Jakarta Floods: 5 Food Stuff to Stock Up On

Jakarta's quinquennial (means every 5 years) floods leaves a murky mess in its wake. My housing area fared much better fortunately, despite the nearly 24 hours electricity cut off. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. It actually gave me the chance to catch up on plenty of sleep...(SO plenty to the point that I woke up feeling all guilty for letting time slip by, with doing nothing)

At noon, with an agenda to buy some light bites for my family, I waded through the murky waters beyond my gates and made my way to a bakery, located about 10 minutes away on foot. Alas, I was mildly surprised to find the shelves this ¯ empty, except for a few trays of Bika Ambon left. I just wanted to buy some light bites, not to stock up on food supplies. But it seems, other customers who came earlier had an entirely different agenda...

As aeen at Suisse Bakery, Hayam Wuruk, West Jakarta

This photo below snapped by one of my friends, at Carrefour Central Park. With that amount of eggs, I can make lots & lots of Martabak Telor (savoury fried egg pancake with filling). LOL!

Photo credit: Elisa

So in line with the recent food frenzy, I have come up with 5 essential items that we should stock up on, during floods like this:

1. Bottled water

When there's floods, either they will cut the electricity (for obvious reasons), so the water pump doesn't work OR the water that comes through the pipe is mixed with contaminated murky floods & rain water, which is unsafe for consumption. The wises choice is therefore, to stock up on plenty of bottled water (well, you can also get the water gallons instead...)

But definitely NOT this premium bottled water, which costs more than IDR 20,000 for <600ml!

2. Instant noodles
Nothing can go wrong with instant noodles. They're quick cooking and delicious as hell!

Ask my favourite? I  love most instant Mi Goreng

3. Bread
Bread needs no refrigeration, and if it becomes stale overnight? You can make French Toast the next day! Double yay! to that, which actually brings us to the next essential item to stock up on.

Too bad these bread are just for display. They look kinda real, no?

4. Eggs

Remember the photo I showed earlier? Eggs are versatile, yummy, nutritious and need no refrigeration, (as long as you don't stash them for too long...2 weeks at room temperature is still reasonable).

5. Rice

If you're among those who thinks that "it's not considered a meal if no rice was eaten", then you better well stock up on this grain. Worried that you have no dish to eat it with? Top it off with fried shallots, kerupuk, & kecap (crackers and sweet soya sauce) and dinner is ready! A healthier alternative to rice would be oats, which is quick cooking, extremely healthy and almost as versatile as rice, since it can be served either sweet or savoury.

Basically, stock up on things that do not require refrigerating, is quick to cook and edible. The floods is not the time to test your culinary skills, so, no overnight slow-cooking or baking at home please...

Miscellaneous:

The following photos are taken at my home, overlooking the streets outside. I'm thankful that my house is raised high enough to survive the floods unscathed. But the electricity was cut off, so while I was annoyed that there was no internet and my laptop only survived 3 hours on battery, my mum was worried that the food in the fridge would spoil.

So, what did you stock up on last week? If you were in the same situation, what logistics would you have loaded up?