With hurricane season officially open, it's a good time to take everything down off the kitchen shelves and see what you might want to stock up on. We've been reviewing the contents of our pantry to see what we need. My husband and I are both long time country folk. Before we moved to town, every year we used to prepare for the winter rains, so we are old hands at it. Some of our preparations are different, however... we no longer have a freezer and we don't drink the tap water here.

So let's start with water. It's recommended that you have 5 gallons of water per person. We have 6 garafons, so that covers Husband, Mr. Dog and me for about 10 days, or maybe 2 weeks if we're careful. We used to only have 3 garafons, but we've doubled our amount since going through our first hurricane watch. Our reasoning is that the 5 gallon recommendation is a minimum, and they are assuming that you normally drink the tap water.

I think it's better to start stocking up on stuff now, little by little, rather than waiting until the hurricane warning gets to a yellow alert status. By that time, the stores will be stripped, since most people here don't have an emergency pantry.

Since we have a gas stove, we assume that we'll be able to cook. We have a rooftop gas tank which we plan on topping off if it looks like a hurricane is heading our way. Our hope is that it will be heavy enough to stay put, but that is anyone's guess. We will, however, make sure that we have matches since our electronic ignition system for the stove won't be getting any electricity. We have lots of candles laid in, too.

This brings us to the pantry itself. What's in there? I don't like canned vegetables very much, but I have canned mushrooms, mixed vegetables, rajas, peas, hominy (for pozole), and corn. We always have on hand a variety of dried and canned beans. We like frijoles charros, garbanzos and refried beans. We also have barley, split peas, lentils, several types of rice, and cracked wheat. I will be stocking up on flour, since I have just been buying it 5 kilos at a time lately, instead of in a large bag. It's not that I will be doing any baking, since our oven runs on electricity, but that doesn't mean we can't have fry bread or other flat breads. Of course, we also have spaghetti and other pastas. I don't usually buy canned pasta sauce, but I do keep tomato sauce on hand, along with small jars of pesto.

It doesn't do any good to stock up on things you don't really like, so I don't buy much tuna fish, since I don't like it, but Husband and Mr. Dog eat it. I do buy canned chicken breast at Costco, and I have some dried machaca (like shredded beef jerky). There are other canned meats available here including cochinita pibil, so we'll probably cruise that aisle if a storm heads our way.

I'll also make sure that we have plenty of salt, spices, sugar, coffee, tea, cooking oil, popcorn, and maybe even some hot chocolate. We used to get flooded in for a few days every year, and there is nothing like eating popcorn and playing board games while you wait for the water to recede . The longest I personally have gone without electricity is 2 weeks, but we lived in a rural area then.

If you drink milk, don't forget to stock up. At least here you can buy milk in boxes. We used to have to buy powdered milk for our pantry.

It was amazing watching people strip the shelves during the last close call. The stores were so crowded that we just left. We didn't need anything, but were just looking for a few extras. Don't forget pet food, and stock up on any necessary medications if a cyclone warning is broadcast. It doesn't fall under the heading of food, but stock up on bleach (for disinfecting), toilet paper and soap, too.

Hopefully, you won't need any of these things, and you can look at it as one less trip to the grocery store.