Got a grill?  Mind standing out in the cold while the grill (either charcoal
or propane) heats up your food?  That's be the way to go.  Yum :D

Purrs for power to come back on quickly.  In the meantime, if you could get
a camp stove and a couple of small tanks of propane, you could cook and heat
water.  Good luck!

Joy

Get a whole bunch of cans of Chef Boyardee and other tinned pastas.
They are nicer warm, but okay cold as they are already cooked and
fairly tasty.  Same deal with canned vegetables like corn...you only
"cook" them to warm them up.

Carrots and salad are nice raw, add bread and a tin of meat and there
you go.

--Fil

We finally set up a coleman burner, we got so sick of cold food. DH is
a real dutch-oven chef back from his Scoutmaster days too. We even had
hot biscuits and cobbler. :-)
You could fix up a "Cracker Barrel" like Boy Scouts do. Cut up
different cheeses and cold cuts and a variety of crackers. (But it's
still *cold food*!)
Hope you get your power back before 2 weeks! That's a long time.

Sherry

Do you have a camp burner or gas? A BBQ?

We have gas hot water & stove, but electric oven. If the gas went off, we'd
be having hip baths and using the electric frypan alot, if the electriity
went out, we'd be very bored but could cook and have showers.

Yowie

EEEEK!  None of the above!  You need a way to cook something.  Sheesh, I
wrote about this a couple not long ago... you must have a way to cook.

You've gotta have a grill and some charcoal (or if you must, propane,
although propane tends to run out and not be easy to find in a prolonged
power outage because there's a run on it).  Even if it's only a hibachi.
You can cook just about anything on a grill as long as you have some cast
iron cookware.

And you must have some coolers (this is assuming you have anything at all in
your freezer or fridge, and I'm not convinced you do.)  Ice may be hard to
find.  This time of year depending upon where you are you can often freeze
water in big ziplock bags just by setting them outside then use them to keep
the frozen or refrigerated stuff cold.

I keep a lot of lump (wood) charcoal and I have a charcoal grill.  I also
have a number of coolers so stuff in my freezer doesn't thaw out and become
useless.

For inside the house I have oil lamps and lamp oil, plenty of flashlights
and batteries stored in the refrigerator.  Candles aren't cats best friends.
I have wood for my fireplace.  If you don't have a fireplace, you may be
able to use some sort of a camping heater but be sure it can be used
inside - kerosene is a NO NO!  Or maybe you can hook up a generator to power
your electricity.  I don't recommend electric "space heaters" because they
are notorious for starting fires (I don't care what your precautions are,
you hear about the fires every year in the winter).

Good luck.  I'm glad the last time my electricity went out for a week it was
in the summer.  I cooked on the grill; made everything from bacon & eggs and
biscuits to jambalaya with sausage in an enameled cast iron skillet.  It can
be done.

Jill

Hmmm good question. You are getting a reply from someone who probably
wouldn't suffer too much under the circumstances since I tend to eat a
lot of salads. I keep all the bits in my fridge and simply go through
and pick what I fancy and throw it on the plate. And if nothing else I
adore a meal of cheese and crackers or rice cakes.

Okay....someone here said sweetcorn is fine cold and yes I'd agree with
that but I have to tell you about the best meal I ever ate and it was
done on a fire.

Dave and me were at a festival and the last night, us and the friends
we had with us had only a couple of pounds of onions and some flour
left. So we chopped the onions and put them in water and put the pan on
the fire then we mixed flour and water as one of us had a cast iron
griddle thingy so we figured onion soup and a sort of chapati. Okay so
the soup is going to be watery and there isn't enough flour so it's
going to be a bit small but it's hot

Never underestimate the power of onions...

After about 10 minutes someone came out of the next tent and said they
had a few carrots and if they donated them could they get a share? So
in went the carrots

Then someone else said they had a few potatoes so in they went

Then a queue started forming..."We've got a few lentils left and some
split peas can we put them in and get a share?"

"We got some ham but we've got nothing to go with it...If we add it to
the pot can we share?"

"We've got some corn and some carrots and a few mushrooms can we have a
share?"

And so it went on, someone had some spuds and someone else had some
foil so we cooked those spuds in the embers

Someone else had nothing food wise but had a much bigger pot so we
transferred the by now close to overflowing contents of the first pot
to the second and put it on the fire.

Someone had nothing but offered to get water and firewood

We even had people who offered joints for what was fast becoming an
amazingly delicious stew, Or they had flour and water so they added
their chapati's to ours

I think at some point someone even added some garlic!

In the end about 30 of us sat down to an amazing stew, with loads of
chapati's and jacket spuds! (One donor provided butter, salt and some
cheese)

We kept that stew going all night!

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs