Things Could Always Be Worse -- a Foodie Prepping Primer?

It seems like every time I start canning season, I also begin thinking of emergency preparedness. I'm not a Collapse of Western Civilization kind of gal, but I am most certainly a 7.0 Earthquake kind of gal, having lived through two of those suckers in my lifetime.

And so I reasonably ask myself at times like these if I'd be happy eating the stores I've canned and/or put up on my shelves. If the power was off for, say, two weeks or so due to a large quake, assuming we are well enough to have an appetite, the question then becomes 1) do we have enough food to survive, and 2) exactly how much fun would it be to eat what we've put up? 

Relishing (left) the apocalypse.

These are the only two questions that matter if you and your loved ones are in a disaster and are already safe, with a good source of water and shelter from the weather. It will come down to food. Doesn't it always? Whether it's a housewarming party or the End of The World As We Know It, that's what you will remember about the party when it's all said and done. So even at the conclusion of the future Earthquake Party, the question will be: What did we have to eat?

If you remember Jim Bakker, the preacher involved in some juicy evangelical sex scandal in the 1980s (with a wife who could not keep her mascara from fleeing the scene of her badly made-up eyes), he basically disappeared. Or so I thought. The other day I was channel surfing and found him, now hawking survival food supply kits on QVC. "It's our $99.99 Special 20-year Survivalist Package featuring MEXICAN food!" he extols. 

While I find him strangely amusing, there's one thing he and I agree on....just because the world ends, it doesn't mean Taco Tuesdays have to.

Anyway, I don't count what's in my chest freezer at all in my accounting of foodstuffs, since chances are it would be warm enough that within a few days anything we cannot consume immediately will spoil. This means for the first three days we'll be eating nothing but steak, ham and chicken. (Note to self: stock up on emergency, End Of The World-strength laxatives.) But ultimately, the safest and longest-lasting emergency source of food lies not in the freezer, but rather in the canning cupboard and the pantry selves.

I can make this delicious.

Rice, beans, quinoa,  various pastas and grains would probably become our staples, along with flour for making bread.  Beans would be especially important since lacking refrigeration, we'd also probably be lacking in animal protein after our chest freezer binge-feast (belch), except for fresh eggs. Since I'm mostly vegetarian, I would be OK here, and everyone else would have to be too. 

But the issue then becomes how to dress up all those beans and grains so that they are tasty, or at least interesting, since they'll probably be eaten two or even three times daily (perhaps with some canned salmon or tuna, which I've also put by). People in this situation always say something like well, things could always be worse, but really, I can't think of anything much worse than having to eat rice, beans and quinoa for two weeks straight. 

Of course having a good stock of wine, beer and other alcohol could help immensely, so that should also be at the top of any emergency preparedness food list in my opinion. Everything tastes better with expensive alcohol to wash it down.

But I think having a good stock of spices, jams/chutneys, relishes, and little gourmet items will ultimately make your family's life livable during times of crisis, as much as warm blankets and shelter do. You need to be able to dress up your staple ingredients with flavors, textures and surprises to keep those Lord of The Flies instincts at bay and keep civilization afloat. Sauces, sprinkles, marinades, aoli and other spreads (we have chickens and oil and therefore eggs and therefore aoli -- yum!). 

For me, I would plan on cooking everything in the solar oven (which even works on cloudy days, things just take longer to cook) or on the grill, and so that gives me lots of options for different tastes and textures as well.

Everyone should have one.

I do not plan on eating squirrel or gopher in stews, or insects, or nearby neighbors. That is not my kind of disaster. But vegetarian paella with canned mushrooms, peas and asparagus with some hard-boiled deviled eggs on the side, a fruit galette for dessert and some '10 Cabernet to accompany it all? I could live with that. 

I am sure there is a survivalist cookbook out there, but I like to see myself as a kind of a "San Andreas meets Ina Garten"-type heroine, creating lovely meals for my family spontaneously and cheerily, while the tremors rumble through, the stucco falls off in sheets and the National Guard personnel carriers pass by the road.

It's Bon Appetite at the end of the world, baby. And I feel fine.

Annual tradition

First big zucchini of the season got picked last night, and so of course today is the first zucchini chocolate cake of the season, cooked in the solar oven.  Today there are at least five more zucchini, the first eggplant, a bunch of ollalieberries and raspberries, onions and peppers, all ready to eat. All around things are ripening and sprouting.  It's a time for abundance. Summer's just a breath away.

Cookin'

Sun Oven with impossibly cute dog in background

I normally enjoy cooking, but must say that I have not really enjoyed it since moving here.  I think part of the reason is that my former kitchen was a cook's kitchen, meaning practical, and designed ergonomically for cooking -- and this kitchen is not.  Plus we have some fabulous restaurants here, featuring locally grown and raised food, which is a sore temptation any night of the week. 

