How Do I Cook?

 Today, let’s talk about cooking with no power, thus no microwave, no oven, no stove.  If you have a gas stove, like me, you only need electricity to ignite your oven or range. As long as gas is still coming through my line, I just need to manually light my burners with a lighter to be able to cook. But, in a catastrophic emergency, I won’t have gas for very long. So, just how DO you cook long-term?

About 10 years ago, several people in my neighborhood decided to try out functioning with no water and no power for a weekend.  It was a great dry run for us.  I went into the weekend sure it was going to be simple. I put a bucket of water from our rain barrels in each bathroom to pour into the commode to flush it.  We bungy-corded the fridge and freezer to help remind each of us that refrigerated food was off limits. I put plastic wrap over top of the sink to help me remember not to run water in the sink. We were confidently prepared! My solution for years to the question of cooking had been to use our fire kettle and cook over an a open fire, like we do when camping. We had a hand-crank can opener and lots of canned goods.  Just one little problem arose over the weekend; if you’re going to cook at least two meals per day over a campfire, you go through a ton of firewood, which we didn’t have. It began, very slowly, to dawn on me that everyone in my neighborhood would be competing to use the small amount of wood that was available. Cooking over an open fire was NOT a solution.

My next thought was to use our camp stove and put it on our deck table. I bought several cans of cooking fuel, which promptly leaked out during the heat of summer and after several years of storage. My gas grill was a great plan for a weekend, but requires a lot of fuel and, again, propane will likely be impossible to obtain and difficult to store.  What a conundrum! I finally resorted to lots of research and discovered something called a “rocket stove”. Turns out, my sons learned how to make them in Boy Scouts and their Leader often cooked on one while on Scouting trips. A rocket stove was invented by an engineer as a solution to the fuel shortage in Haiti.  Rocket stoves utilize a small space for twigs and sticks, which you feed into it. There is a large opening for airflow that makes the fuel burn hotter.  It has a small chimney and ALL the heat produced goes directly up this chimney to cook whatever is placed above it. There is no lost heat, like with a campfire or grill. And you only need a few twigs to boil a pot of water! Now, THIS was a solution. My sons built a few in the yard for me out of cinder blocks but, eventually, I purchased a stainless steel model that I can move wherever works best for me. Google rocket stoves to get free plans. All you need is a few fireproof bricks and the plans. You can even put a small grate on top to hold your pans.

Speaking of pans, my family used to camp a lot, when the children were young (and so were us parents). I always cooked over the open fire.  There’s nothing quite as good as buttered fried toast, coffee, and eggs over a campfire.  But my cookware always got burned-on soot on the bottom and the sides.  I finally went to Good Will and bought cheap cookware to use for camping so I didn’t mess up my good stuff. You might consider investing in cast iron or old-fashioned cookware to use. The non-stick stuff, my good cookware, just didn’t hold up over a fire. While you’re at it, buy a cheap pot that you can use for water or coffee. You’ll want to boil lots of water and will need a special kettle for it.

We’ve got our rocket stove! We’re good to go.  But then I began to think about baking - things like that ever-important bread. I can’t cook bread, not the kind I typically eat, over a rocket stove. I’ve heard there are now plans available for a rocket oven that you can use for bread, pizza, sweet rolls, or anything else you might want to bake.  I chose to purchase a solar oven. Remember, I live in the South where we wear shorts from the middle of March through December, sometimes even on Christmas Day.  We have lots of sunlight to go around.  My solar oven has reflective panels and a reflective back. It came with 2 lidded casserole dishes. You fill your casserole dishes, put them inside the oven, then focus the panels where they can reflect the most light into the center to heat the food. Takes a bit longer than a regular oven, but it works.

For most things, we’ll use our rocket stove.  But the gas grill might be useful once or twice, and I know we’ll have fires occasionally, since we love a nice fire, especially when the weather is cold. But our solar oven and rocket stove will be our go-to appliances.