What are some good food suff to have on hand when the power is out
Here I am in Central Texas and we are facing another, maybe, cold winter (This week is going to be a little unusually cold) and I would like to buy a few things to have on hand in the event that the power is off for a week again. The house here is all electric. We have a generator but it is mostly to keep refrigerator on (is this irony?) and run a little space heater for my elderly mother.
What sort of things can I get to make meals more interesting with maybe just hot water? Sandwiches, ramen noddles, oatmeal all come to mind but I am hoping for a few ideas that will seam more "We are going through a not cooking but eating well." phase and not "We are eating this way because the power is out." Any ideas?
My recommendation on short notice would be to get a couple Mr. Buddy/Mr. Big Buddy heaters. You can get days of use out of one if you buy an adapter and a propane bottle for a gas grill. Says on the box they are indoor safe, just be careful where you place them because they get very hot. This will probably be more effective than a space heater run off a generator.
As for eating well get a camp stove. You can also run this off a big propane bottle with the same adapter used for the Mr. Buddy heater. You can use the camp stove to make side dishes. You'll also want an outdoor grill. Webber charcoal grills work great and you can do both hot and low and slow cooks with the right technique. Since you have a generator you could also consider an inexpensive pellet grill. This will require electricity, but not much. You can use this type of grill like an oven, and it is much easier to manage compared to charcoal. With this setup, you can make anything. Pizza, chicken, roast, and ribs all come to mine. I'm smoking a chuck roast on my pellet grill in the snow right now.
Thinking long term, I've been thinking of the same thing with the low temps and heavy snow we got in the PNW this week. My house is also all electric. I have a heat pump and electric aux furnace. Heat pump is slow start/solar ready and has been doing fine with temps in the teens. It only needs 30 amps to run. I looked into whole house generators and I'd need an enormous propane tank to run it for just a couple of days. Having the heat pump available year round is appealing. Has anyone gone with a smaller generator to just run their heat pump?
Buy a home "cryovac" machine like food saver.
Prepare cooked meals such as pasta sauce, stews, curry etc in meal size portions. Cryovac and put in the freezer.
To use them put, still in their sealed bags in hot water and bring to the boil.
You can do things like boiled, mashed rosti potatoes. Frozen beans, peas, broccoli etc can be portioned out into separate bags (either at use time or in advance).
It doesn't matter what combination you choose to use, they are all in separate bags in the same pot of water.
The range of meals is only open to your imagination.
A bowl with dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), marinated beans, Greek salad, olives, and even a precooked protein can be made entirely from canned and room temp ingredients.
If you can open the freezer, ceviche is a really nice food to enjoy with fresh veggies and requires no heat.
That said, I agree with the others here that a camp stove would be worthwhile if only to feel like you’re eating a true at-home dish rather than a backpacking meal. You can likely get away with this in your garage so long as you maintain good ventilation when the burner is on.
Peanut butter. It is dense in calories, tasty, great shelf life, and you can just eat spoonfuls of it directly from the container without cooking or additional ingredients if you want.
Two burner propane camp stoves work just about as well as a home range. The one pound propane cylinders are stupid expensive; so go to a propane supplier to get an adapter made up and buy a small cylinder. You can cook for a month or more on a single fill.
There are cautions about using camp stoves indoors but people have been surviving cooking on propane and methane (natural gas) stoves inside homes.
15-30 gallons of safe drinking water per person. Even if it's cold outside, of your water gets cut off for any reason you won't last long without it.
As others have mentioned, propane for heating and cooking... A few solar chargers and battery units and a generator.
Canned meat and vegetables. I usually buy packs of sardines at Costco and have some around. I also keep a few packs of jerky on hand
Perhaps not immediately useful but I would suggest buying an alcohol fueled camp stove in the future. A can of denatured alcohol (paint thinner) is compact and stable indefinitely. That will allow you to do most of the things you would do with a regular stove burner during a disaster. There are even devices sold for camping that will let you do limited baking over such a stove.
