make sandwiches for lunch with the bread, and eggs are just a quick little meal if we cannot think of what else to whip up in a hurry.

And, yes, french toast is sounding rather yummy right now!

 

[kmccain]

Where i grew up in Northeast Pa the closest store was over 10 miles away. I always figured that was why people stocked up. We were days before we could get out. No one had 4 wheel drive either! The closest thing we had were chains for the tires. I think we stocked up because we had to!

I remember 1 year we were without power from Christmas until New Years due to an ice storm.

Ahh those were the days............

 

[C.Ann]

Actually, I can give you a better reason. It started in the Northeast when they had some really really bad blizzards back in the 70's. I can name one storm in particular in 1978. So little snow was predicted that everyone went to work and school and basically went about life as usual. Things got bad and everyone headed right home. Well, the storms got so, so bad (in the storm I'm thinking of over 4ft of snow fell in our town) and lasted so long (3 days or so) that nothing could get in or out (the highways were parking lots with people freezing to death because they were snowed into their cars) and people who did get home were trapped in their homes for days - I can remember that after the storm stopped you were not allowed to drive for a week. People were skiing or walking to the stores to get food. Well, everyone ran out of milk and bread and eggs and... including the stores because nothing was moving. The big thing about this is that the storms were only predicted to last a little while with only a few inches of snow so now whenever snow comes people around here remember those storms and what happened and always make sure they are stocked up. IMO the remembered paranoia seems to have spread...

I live in the northeast - and I was an adult with small children during the Blizzard of '78.. I remember quite a few blizzards - with basically no warning - where people weren't allowed on the road for days at a time.. Predicting the weather tends to be right up there with fortune telling - LOL.. So many times we've heard "2 feet" and ended up with a few flakes.. Other times they would predict "1 to 2 inches" and we would end up with 26+ inches! Most people figure it's better to be safe than sorry..

I've never really understood the eggs - but milk and bread? Definitely!! If need be, the milk can be put outside to stay cold - and there are endless varieties of sandwiches you can make if you keep a few staples on hand.. And of course there's everyone's favorite - cereal!

I think it all boils down to how much faith you have in weather predictions.. My mom spent my entire childhood drilling into my head - "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.." - so whenever there was (is) any chance of a storm at all, I made (make) sure we were (are) prepared..

 

[edk35]

I live in MD and we get snow every year and last year we got just under 100 inches where we live..... people HERE do that. They can forecast 6 or 8 inches and people panic.

My parents live in Dothan AL. Just spoke with them a while ago about the weather.

 

[SeansMom]

I live in Ontario, so snow is a common occurance...we just set things outside in the snow if the power goes out...

Lol...I was thinking along these lines, too. How would anything go bad if it's so cold out you can just set things outside or in a garage, shop, or other outbuilding (or even your porch with a cooler full of snow?)

Bread=easy P.B sandwhiches in the dark.

Mild=nutrition in a glass, and it goes good with P.B. in the dark!

 

[momof1princess]

well, it was sleeting earlier, but now it's turned to snow! and wow, it is really coming down out there! everyone in the snowfall area please stay home and be safe!