One of the known problems with stored food is called menu exhaustion.
The first time I ran into this was camping with the boy scouts. One of the kids brought Vienna sausages for all his meals. He loved them, and they were easy to cook. He was bragging to everyone else about all the benefits of Vienna sausages, at least for the first day! He shut up the next day....
By the third day, he was trying to trade for food. By the fourth day, he was wildcrafting!
Spices make a big difference, because the beans that are your "Vienna sausages"; and when you just Can't eat another bowl, they taste good as chili! Rice that is "coming out of your ears", with some chicken bullion or curry added; becomes tasty again. I want to try some staghorn sumac berries in rice to see if it is close enough to lemon seasoning, to be tasty. They use sumac on the Mediterranean for cooking, so I need to look up some of those recipes too.
Spices are an inexpensive way to widen your menu, using mostly the same base ingredients. Spices can also make some wildcrafted foods more acceptable taste wise, which will stretch your survival pantry!
I recommend that before you buy quantity on spices, you try some first; to be sure you like their taste. It would be bad to open supplies, after civilization crashes; only to find it too hot to eat, when it is impossible to replace it!
I got these in a few weeks ago, and posted on it:
After trying the chili powder, And finding it good...but strong; I decided to stock up on some more, as a bridge until I can grow the ingredients to make my own.
Recent spice add, as a result of stocking up:
This is an added 80 oz of chili powder to add to my 40 oz already stored at the homestead!
A side note, if you add a tablespoon of Cocoa powder to your chili, the other spices will go further. Cocoa is a reference spice that resets your taste buds, so you can used less spices. This is the chili that doesn't make you burp chili all evening, but still tastes spicy!
So stock in straight Cocoa to go with this chili powder. That will be my next stock purchase.
The back up plan is always seeds for your most used spices, for Long term pantry supplies.
Prep weekly, and think outside the box they dream of putting you in!