When All Hell Breaks Loose (73 page)

T
here are many ways to cook or heat up food when conventional methods are no longer an option. Whether you need to cook food at all depends on what's for dinner. Canned foods are precooked and can be eaten straight from the can. In summer months here in the Southwest, canned foods can be set in the sun for a few hours and then opened to enjoy a warm to hot meal depending on the sun's intensity and the length of the exposure.

Many foods, such as grains and legumes, require heat to make otherwise indigestible components digestible or at least palatable. Below are many suggestions and items to have on hand that will make your kitchen experience a little less challenging during rough times.

Handy Things to Have around the House
for Preparing Food after a Crisis

Major disasters will spell an end to a normal kitchen for days or weeks. Have the following goodies on hand to ease your food preparation until things get back on track.

Cooking Utensils

If nothing else, a good quality metal two- to four-quart pot with lid will serve you well for many meals. Number 10 cans from stored food or coffee cans can be used as cook pots in a pinch. Many of these cans have plastic coatings inside which must first be burned away before they can be used. Build a fire in a safe location outdoors or in your woodstove or fireplace. Place the can, opening down, on top of the fuel and light your fire. It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes of decent flame to burn out the plastic coating. After the fire subsides and the can cools, take it out and wash it thoroughly with soap and water. In water-stingy desert locales, I've "washed" by aggressively scouring the can out with earth and sand before use. You can get fancy if you like and knock two small holes on opposite sides of the top rim with an ice pick, nail, and hammer, or a Swiss army knife attachment. Salvaged wire can be doubled up and anchored through each hole, providing a convenient bail or handle to suspend the pot over a heat source, to carry it when hot, or lash it down to a pack when hitting the road. Make sure your emergency cooking utensils are made from metal, as glass and ceramic cookware can easily be broken.

Eating Utensils

Many foods can be eaten with the hands. Doing so, however, increases the risks of gastrointestinal problems when forced to use emergency sanitation techniques. Why take the chance? Although Martha Stewart would disapprove, there is no need for a fork, spoon, and knife unless you think there is. Campers have used the famous "spork"—a combination of fork and spoon—for decades. A simple eating spatula can be carved in seconds from a piece of wood. Chopsticks from a couple of twigs can be improvised even quicker, and like the spatula, can be added to the fire or thrown away after the fact, saving time and wash water. With individual bowls, spoons are not required as you can "slurp-drink" your soup from the bowl itself. Although not a good sanitary habit, I have slurp-drunk stew from the cook pot along with everyone else who was present. We simply passed the pot around the circle of people, as no one had any containers or utensils.

Spoons are great for canned goods and most survival fare, which usually manifests itself at some point as soup or stew. Stew is a great excuse to throw into a pot anything that might be edible, along with a bouillon cube for flavoring. Knives might be necessary if your survival cuisine gets tough and stringy. Although plastic silverware is convenient at first, it's weak and constantly breaks. If you pack only one eating utensil, make it the mighty spoon. Larger camping stores sell extremely strong Lexan plastic spoons if you're fickle about weight.

Paper Plates, Cups, and Towels

Paper utensils and napkins are great when washing dishes is a drag due to knockedout services. Paper plates come in several qualities and prices, as do paper cups and towels. The dirty dishes can be burned in a safe location or buried in the pit latrine, saving precious water and eliminating the chance of dirty or poorly washed dishes attracting flies and other disease-spreading critters. Paper cups can be purchased with built-in handles that make holding hot beverages more pleasant. Paper cups are also more durable than Styrofoam cups, which can easily crack and break and produce noxious fumes when burned in the living room fireplace or woodstove. Paper towels provide both safety and convenience for wiping up nasty things without worrying about storing the towel for later washing. Although paper products are perhaps not eco-friendly, their short-term use saves immediate resources far more precious to the survivor.

Heavy-Duty Aluminum Foil

Heavy-duty aluminum foil can be used to protect food that can then be thrown directly onto a hot bed of coals to cook in the fireplace. You can also fold aluminum foil into improvised containers that can hold food for cooking or water for boiling and disinfecting. Foil can also be used to reflect the light from a candle flame when mirrors are absent to achieve brighter lighting. I have aluminum foil covering the ends of my energy-conserving fluorescent lightbulbs. The larger bulbs stick out from many conventional lighting fixtures and their exposed glare can be annoying. The foil bends nicely to whatever shape is required and is worry-free against the hot bulb. Several sheets of heavy-duty foil can be used to make an improvised fire pit outdoors for heating and cooking. The foil can be used repeatedly or rolled up and discarded when cold to the touch. Foil can be used to line homemade solar ovens or scrunched up and stuffed into holes or cracks to prevent mice and other rodents from chewing and entering the opening. Layers of foil can be made into an insulating mat to act as an improvised lid for cooking pots or formed into energy-efficient skirts to put around burners and cook pots to maximize heat and conserve fuel. And of course, aluminum foil can be used to wrap and protect food for use at another time.

