Until recently our food cupboard contained a stapler, a tube of glitter, a tub of fridge magnets and half a dozen attractive but empty biscuit tins, all shoved at the back.

The comestibles it did house - two tins of baked beans, two jars of capers, Marmite, a packet of Shreddies and some strange smelling tea I'd acquired five years ago in Morocco and had been too frightened to try - were balanced precariously on the edge of the shelves, giving the illusion of a bountiful supply of provisions.

This illusion was destroyed this week when my husband developed a bout of autumn cleaning and decided to sort it out.

The cupboard now echoes when I lean inside and shout: "What shall we have for dinner?".

Normally I wouldn't worry about comparisons with Old Mrs Hubbard but with the recent heavy rain and the unlikely but not impossible prospect of Preston Park being cut off from the rest of the world by the biggest floods since Noah, I have been reminded that perhaps we should stock up on a few more necessities.

After all, you can never have too many capers.

It's shocking to think about it now, but for years my husband and I would only buy food when we needed it, which was rare since the takeaways and cheap Italians (the meals, not the people) always seemed a more tantalising option.

We somehow managed to convince ourselves that it was cheaper to pay someone else to cook for us than do it ourselves, which is that kind of warped logic you allow yourself to have before children come along.

In fact we didn't get into doing "big shops" until we had Eve and two years later we still haven't quite got the hang of it.

We'll buy lots of food we like, which we'll eat within 48 hours, and a few unappetising standby meals, which stand by for so long they practically walk to the bin themselves.

The irony is that we both come from families that panic buy as a matter of course - probably because they grew up with rationing and haven't yet adjusted to a free market.

My mum has more tinned produce than an average-sized Sainsbury's.

Spend any time in her kitchen and you soon start humming anodyne tunes and looking for the checkout.

My father-in-law believes in going the whole hog - quite literally. He'll buy an entire pig or lamb from a slaughterhouse and butcher it until his chest freezer is packed with meal-sized portions to last the next two years.

My mum cannot imagine what it must be like not to have ten tins of tuna fish to shuffle about whenever you're trying to find the tomato ketchup. My father-in-law could well have the last stock of mammoth cutlets.

Both our families think it's madness that whenever they come to see us we have to dash out to Tesco Express for tea bags and digestives.

But that is all about to change. I've been thinking about how to fill this empty cupboard and I've written a shopping list that includes plain flour, tuna fish, sardines, some interesting looking vinegars and pickles, tinned rice and custard powder.

Now all I need to see us through those inevitable states of emergency are some wartime recipes.