Sometime this summer you may want to experiment with your food storage and your alternate cooking sources to make sure that you can cook when you do not have power available to you. A great time to do this would be on a camping trip. If you don’t have time for one this summer, you could set up in the backyard and plan a basic dinner, which you prepare entirely without electricity.
If your primary source of emergency preparedness foods are MRE’s or the hiking and camping meals, which are available to you then you should plan a meal that you utilize these meals. You may want to have each family member choose a different meal to have prepared, and then you can sample each other’s and decide which meals are the best, and which ones do not appeal to your tastes.
If you are planning on using easily prepared and canned foods as the primary source of your food storage you will want to prepare one of the menus which you have planned out. This will give you a chance to find out how long it takes to heat and prepare certain foods on a propane cooking stove or your barbecue in the backyard. It is nice to work out the kinks while it isn’t too cold outside.
Another advantage to having this type of practice run is that it ensures that you will have the equipment that you need in order to successfully prepare these meals in the event of a real emergency. If you are planning on cooking in your fireplace or on a wood stove, then I suggest that you wait until the weather gets a little bit cooler.
I know a family who lost power for two weeks, due to an ice storm. During this time they prepared all of their meals outside on the barbecue and propane cooking stove which they had. This saved them a lot of money during this crisis and helped to lessen at least one of the inconveniences that come with losing the power for an extended period of time.