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 We’ve been told that in some parts of the U.S. the electrical grid is so outdated that even minor storms can mean no power for up to a week or even more. With that said, we can conclude that knowing how to cook during a power outage, or when there’s any interruption in our utility service, is just plain common sense.

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 (www.ready.gov)?

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, and that’s a recipe for calm!

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
• Dried fruit
• Bottled water

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 barbecue grill.

There are some good foil packet cookbooks available that can give you a real jumpstart in this area of cooking, but basically, GOOD survival cooking means understanding flavor combinations and getting creative with the ingredients that we have available to us. Some examples of good combinations for foil packets 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 (especially for my kiddos that live in northern California and are dealing with the threat of wildfires—in case they need to evacuate).

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 of more use to others. Since we’re all in this together, maybe we all ought to look seriously at how prepared we really are!

And if you’re new to the idea of foil meals, and would like to develop some expertise with it, here’s a recipe for a foil dinner or lunch that always gets rave reviews. You can wrap your food in parchment paper before wrapping it in the foil, if you prefer. A wonderful thing about this recipe is how good it is even without the meat. I added extra potatoes and some fresh green beans when I was out of meat one time, and the result was still scrumptious.