The Well-Planned Emergency Pantry

I am VERY interested in emergency preparedness — always have been, but the interest is heightened, considering the disasters this country has seen the last few years. Just last weekend for instance, a community not too far from us, Harriman, suffered a major wildfire that burned at least five homes to the ground and caused over 5,000 people to evacuate.

And then there was the tornado that hit New York City a couple weeks ago—my daughter who lives in Brooklyn, said the aftermath resembled a war zone! And of course, who will ever forget the horror (not to mention the inexpressible inconvenience) that Hurricane Katrina caused?

So I’ve been thinking about survival cooking. It’s a good skill to cultivate no matter what our circumstances. We’ve been told that in some parts of the U.S. the electrical grid is so outdated that even minor storms can mean no power for up to a week or even more.

The good news is we don’t have to figure it out on our own — we have some help with this. Did you know that the federal government encourages emergency preparedness and even has a special website set up to help Americans think through what they need to do to get through whatever comes along (Ready.gov)? Knowing how to cook during a power outage or how to prepare meals when we have no electricity is just plain common sense.

If you’ve not thought about survival cooking before now, here are a few tips to help you get ready. Even if you never have to use them, at least you’ll know that if you need to, you can.

Let’s start with a well-planned emergency pantry: Canned and dry-packaged foods that can be opened and heated or reconstituted with water and heat are best:

Canned beans

Canned soups and stews

Dry and canned milk

Canned fruits and vegetables

Granola bars and granola (store dry goods in tightly sealed jars to prevent bug infestation)

Pastas and pasta sauces

Canned meats (tuna, chicken, salmon, Vienna sausages)

Dry mashed potatoes

Nuts and chocolate

Even if we have the goods to cook, HOW do we cook without power? Ready.gov recommends we buy a sturdy little camp stove that runs on a canister of kerosene for as little as $30. If we could spend a bit more than that, we can get a double burner stove that will get us through even a long power outage quite nicely. If we were to throw a couple of kerosene lanterns into the bargain, we’d have light to read by in the evenings as well.

There are also solar ovens, volcano stoves, and of course, Dutch ovens that do well in fire pits. But if we’re not ready to buy equipment, we can take heart: Almost anything can be tucked into a foil packet and cooked on the side of an open fire or over a grill. Good survival cooking will involve getting creative with the ingredients that we have available to us. Some examples of good combinations include:

Potatoes, onions, butter and cheese.

Apples, walnuts, brown sugar and butter.

Slices of canned ham with canned sweet potatoes, brown sugar, and butter.

To make the packet, layer the contents in the center of a 12 by 12 inch square of foil, fold the sides up and down to form and envelope, then roll the ends up tight to seal it all in. Cook right in the fire.

I’m thinking very seriously of creating a box of emergency pantry items for each of my kids — maybe for Christmas. I’m not pushing panic here, just preparedness. I’ve found two things: if I’m prepared, I’m not so frightened. And if I’m prepared, I’m more use to others. Since we’re all in this together, maybe we all ought to look seriously at how prepared we really are!