How will We Cook When the Lights Go Out?

January 2020

Remember that for Christmas we gave our sons and daughter’s families water barrels to store drinking water. We bought water pumps for each household and a lead free hose for the families to share. Meanwhile, we celebrated other family events with gifts of food storage and cookbooks.

For when the earth rumbles or the east wind blows, we may not have power.

How will you and I and our neighbors heat our food?

Even though the Richens have lots of trees on our tree farms, we live in Portland, not in our woods.

Our home's fireplace isn’t built for the hanging pot that my Arkansas relatives once used – true for most homes built after 1900.

Moreover, wood fires are inefficient. Also, in-house fireplaces drag in cold air to keep themselves burning. You’re going to be trying to keep heat in your house.

We used to have a wood stove that might have been good for cooking, but it put a lot of particulates in the air.

We want to find a cooking process that doesn’t turn Portland, the City of Roses, into western China.

When the next natural emergency hits your part of the country, you’ll also want a way to cook that is clean and efficient.

That’s where my friend, Mary, (not her real name) came to my rescue. She has discovered a simple process that is clean, has low toxicity and doesn’t use a lot of fuel.

You can save fuel, and safely cook your food by buying a one burner butane stove and creating a hot box.

Mary showed me her solution to cooking with as little butane as possible. In fact, we had a great lunch made with her one burner butane stove.

“Five minutes to bring the water to a boil," Mary says.

“Add the rice or chopped potatoes or whatever you’ve decided to use. The water comes back to a boil in a minute. Then boil the rice for five minutes only, take it off the burner, add reconstituted air dried vegetables and any other cut up food you’ve decided on. Put it in the Hot Box (more about this below) for a couple of hours. All is cooked and the insulation in your hot box is still warm.”

Off the stove into the Hot Box. Two hours later, her food was cooked and her sleeping bag was warm.

What could be more efficient use of a heating/cooking system?

And why butane and not propane?

Chemists will remember that in the presence of plenty of oxygen, butane puts out carbon dioxide, but Propane puts out carbon monoxide which we don’t want to be breathing.

“That’s why demonstrations in the grocery store are done on butane burners,” Mary says.

Of course, while butane puts out mostly carbon dioxide, anything used to create fire also creates some carbon monoxide. You cannot use these types of heating materials in a small room. So, no cooking in the closet, my friends! Give the butane plenty of air and store it carefully where there is air, too.

The stove Mary had was built by Stansport, but after much calling around, I was able to buy locally almost the same good stove for my families under two different brands. Big Five Sporting Goods had almost the same stove in two different brands, including the Gas One, which I bought.

So, for my Christmas list that year, I cleaned Big Five out of them. (They’ve restocked). Friends have already bought more for Christmas. You can find them, too.

The other sporting goods and home stores I visited carried only propane stoves for outdoor camping. Those stoves are fine if you are where the carbon monoxide dissipates quickly, like out in the cold morning air, but in an emergency situation, you’ll want to cook where you can keep yourself as warm as possible.

What’s a Hot Box? Mary showed me.

Hers is a cardboard box.

“The corrugation is one part of the insulation,” she says. “I put my sleeping bag into the box and fold it around all sides of the hot cooking pan and then put the box lid on. The food just keeps on cooking for the next hours.”

So, with the hot box, Mary saves on butane. She can get eight to ten hot dinners out of one bottle.

All of these materials can be purchased locally, but you can get butane bottles for a lot less if you buy them online by the case.

You, my friends, already know that I want to credit my creative friend with her real name, but she would rather not be identified. Why?

While helping to host neighborhood preparedness meetings, two different neighbors told her that they didn’t need to take the time to get prepared for emergencies because they knew she had stored all that would be needed.

Wow! Really?

I asked “Mary” how she answered these boors.

“I couldn’t believe they meant it, but then I realized they were serious,” she said. “I just stood there with my mouth open.”

I suggested, “How about 'I will share with people who can share with me, so get yourself ready, my friend.'”

“Maybe next time," she replied, "But, it’s unbelievable that anyone would think that way!”

Yep. It really is.

So, I’m off to figure out how to more ways to use birthdays and other events as excuses to help my family and friends get ready.

Eating Well After the Quake

A Flashlight Aided Study (of My Food Pantry)

Okay, gang, here’s a little perspective on long-range planning. What food would you want on your shelves if an emergency took out your electric stove, your refrigerator and your microwave? In my canning cupboard, deep in the basement, I pull out my battery-powered flashlight. Cans of pears, peaches and beans shine out at me, but also, I see rows of dishes that aren’t often used, and little figurines that once belonged to my mother. I know what I don’t want to see in here – cans of USDA Approved School-Lunch Spinach. Sorry, Pop-eye, but your taste runs to tin. I also don’t want to be picking canned food out of shards of pottery and china. I need to store the dishes and figurines somewhere away from our emergency food supply. That’s a clear job for my half-hour* of weekly house cleaning.

Note to self: Move these heritage glass pieces away from food storage.

