Right now, I could probably go a couple weeks, but some of the meals wouldn't be pretty.
DH thinks he needs bananas on hand at all times, and will only eat a certain kind of bread. So someone has to go to the store pretty often for little things like that.
Depends on what the items are. Milk and bread-weekly. If a storm or other disruptive event, I can make bread or at least, flour tortillas. I don't have a cow or goat, so I would miss my milk. I never buy one of things that are non perishable. If I need one, I get 3-4. I could go without a grocery store probably a couple of months if I skipped the perishables. If there was no electricity, then the freezer would melt and I would feed the neighborhood. I like half gallon glass canning jars. They are good for storing rice, beans, pasta and dry goods. I have squirrel DNA.
I think this is one of those "need" vs "want" questions. We could possibly go for two months without a trip to the store. But will we? My new root cellar/storage room/wine cellar has enough essentials down there to last easily 60 days and maybe much more if we had to shift into survival mode. But I LOVE POTATO CHIPS!!! Fresh potato chips!!! Lays potato chips!!! Chips, chips, gimme chips!!! Oh! Excuse me. I lost my mind for a minute.
Quite a while, at least several weeks. I have an extra freezer stocked with meats, flour, rice, tomato sauces, etc. My pantry is pretty full also. I tend to buy a lot when there's a good sale and stock up.
@Smiles Jr. for you it's chips, for me it's brownies. I keep cocoa powder in the pantry-can make from scratch when I don't have a box to scratch the mix out of.
I could go several weeks, but like Bay, I need my milk. Actually I need my half~n~half. Because without half~n~half my coffee has no reason to exist. And I like my coffee.
And like So Lucky also said, a lot of those meals would not be pretty, but we wouldn't starve. I have about 50 pounds of dried beans and about 20 of rice, so there would be all the variables of beans and rice and rice and beans.
So, no fresh veggies and fresh fruit - meaning out of storage or being shipped 1,000+ miles? There would be enough veggies out of the greenhouse for about a week of stir-fries.
Freezer and kitchen shelves with no fresh food - unless I kill a squirrel ... probably over 2 months. At some point, I'd have to finish off the boxes of cold cereal. Does soymilk come powdered? Surely, it must!
Fortunately for the budget, all the rice and pasta in this house isn't very expensive and cheaper in quantity.
Steve as it is, this time of year, at the market for "fresh" produce and milk every 5 to 7 days
I could fill stomachs for a couple of months or longer, but it would not be fun without milk, fresh food, eggs, butter. I would run out of meat really fast.
If we had power, several months. If not, half of it would be lost when the freezer defrosted after running out of gas for the generator. (I wouldn't want to think of a situation where the power would be out for months though, would you?) I've been trying to can more meat and things that I would otherwise prefer to cook from frozen. It is more reassuring, knowing that it won't spoil. It is handier also, to have it already cooked. I try to keep powdered milk on hand. That is something I would miss...milk. We go through 4 gallons a week here. Savannah would be lost without bananas. I have never seen a child so obsessed with bananas. As long as the chickens had something to eat, we would still have eggs. After that we would just have to eat the chickens. And eventually your meals would get very boring. We would eat a lot of beans, LOL.