Emergency Food!

We are in the middle of a big storm right now, at least in Arizona, and it reminds me to write about emergency foods. I live in Phoenix, Arizona -a big city where we get most of our power from a nuclear power plant. Unlike any other major city I have lived in, we have power failures several times a year. Yesterday, my house experienced two power failures, each lasting over an hour.

So, I keep a supply of candles and rechargable flashlights on hand, along with a couple of oil lamps. (The oil lamps give good light with minimal smoke.) I make certain that matches are always available.

I also keep a small supply of food, enough to keep us going for a few days, if needed. (This is assuming that the fridge is empty, which it never is, and there's no bread or snacks around -which is rare.)

My plan is pretty simple. I try to allow for 3 days of food for each resident. I assume three meals plus snacks. I only stock ready-to eat food, canned or aseptically packaged (think Tasty Bites), since we have lots of stuff I could probably cook in my chafing dish. I like the ready-to-eat foods because they are sterile and do not require added water. The down side is that not everyone can stand to eat them cold.

A lot of these foods are things we don't normally eat at all, like: brown bread in a can, canisters of chips, canned desserts, canned fruit, canned soups, etc.

I try to vacuum seal some dried fruit, and nuts, but, these need to be rotated out fairly quickly to avoid rancidity.

I also store canned soda water and some soda pop, since it is also sealed and sterile. Commercial water bottles allow bacteria to enter them and are not sterile.


The biggest trick is to set aside a day each year to check the supply, rotate out old food and add fresh foods. I try to do it on the day we change the smoke detector batteries.

It seems so odd to be doing this sort of thing in this day and age, but, at least where I live, you can't always count on having electricity!