My friends, what’s in your storage supply? What will your family really eat after the emergency. How will you cook it?

Ideas from two family foodies Our sisters, Tammy and Marilyn, have been teasing me about getting ready for the earthquake. Yes, they were among those who received a water barrel and pump for Christmas. I asked if each family would like to have the water barrels. Tammy and Marilyn were delighted with the idea. So their teasing is not passive aggression. It’s just having fun with my project.For my birthday, Marilyn and Tammy invested in a sack full of canned goods they believed I should have.

A Book Discovery In addition, I received a cookbook about eating well after the power goes out. Marilyn, volunteers at Title Wave – the resale store for the Multnomah County Library. When she saw the title Apocalypse Chow, she could not pass it up. It seemed the perfect book to add to their joking around about my plans for family survival. The book turns out to be a great addition to the project.

This is a book to look for. Eat what you love, not what was cheap when you hit the store shelves.

Apocalypse Chow is written by Jon Robertson, with Robin Robertson. It was published in 2005 by Simon Spotlight Entertainment, of Simon and Schuster. Yes, that’s Jon, writer and publisher, and Robin the chef of Global Vegan Kitchen. Tanja Thorjussen’s drawings add a lot of homey character and clarity to the book.** It turns out that the Robertsons live in Virginia, so have survived several hurricanes, some with more grace and pre-planning than others. Collecting all they have learned about survival and grace in this 246 page volume, Jon has written a very usable and often funny book encouraging the rest of us to plan to have food we will be able to cook with minimal fuel and water. He also encourages us to take a good look at our eating preferences and our snobberies as we shop for the staples we will use in the AFTERS. Buy what your family will eat with pleasure because there will be a lot of other things to cause angst. Apocalypse Chow contains some surprising lists, including several that encourage the family chef to visit various ethnic markets and stock up on great, non-perishable items. These change-of-pace foods will keep the family from becoming jaded on Boston Baked Beans. Grilling and boiling tips, storage ideas and a cast of 15 minute recipes are featured in Jon Robertson’s readable, humorous and important book. Apocalypse Chow is available new and used. I have ordered five more copies (yes the sisters will be getting a copy for a birthday or half-birthday***, as well. You will enjoy it, too. And its lists, if heeded, will give you a better survival kit than the basics list that Homeland Security might have recommended.

Footnotes:

*Half-hour a week house cleaning? I am my mother’s daughter and learned efficiency from her. Best house-cleaning tip she gave me? Take off your glasses. To the nearsighted, the clean and the unclean fuzz into soft color and fine texture. ** Tanja Thorjussen’s drawings add clarity? Thanks, Tanya for clarity on what Jon meant by a wine box to use for food storage. We at RichenHaus buy wine by the bottle and were therefore imagining an empty wine-party box. Jon had in mind a wooden container for twelve one litre bottles to use for storage. ***Half birthdays? Well, any excuse to give something important to those I love.

Why survive the Apocalypse?

June 24, 2015

I’m looking at our world in a brand new way this year. Life is fragile, and we are part of that fragile fabric. Aware of the ephemeral, I decided to gift my family with the first step in a survival kit. Ever since, I’ve been watching the small habits and charming humor in the people around me. I’ve been smelling the morning, greeting the raccoon and the chickadees, really studying the texture, the light and the shadows in places that I often take for granted.

I’ve had some readers comment that they don’t want to be around after the apocalypse, (or after the Great Subduction Zone Earthquake).

I understand that feeling. Recovery is work, and fear, and discovered loss. Loss would make recovery seem like shoving one foot in front of the other, even though we also might, at the same time, discover people and things that have not been lost.

But I have a list of what I want to be around for – people, places and ideas I want to assist in recovery, if I’m still here.

Of course, family is the beginning of that list: Woody, my resilient and positive husband, our wonderful kids, grandkids, brothers and sisters, all the in-laws and out. And then friends, my great, close and wise friends. Kids I’ve taught and get a kick out of because of their humor, their imaginations and their energy.

I would hope to find all these people, though some may be missing. Together, we survivors could rebuild our world, create support, maybe even improve our community, over time.

Is this a group hug?

And I would look for my neighbors, some of whom already are friends, and some who might become better friends if we have to rely on each other.

And I will want to see what flowers arise from the ashes during the next spring. Fireweed and pine trees open first after forest fires. What will grow through our broken concrete? I want to be as strong and persistent as those flowers.

Some folks who’ve insisted they don’t want to be around afterward also discuss the innate savagery of people following a disaster. Yes, we all have that capacity. Indeed we do. But we all also have the capability for mutual building. I want to be here to help encourage the building.

Is this blog a downer? I’m thinking here about the people I appreciate, believe in, and with whom I want to recover. You’ve got that list inside of you as well.

So, let’s plan and get ready for the next event, whether the event is bugs in our water or the earth moving under our feet. Here are some photos of things I’ll watch for and nurture afterward.

Next issue of Rae: Always Asking will be about cooking after the big event. Tune in and see what I’m learning and what resources I’m finding.