Your hardest things to store are fat. Red feather canned butter. Bega canned cheese. Those aren't really deals, but they are a vital part. Salt, pepper and multivitamins. There's a reason that salt and/or peppercorns were often used as money through history. You can't buy too much salt -- it's a mineral, and never goes bad. On top of that, in a grid down situation you will be using a LOT more salt -- not just for consumption, but as a preservative. Bulk pasta. It will give you an option for starch past the rice. On the other hand, all of this is going to be pretty grim and just a way to get scurvy or beri-beri slowly if you don't have a garden. Even in an apartment, you have windows and can start some herbs. Olive oil, salt, pepper, the pasta and a few leaves basil and parsley from a window pot makes a MUCH better meal than plain pasta. If you can get a garden going, grow tomatoes and squash and zucchini and cabbage, and you can get actual food that also lends itself to preservation. Learn to can (hot water bath is fine for all this, you really only need steam canners when you start putting back meat) and learn to make saurkraut. Seriously, I thought I didn't like saurkraut until we started making our own. Even the stuff in the bags in the cooler at the store isn't as good as from your own crock. Same with tomatoes. I avoid fast food tomatoes now, because none of them are actually ripe (and most have been ruined by refrigeration as well.)