The only difference between adventure and disaster is preparedness.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

How Can I Cook with No Power?

Excerpt from Apocalypse Chow:

"Your primary necessity for eating well without power is having a reliable, efficient source of heat for emergency cooking.  If you have neither working gas appliances nor an electrical generator, you'll want to consider the following advice for buying an inexpensive alternative source of heat. 

Camping Stove

You can purchase a small, efficient, inexpensive emergency stove from your local camping supplies store.  Did you know that for about $50 you can have a tiny little stove and a canister of fuel that will last for two days?  For $80 you can practically open a backyard restaurant with takeout.  Camp stoves are great but made mostly for the adventurer.  You may never have to reconstitute a dehydrated dinner while clinging to the side of Mt. Everest or while kayaking the North Sea, but if you pay a call to your nearest sporting-goods chain or outfitter, you will discover an amazing array of portable cookstoves for the outdoors.  Some of these stoves are little more than a tiny nozzle and a frame that sit atop a canister of fuel, but you will also find the good old reliable Coleman two-burner stove.  (Coleman even makes a folding camp oven!)

For general home-based cooking, we recommend a single-burner butane unit that chefs use for demonstrations.  The recipes in Apocalypse Chow! were tested on a Glowmaster portable butane stove, 7,000 BTU, available at www.gourmet.org and elsewhere.  Similar stoves include the Burton stove, 8,400 BTU (at www.cooking.com), and the Glowmaster stove, 7,500 BTU (www.glomate.com), which are designed for both indoor and outdoor use. 

You can also use these stoves for camping, tailgating, boating, backyard barbecues, or for cooking during emergency power outages.  The stoves come with hard-sided carrying cases and cost $50-$100.  Fuel canisters are inexpensive and can be purchased by the case."

Check back in tomorrow for more tips!  Also, I have 2 butane stoves that I got from www.simple-safety.com and they are awesome.  Give their website a try!

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