Post Hurricane Food Ideas

[Cookiely]

I have a free subscription to Food and Family by Kraft which comes out five times a year and realized that a lot of the recipes are simple and could be easily adapted for post hurricane meal planning.
http://www.kraftfoods.com/promo/ffmag/f ... offer.aspx

[olddude]

Thanks for the heads up on the recipes.
Got me thinking what has been my fare of choice after past storms. When the family stayed we ate out of the freezer. When my crew bugged out I tended toward one pot meals out of cans. A fav was hearty canned soup or Dinty Moore stew with an extra can of veggies thrown in.
What have board members dined upon by post storm candlelight?

[Jinkers]

I like those ritz crackers with the squeeze cheese, I love to snack, and that makes a good one...

[Dionne]

We didn't do much eating in the first days after Katrina. Primarily we tried to stay hydrated......drank lots of bottled water. The best I can recall is sharing an MRE with my wife a few days after landfall.

[MomH]

My "kids" like what we call peanut butter burritos. Mix PB and syrup, spread on a floor tortilla, roll like a burrito and enjoy.

Another one my Girl Scouts made up was to take a baking potatoe that wasn't to big around, core out a hole lengthwise, fill hole with link sausage, wrap in heavy foil and bury in the coals of a fire or the charcoal grill. When they are squeezable they are done. Add salt and pepper and enjoy.

[Jinkers]

Another good one are these dinners we used to make on campouts in girlscouts, a hamburger patty, potatoes, onions, seasonings, carrots, or whatever else you like, wrap it up in foil and cook it on your bbq, we made these alot after Hurricane Wilma, and they're really good.

[MGC]

Post hurricane....MRE. I still have a box of them in the laundry room......MGC

[timNms]

Post hurricane....MRE. I still have a box of them in the laundry room......MGC

You might want to hang on to those, MCG as I hear it's supposed to be a busy season...ARRRRGGGGG

You can bet that if there is a storm that affects our area this year, I'll be better prepared than I was for Katrina...no more potted meat sandwiches and hot bottled water for me! I'll have my freezer full of ice and lots of goodies to choose from when it gets time to eat

[Persepone]

Some MREs are a good idea because you can put them in a backpack, etc.

But if you are home, the best thing to do, I think, is eat what you normally eat and like to the extent this is possible and practical.

Look at foods your normally cook/eat and think about whether they would be practical to fix after a storm &/or how you would adapt the recipes, etc. for your family size, for dealing with no refrigeration, etc. If, for example, you want to make tuna fish, then you need small containers &/or individual serving packets of mayonnaise in your emergency kit. You need to mix and eat and then toss any leftovers. Normally, if you have a family, you probably buy quarts of mayonnaise--but for a storm situation, you want individual serving packets, and the tiny jars of mayonnaise.

You want foods that cook with a minimum of water since you'll be using bottled water to cook. Foods that use rice are better than those that require pasta (except perhaps for the Lipton noodle packs where you don't toss out the water you cook the noodles in...but those are quite salty)

The advantage of this approach is that you are not buying "different" food (except for perhaps different formats such as some small jars of mayonnaise, etc.) so you don't have "regular food" and "hurricane food" but just "food" on your pantry shelves. This means that you can "rotate" your food stocks as you would normally do, not put a huge strain on your budget, etc.

When you go to the store each week (or whenever) you just need to add one or two items to your usual list and very quickly you'll have your storm stock.

To figure out how this would work in actuality, keep a "food diary" for a few weeks and figure out how much your family eats per meal and then figure out what the can and jar sizes would be if you had to toss all leftovers. Also keep track of ingredients such as milk, eggs, and other "fresh" ingredients and figure out what the substitutes are. Powdered milk, for example, is shelf-stable, as is canned milk. Both need water to reconstitute. Parmalat (shelf-stable milk) does not. However, it has a fairly short shelf life--and you need to buy the individual serving containers unless you would use more at one time because otherwise you'll be tossing a lot of it out. But that's the general idea--figure out what you normally eat and the quantities, etc. and then do the math.

Living on cheese crackers for a day or two may be fine if you actually like them, but it probably is not very good for you and I'd think that approach would get very old very fast.

[somethingfunny]

Open a Ramen packet along one end, pour in some boiling water and add crushed up spicy Cheetos...Fritos work great too! The chips soak up the water as the whole thing cooks together in the bag. Roll the resulting "food product" up in a tortilla and enjoy!

[olddude]

I have a sort of tradition during and after hurricanes...PopTarts...Strawberry frosted Poptarts to be exact. Night storms are the best for Poptart munching... the very best is night with the power out, lying on the couch, fully dressed, boots on , bug out bag within reach , listening to"Tryin' to reason with hurricane season"on the local genny powered US1 radio, wind howling, paperback reading by flashlight, all the while nervously munching on raw Poptarts...

[LSU2001]

After Katrina we had one heck of a shrimp boil and fish fry. My neighbor had 2 freezers full of shrimp and fish and no genny. By day 2 his freezers were thawing and he invited me to help him cook all the seafood. We fired up the propane burner and invited the neighborhood. By days 3 and 4 we were grilling steaks, burgers, deer, etc. I ate more that week than I had any right too. lol.

Besides that I always have plenty of beans and sausage ready for red beans and rice cooked on a coleman stove. Even though I had natural gas in my previous house it was cooler to cook outdoors on the coleman stove. You can even cook them in a cast iron dutch oven over coals if need be. They go a long way and will last in a cooler for several days. I now have all electric so the propane burner and coleman stove will be essential.
Tim

[njoynit]

We cooked alot of the meat up from deep freeze.I was also lucky.we had a 5th wheel.could still cook.
I planned for the next one.
http://www.campfirecafetv.com/home2.html

Now you know what to do with the trees wood you still have laying around from Rita(don't stack wood..it can move& the 5 gallon bucket beside it empty will not budge)

You can find more sites with more recipies by searching'open fire cooking'

We know that small cans of raviolli/ spagetti/stew /chick dumplings.Can be set on hood of vehicle for 2 hours and be hot to eat.
Fill freezer full with ice as use ice can use freezer and more ice to keep cold the less power deep freeze will draw...I figured it out in the oppisite direction though.
plan on buying frozen veggies a mixture of them.good with cheese...good with meat cook up to keep from spoiling and add instant gravy like pioneer.
koolaide makes good icees add less water.pre mixed is perfect(Vodka and grape koolaide is good too.)
prepare meals ahead of time in ziplock baggies& assemble packets like those MRE's

I had neighbors bringing food over to store too cause they didn't have a generator.so that helped my gas(cost them a can a day)...and meals and ice build up.I was not short of ice or water.I'm glad we still have the hot tub too.

[nutkin178]

The day after Rita, lots of people emptied their freezers and bbqed whatever was still good.

[bosag]

Has anyone experimeted with solar cooking? I was wondering if a dutch oven w/ a glass lid would work in the same way? We do have a propane stove for the kitchen and the grill, and about a dozen bottles of propane for the coleman stove, but I like to have a backup to a backup to a backup.............well you get the idea

[Cookiely]

Has anyone experimeted with solar cooking? I was wondering if a dutch oven w/ a glass lid would work in the same way? We do have a propane stove for the kitchen and the grill, and about a dozen bottles of propane for the coleman stove, but I like to have a backup to a backup to a backup.............well you get the idea

This was very interesting. Learn something new everyday. Great idea in Florida. No lack of sunshine after the storm passes.

http://tinyurl.com/2xgef7