Disaster Preparedness

I hope everybody is okay and safe and your families and loved ones are all well.  We got very lucky here in Baltimore and survived the storm unscathed, with power intact and only a slight leak in the ceiling.  But I wanted to address the issue of disaster preparedness - after the derecho in June, it occurred to me that we were ill-prepared to spend a week without power.  So when they started calling for Sandy, I wondered what we should do.

I think you all know how I feel about canned goods.  So it probably isn't a surprise that when I went to consider what we had in stock in case Sandy knocked out our power, we didn't have much. A few cans of soup, a few foil packets of Indian dinners.  Pretty much everything needs to be cooked.  We have an electric stove and a propane campstove.  We don't usually lose power - and when we do, it never makes sense - so we are more concerned about things like our roof staying on and our car not getting hit by a falling stop sign. But a little bit of disaster preparedness never hurt anybody, especially if the grocery stores can't be restocked for awhile.

When I woke up Saturday, I felt sick, so I dragged the husband to the store to pick up soup and Spaghetti Os, in case of disaster and mostly because I wanted them.  We went to buy bottled water and couldn't find any. (When we got home, we just filled a couple spare pitchers and all of our reusable water bottles.  We contemplated what other stuff we might need, and wound up buying taco tortillas because we keep Tasty Bite Madras Lentils in the pantry, and they make surprisingly good cold tacos (great camping food).  I also picked up a few cans of baked beans and some more canned soup.

We happen to have crackers and peanut butter leftover from our last camping trip, and we picked up some more snack food and some juice (I drink a lot of juice when I get sick).  We have a few cans of Trader Joe's tuna - that and the Sustainable Seas tuna is the only kind I will eat - and a bunch of cans of beans, which is kind of all we have for protein.

My dad said that we can use our propane stove in the fireplace, which does vent properly.  This means we can cook the package of fondue that we have

In the future, we will probably start keeping a regular "emergency kit".  I'm not really sure what should go in it - maybe one or two gallon jugs of water, a three day supply of canned goods (Spaghetti O's, tuna, peanut butter, a few Go Picnic meals, canned beans and soup, foil packets of tastybite Indian Entrees, nuts/seeds), a couple of flashlights, a pack of baby wipes/antibacterial wipes, and a spare batteries for the camping lantern. All of these things, except water, are things we will cycle through anyway, so maybe it would make sense to get a collapsible jug instead - which could be something we take camping.

Any other suggestions for what we should keep in our "emergency kit"?  What do you make sure you always have on hand?

Mrs. Veggie and Mr. Meat

I have a friend who came over for dinner last week and she expressed a bit of frustration at the fact that her husband not only eats mostly meat, but he's a picky eater with a pretty limited palate.  She's a vegetarian and he isn't, so I'm a bit familiar with their situation.  I made a couple of suggestions for meals that could easily accommodate meat, like curries and stir fries.  But I kept thinking about it and I feel like there must be a wealth of possibilities for meals that you can do two ways, and also don't require my friend to prepare meat. I'm starting with a lot of convenience food suggestions, which is an easy transition for people used to ordering takeout.

Here's a sample menu plan & shopping list for a week:
-Burgers & fries with salad
-Curry
-Barbecue (Lentils for her, pre-made pulled pork for him, barbecue carrots on the side)
-Frittata/Torta Espanola 
-Stir fry (with baked tofu for her and chicken for him)

Shopping List-
Burgers and Fries
-1 bag frozen sweet potato fries
-1 package veggie burgers
-1 package meat burgers
-1 package hamburger buns (these will also be used for barbecue night)

Curry
-1 bag frozen peas
-1 bag carrots (also for barbecue)

-Curry powder, coriander, tumeric
-4 medium potatoes (need 8 total)
-1 can coconut milk
-Onion (need 5 total)
-Frozen chicken strips or a rotisserie chicken (use in both the curry and the stir fry)


Stir Fry
-2 bell peppers
-1 container sliced mushrooms or another pre-prepared vegetable for stir fry
-snow peas or green beans or another green vegetable
-1 bottle of stir fry sauce/marinade or 1 bottle soy sauce and 1 bottle sweet and sour sauce (combine equal parts for an easy marinade)
-1 box extra firm tofu
-onion (need 5 total)

Frittata
-Eggs
-3-4 Potatoes (need 8 total)
-Onions (need 5 total)
-Plain Greek Yogurt (use instead of cream)

Barbecue
-Lentils (brown)
-Barbecue sauce
-pre-prepared Pulled Pork
-Onion (need 5 total)



Anyone have any other suggestions for meals for my friend?  What are your favorite carnivore-pleasing vegetarian meals?