You're in Texas I realize that it can get cold (chilly) but not really that cold. I wouldn't think you need to be resorting to MREs and other kind of food stuffs especially if you have a generator that can run your refrigerator for the time the power is out. You should be able to eat largely a normal diet unless you realize solely on a microwave and frozen dinners for your food. A propane grill means that you should be able to cook nearly everything you would in a kitchen. A charcoal or Wood grill would work as well just cook outside it's not that cold.
Through most of human history people cooked over fire.
Basically any canned food you normally have. You can eat it hot or cold. Want it to be interesting - get some granulated garlic, hot sauce, and toasted sesame oil (basically all the shelf stable spices etc that you already have).
Dehydrated backpacker meals - These are lightweight, compact meals in a bag that you just add hot water to rehydrate. They come in lots of flavors like pasta primavera, chili, rice and chicken, etc.
Canned soups/chili - Stock up on cans of soup, chili, beef stew, etc. You can eat these cold if needed, but they're better warmed up.
Couscous - Couscous is very easy to make with just hot water. You can make it savory by adding in canned veggies, tuna, precooked chicken, or peanut butter for a Thai style couscous.
Quinoa - Cook quinoa in hot water and mix in canned beans, corn, peppers to make it a filling meal.
Steel cut oats - More hearty and filling than regular oats if you cook them in hot water overnight in a thermos or insulated container. Top with dried fruit, nuts, cinnamon.
Rice and beans - Canned beans, minute rice or precooked rice and seasonings make a nutritious, filling meal.
Ramen - Jazz up instant ramen by adding frozen mixed veggies once the water is hot. Scramble in some eggs too.
Hot cereal - Packets of plain instant oatmeal, cream of wheat or grits are good to have on hand.
I buy 5-lb bags of adzuki beans, mung beans, garbanzo beans, black beans, and lentils, soak about a half cup of each all together overnight, rinse twice a day thereafter for a few days, and microwave on 30% power for about ten minutes along with some beetroot, sweet potatoes, and/or whatever else I want to add. Sprouting the beans reduces cooking time significantly, thus saving you fuel- they cook up at about the same rate as the beets- and they're more digestible. Once your guts adjust to that much fiber (if they aren't already) you'll be just fine.
I add all sort of things for taste, and prefer diced apples, green olives, and raisins. Raw red cabbage, diced, into the mix right after it is done cooking softens the cabbage and adds sweetness. Cauliflower is sweet, too (as are beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots, yams, ...). Another upside is that bulk dry beans are not costly.
Sprouted lentils can be eaten raw, but I've read to avoid eating raw sprouted white beans- I don't remember why.
That's my recommendation. Good luck over there.
The companies that produce the field rations for the armies also sell it for camping. It usually has everything needed and can be eaten cold(depends on the food), but it can be heated with esbit, spiritus or sterno. Only the german rations are for a full day, other NATO nations have only a meal in them.
Pasta with premade tomato sauce. If you have it around, the sauce sold in mason jars is usually better than the canned one.
You also need a can of mushrooms to add some texture to your sauce.
Tuna cans and bread to make tuna sandwiches.
Some chocolate or other treats to keep the fun.
Not everyone knows it but you don't need to keep the water boiling when cooking pasta : https://lifehacker.com/you-don-t-need-to-boil-your-pasta-jus...
With a Weber grill and some charcoal, you can basically make anything.
Use it as a stovetop for normal cooking or get fancy and do some wok cooking.
A Dutch oven can be used for classic winter meals like stews and braises.
If you're able to boil water then that opens up a lot of possibilities. Pasta, rice, and potatoes are all options there. Throw in some canned meat/veggies/beans, oils, spices, whatever you got.
If you can cook water, you can already make basically anything which doesn't require a convection oven. Which is most dishes. A more interesting question would be: What if you don't have hot water?
Solar panels and many kWh of charged batteries.
Lithium-based batteries in particular have been dropping significantly in price over the past few years.
Biolite has some cool off-grid stuff you could check out. I have a CampStove 2+, which I occasionally use for cooking outdoors.