Someone in my family tried to convince me we should just trust God, but - Joseph in Egypt prepared in advance and saved his family, and all the Egyptians, too, by advance planning when he could foresee a food shortage before it happened, and Noah had to build an ark - and, of course, if you buy food ahead or grow a garden and don't need it - well, you can always eat the food if you have things that will last.

I came from a large family, and grew up eating the cheapest food because of many kids and needing to stretch our food budget. Rice is cheap, and I saw a video - that I can't find again - where someone showed how cheaply you could make something like a Chinese stir fry with white rice, soy sauce, whatever leftover veggies you may have in the firdge (or in your garden) and even just a bit of scrambled egg, or whatever meat or fish you may have - buy powdered egg to rehydrate to make scrambled egg to go in with the rice.

Pancake mix is pretty cheap, I bought some Kodiak Cake pancake mix which is whole grain, and fairly high protein - 14 grams of protein per serving, has milk as one of the ingredients in the mix besides the whole grain - if you have syrup and kids are hungry, they may eat it even though whole grain which may not be to their taste.

You may not be able to have hamburgers or roast beef, but with the money you save while phasing out fresh meat, you can afford to buy pancake mix, canned chicken, canned tuna. Ramen noodles are still quite cheap and rather than using as a soup, think about using them in stir fries. Macaroni and cheese mixes are inexpensive and often liked by kids. some require that you add butter or margarine plus milk, though the little Kraft cups of mac and cheese for the microwave do not need anything to be added - check your packages.

This link https://www.realmomnutrition.com/how-much-protein-your-child-needs/ shows you how much protein kids need at different ages, and gives pictures of what you could use (in normal times) to make up the correct of protein. For example, a child ages 4 to 8 needs only 19 grams of protein per day, and could get that total from 1/2 cup black beans (7 grams), 1/2 cup brown rice (3 grams), 3/4 cup whole grain cereal (3 grams) and 1 oz. cheese. (6 grams). Canned beans are cheap, and even better to buy dried beans and cook them. The photo showed a dry cereal, but cooked cereals like Cream of Wheat or instant oatmeal would possibly have longer shelf life and also give 3 grams of protein per serving, OR old fashioned oatmeal is higher protein. As for the rice, I had said earlier that you don't want brown rice as it will not keep as long - if you have brown rice, use it up first. But Basmati rice is a white rice that actually has 4 grams of protein per serving, or least Royal Basmati on Amazon was 4 grams protein per serving.

Older kids and teens will need more protein, toddlers, less. Protein is not the only need, but you do want to make sure everyone gets enough protein - but it doesn't all have to come from meat which is one of the most expensive foods and one that is likely to be difficult to obtain becasue of scarcity and high prices when it is available. In addition to protein, any food that will keep them full is good, whether it's oatmeal or pancakes or lentils and rice with soy sauce. If kids are accustomed to cereals that include pretty colors and marshallows and all that, and meat twice a day - if the shortage gets bad, no, they may have to get used to some alternative foods - but you can buy ahead applesauce and fruits that they like. Spaghetti or other kinds of pasta with tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese makes a meal that is often liked by kids, pretty inexpensive, and nutritionally pretty good value. There is some protein in the pasta, more when you add the Parmesan.

Make sure you have good locks on your doors, make sure you do whatever is possible to make your home as sexure as possible. Then for storage - take a good look around your house and really think carefully about where you can store food besides only the kitchen, what other shelf space, cupboard, cabinet or closet space where things could go and be dispersed and not obvious. There may be space being used for things you don't even need that could be put in storage boxes in the attic to make room for food in rooms other than the kitchen. The things you are using currently can stay in the kitchen, but other things could go into large zip log bags under a bed. Trust God to keep you safe, but remember that Noah had to build the Ark. And then God kept him safe.

As far as gardening - it's a great skill to teach children - they may want to help - and read the Little House in the Prairie series and they can play it's Little House in the Prairie days. stock up on all-purpose flour and let some of the kids help you to make soda bread, which seems to me to be a lot less trouble than yeast bread, and I like it, or if you buy "wheat berries" they keep longer than the shelf life of regular flour, and you can grind wheat as you need it to make the flour - and kids could help with that. We got a hand grinder for $43 which is a little labor intensive, but kids could take turns grinding - my husband did it and put the flour through several times, first with a coarse setting, then medium, then fine, and did it on the fine setting more than once. It still came out a little course, kind of like corn meal, and people had told me it would be that way. The home flour mill devices are a little expensive but would be worth it if you want to do home made breads and continue grinding your own flour over a long period of time, and you can get these devices used on e-bay. I have heard recommendations for Wonder Mill and the older "Magic Mill." You may not want to do that, but I thought if bread goes up to $20 a loaf or becomes unavailable, I'll wish I had made a plan for bread. Currently, you can buy wheat on Amazon, and even with just the hand grinder thing, our soda bread was edible and we could do that every day. "Hard Red wheat" berries are for yeast bread with a traditional "whole wheat" kind of flavor and color as I understand, and "soft white" wheat berries are for non-yeast kinds of things whether soda bread or cookies, you can read about these things if you are going to go in that direction of getting actual wheat - but either way, when you get the wheat beries and grind your own flour, it's all "whole wheat" and you get more protein and more nutrition than you would from store bought bread. I would not be going to this much trouble to be "healthy" but I am going to this much trouble because I think we might have no bread at all otherwise, I keep thinking about how bad it got in Venezuela and I don't know how it is now, but I understand the concept of not having food, and decide to prepare in case. While trusting in God, ask him to show you what to buy and how to make it all work for your family.