Time to buy a year's supply of cream of mushroom soup, other pantry items

    I stumbled across Campbell's Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Chicken soups this week for 69 cents a can. I bought 10 cans of each. I still have some left from last year when I stocked up at 60 cents per can.
    I'll be watching the price. If it drops some more I'll probably buy another 10-20 cans of each.
    Thanksgiving and Christmas are a great time to stock up on these two items, as well as Pet Milk, sometimes sweetened condensed milk, and a few more items used in holiday cooking. Grocery stores heavily discount these items in order to attract customers doing their holiday shopping.
    One need but read the news from the northeast to know that disasters can happen and food supplies can be disrupted. One way to plan for these disasters is to buy a bunch of expensive freeze-dried food and such. The other way is just to stock up of groceries when they are on sale.
    A few years ago I actually bought 50 cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. It was only 50 cents a can and I figured we would eventually eat through it. Over the course of a year or so we did, and saved a bit of money, too. When I found a good quality pasta on sale for 50 cents a pound a while back I bought 50 pounds. I don't know that I'll ever see Ragu spaghetti sauce at 88 cents again, but last time I did I bought 30 bottles.
    So don't worry about buying a lot of expensive emergency supplies. Just make sure that you have a full pantry. Keep an extra bag of sugar, an extra bag of flour, a few bottles of cooking oil and just lots of non-perishable food in general on hand -- all bought on sale of course!
    You might think disaster will never strike, but one of these days you'll pour your morning coffee and find the cream has curdled. If you have a pantry full of Pet milk you can at least get through the day! And if that's the only disaster you ever have, you'll still save lots of money by buying lots of your groceries while they are on deep discount.