Community Chat

[sarahpanda]

I've been through enough hurricanes in the past that I should know what to have in the house to eat when the power goes out - but I'm looking for new ideas.  I usually fry some ham and fix some biscuits to have on hand (ham biscuits).  What suggestions do you have? Thanks

[sarahpanda]

By the way - we don't own a grill.

[JeanLouiseFinch]

Nothing that needs refrigeration.

Bottled water.

Peanut butter
Dry cereal
Crackers

Canned soups (can be eaten w/o heating if you really have to)
Canned fruits & vegetables
Pouches of tuna
Nutella (not good for you, but an option when you can't be picky)

Extra water for flushing the toilet or wash up - fill your bath tub while you still have time.  Use a big pitcher or bowl to pour some in the toilet to make it flush, or to transfer a little to the sink for washing up.

I'm sorry you're experiencing this and hope you make it through OK.

[Georgiagrama]

@sarahpanda

I buy cans of potted meat - I like chicken, pineapple, peanut butter for sandwiches, canned food that we can heat up on our grill or little camp stove. 

We do have a grill, so, whatever is in the freezer we grill, but the campstove comes in handy for soups, chili, beef stew. It's a really handy little thing to have and ours is just a small one so it's easy to store. 

None of it is gourmet, and may not be our first choice, but, it sustains us until our power is back on. At least with anything canned, we don't have to worry about spoilage. 

[candys mine]

Water, Water.Water and a can opener. Shelf stable items.  Peanut buttter and Marshmallow Fluffy creme.  Crackers in a tin.  If you still have an oven you've got it made.  Canned tuna and cream of mushroom soup and dry noodles.  then you can have plain noodles or plain mushroom soup and crackers or tuna on crackers or tuna noodle cassarole. Carrots and onions will keep for a while and can be eaten raw.  Maybe some canned Chef type tomato sauce and pasta meals.  Tinned Sardines, canned salmon,  jars of olives and capers some hard cheese.

[Caaareful Shopper]

A relative of mine bought bags of ice and poured into her top-loading washing machine.  Then added refigerated foods she didn't want to go bad when the power went out.  It worked great.

[JeanLouiseFinch]

Also, 

Whatever is currently in the refrigerator - prepare whatever you can (like hard-boiling the eggs) and have them ready to go into a cooler (hopefully you have one of those blue ice block things), and use all that prepared stuff first, before going to the canned and dried option.

[CAMOGIRL]

Apples

Bagged whole peanuts in shell

Peanut Butter

Crackers

Fishies in BIG box

Individual applesauce and fruit cups

Beeforoni

Tuna in water

Pork n Beans

Cheerios

Oreos

Ginger Ale - taste OK room temp

Water, Water, and more Water - A MUST have, you really can not overstock on this!!!!!!!

Hope this helps! Spent quite a few years in Houston and ALWAYS stayed stocked up on these items for my family checking every year to see what needed to be thrown away or restocked. 

[jackthebear]

not food but one thing I did in the aftermath of Sandy when we had no power, was to freeze milk bottles of water to keep in a cooler,  (any plastic bottle really)  it worked so much better than a bunch of ice melting all over the place.

kept the food cool and lasted,  

[cotton4me]

In addition to what everyone else has mentioned, the thing I ate and enjoyed the most when we lost power was Bumblebee Tuna Salad on the go.  It comes with ready made tuna salad and crackers. They also make chicken salad.  It was a nice treat, at least to me, but I know we're all different.  I also keep it in our emergency  "grab and run" backbacks.