Yeah that and the well pump is the only reason I have the generator. We buy beef by the cow and we will soon be butchering pigs as well. So loosing all that meat would be bad. We don't really freeze much of the produce we typically can most of that do no issue there. We also don't have a great garden at the new house yet so we normally don't have all that much to can. Usually just a dozen or do jars of tomatoes.It depends on the nature of the disaster. One would have a different strategy for a major disaster like a huge earthquake than for a 3-5 day power outage due to a wind or snowstorm. I've been in some serious hurricanes, and ice storm blizzards, but a major disaster has never happened to me in my lifetime thank goodness. The odds are very low for a catastrophe to happen for most people unless your town is in a tornado zone or a direct hit area like New Orleans. The longest I can recall being out of power was hurricane Dianne in 1955 and an ice storm out here in the early 2000s. Both outages lasted about 6 days.
We have a generator primarily to keep garden produce frozen. There are many months of food prep in our freezer. In the event of a more serious, true disaster, we would have to start cooking and canning whatever we could save. Our car can provide backup power for the freezer for a fairly long time if push came to shove.