Several Ways to Light a Fire

Fire is king, and the art of how it's made, used, and extinguished can be incredibly complex so I'll save it for another book. For our urban adventure, have several conventional ways to make fire on hand at all times. While you can make fire with certain chemicals, sticks, parabolas, fresnel lenses, optics, mish metals, batteries and steel wool, "flint and steel," and even sunlight and the two-liter plastic pop bottle used for disinfecting water with the SODIS method, having and using matches and lighters is a lot easier under survival stresses. Both produce the instantaneous flame much sought after by more unconventional methods. Have two or three ways to make fire and, if you need to evacuate, carry them with you in three different places. Don't put all of your survival eggs in one basket. All responsible family members should be equipped with the necessary means to create fire.

Regardless of the small amount of space I dedicate to fire in this book, your family's ability to create it and control it is of paramount importance to their comfort and survival. Practice
now
how to light a fire in all weather conditions and with all types of fuel. Seek hands-on training from a reputable instructor about how fire is made, used, and extinguished. Know well the three elements of the fire triangle
—fuel, ignition or heat
, and
oxygen—
as in these lie the keys to success for not just creating flame, but in controlling and putting it out completely for the safety of your home, neighborhood, and town. Ignorance can kill, especially when dealing with fire. Unfortunately, due to the majority of Americans being ignorant about how fire is created and used, you can count on many buildings (and towns) burning after a prolonged crisis due to carelessness and a lack of emergency response personnel and equipment.

A Manual Can and Bottle Opener

Years ago, Gary Larson's
Far Side
cartoon featured a couple inside a bomb shelter after nukes had gone off in the distance. The husband and wife were surrounded by canned food, without a can opener, as the wife yelled her discontent at her husband's memory lapse in proper preparation. Many homes have electric can openers, which will, of course, be useless during a power outage. If the lion's share of your emergency food is canned, a quality can opener or two is a must. Swing-A-Way makes a good brand of manual can opener that's easy to use, lasts for a long time, is readily available, and relatively inexpensive. Cheap can openers are a bummer to use; they result in mangled cans, spilled contents, and children learning bad words uttered by the pissed-off user. Military P-38 can openers are great. I have one on my keychain and use it often. They are cheap, lightweight, compact, and very fast with practice. Not all are created equal; discount stores carry brands made from cheap metal that bend and break. Try military surplus stores for the real deal. I've seen bottles opened with plastic combs, the sides of tables, and teeth (not recommended). The Swing-A-Way can opener also has a handy hook for opening bottles, as do most Swiss army knives.

Camping or Backpacking Stove with Fuel

Portable two-burner camping stoves are great for cooking grub when standard options are on the fritz. They're convenient, relatively safe when used properly, readily available, and easy to service and buy parts for. Larger two-burner stoves fold down into their own briefcase-sized container and include everything you need except fuel and a pot. I've used various models for years as a regular part of my kitchen experience. Basic two-burner camping stoves are available at many discount stores and are perfect for most families. I especially like the "matchless" models that use a self-generated spark to light the burners, thereby eliminating the need for matches or lighters.

Due to its weight and bulk, it would be suicide to pack the above-mentioned two-burner stove in case of a hasty evacuation. Miniature backpacking stoves are cool when weight and space are at a premium, but their smallness and one-burner capacity make them a poor choice to use for a family of any size. Picture the size of the pot that it would take to feed your family, and then picture it sitting on the dainty, unstable single burner. Their scaled-down size makes them a pain in the ass to use on a regular basis and the teetering pot perched atop the engineering marvel can easily be toppled by kids, pets, or inclement weather, increasing fire danger if used in your home. Rabid designers may be able to make a cell phone smaller, but who cares if your fingers are too fat to make a call. Backpacking stoves are also expensive in comparison to larger two-burner models and you may be forced to endure elitist snobbery from sales people at high-end outdoor stores when deciding which God's-gift-to-ultralight-stoves to choose.