Since we're remodeling our kitchen over the summer, it will be interesting to see if I fall back in love with cooking once my utensils and ingredients are in places that make sense, and once I have storage space and organization, once again.  I hope so.

Until then, I will be able to fall back in love with cooking, just a little, by using my favorite summer appliance, my solar oven.  It saves me turning on the range when it's warm outside, and cooks many things better than a conventional oven does, due to the fact that there are no fans to dry out what's being cooked.  Everything from chicken to chocolate cake comes out moist and tasty, done to perfection.

I'm also thinking it will come in mighty handy once the kitchen is ripped apart and the whole place is non-functional -- for however long that takes (I don't even want to think about how we'll function with no sink).  

We can't eat out every night, after all.

Or.....can we?

Semi-solar cooking

It was sunny this morning, so I decided to bring out the solar oven and make some homemade cookie bars for my oldest son, who will be passing through town tomorrow.  I wanted something that will travel well, so I chose a chocolate/graham cracker/coconut cookie bar recipe.

It was all going well, until..

A pop-up thunderstorm, um, popped up.

So back into the house I came, and into the conventional oven went the cookie bars, to finish cooking.

After the change in cooking venue, I knew I'd better sample one or two pieces once it came out of the oven and was cut up, you know, just to make sure they came out.  I'm devoted to my kids that way, don't you know.

They came out perfect.

Here's the recipe:

Chocolate/Graham Cracker/Coconut Cookie bars

9 graham crackers

Two Tbs. Butter

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup sweetened coconut

One standard-sized can of sweetened condensed milk

Grind up graham crackers in the food processor, then add the two Tbs. of butter, melted.  Mix with a fork until graham crackers are moistened slightly.

Press mixture gently into a small 9 inch casserole dish -- do not tamp down.

Sprinkle onto cracker mixture the chocolate chips and the coconut.  Pour condensed milk over the top, coating the entire surface.

Place in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until slightly browned and bubbly.

Cool slightly then cut into squares.  Do not let them get cold before cutting, or they will be very difficult to remove and the pan will be quite hard to clean.

Double Duty

People start doing homesteading-type activities for many reasons. A couple of the main ones are frugality and a desire to simplify life. In these bizarro-world economic times, no one can argue that frugality (especially if it's virtually painless) makes for a nicer number when looking at your bottom line at the end of the month, after paying the bills. When our family started taking things back to basics, our main reason was to disconnect from being consumers only, and to begin being producers, specifically producers of the things we were going to use.  But after a few months we noticed a marked increase in our savings, so frugality was a nice and very much appreciated side effect.


Outside right now, I have a lasagna cooking in the solar oven and a load of wash on the clothesline, meaning the sun is currently acting as both my stove and my dryer.  We have a lot of different sized mason jars laying around that see duty as canning jars and drinking glasses.  They're also food storage containers.  In the refrigerator, I use them instead of Tupperware containers, to preserve a cut up onion, a half-used jar of tomato paste or leftover spaghetti sauce.  I use them in the freezer, saving chicken broth, limoncello and peach syrup for making sodas with. In the pantry, large half-quart jars hold all our flour, pasta, rice, etc..  Don't get me started on the mason jar thing.  I'm fairly obsessed.  And my point is that the mason jars can do many things successfully, which increases their value to me, as well as their cost-effectiveness.  


Many things can do double duty, if you're willing to get creative. I just ate an orange and now the leftover peel is sitting on the stove simmering, along with a half stick of cinammon and some cloves, to freshen the air in the house. I like it better than any air freshening crap they sell in the store, and I'm sure breathing in the scent of real oranges and cinnamon is probably better for me than whatever's coming out of the spray can or the  liquidy goo plugged into some power outlet.  


Occasionally I peruse the Sunday ads and am amazed at the number of appliances which 1) serve no other purpose than the one advertised and 2) are so easily done by something else -- something most of us already have around the house.  Two great examples are appliances I saw advertised last Sunday.  One was a self-contained cupcake maker, and the other was a quesadilla maker.  These were both stand-alone devices, using their own supply of electricity and taking up either valuable counter or shelf space in the kitchen, 365 days a year.  


I know now why modern man keeps needing bigger and bigger houses -- it's not because we need more space in our bedrooms or family areas -- it's because after a few years we run out of space to keep all our cupcake maker, quesadilla makers and other assorted -makers that have accumulated through the years.


I have a cupcake pan that goes into either of my ovens (solar or conventional) and a Lodge pan that does the same thing.  With these, I can make cupcakes, muffins, quesadillas, and about 100 other things.  


People might say I'm sounding preachy about this, and maybe I am.  So I'll preach it. Do we really need this much stuff?  What might life be like without cupcake makers and canned air freshener?  Damn good, I'll tell you.