For the first couple days after any kind of basic-necessity disaster (no electricity, no water,
My plan for today has already changed. Last night when I checked the weather it wasn't supposed to start raining until mid-morning. I'd planned to take a long, long walk beginning at around 8 a.m. I haven't walked in a couple of days (one doesn't want to exert oneself when one can't shower. ahem.) and was really looking forward to getting outside. The temperature is unseasonably warm.
It would have been great.
However. The winds from the west pushed the storms here earlier than predicted, and it's been raining and blowing for half an hour already. The chance of rain all day today is from 80 to 100 percent.
[I'm very glad the lineman came yesterday to hook the power back up to the water pump. That whole apparatus is in a muddy cow pasture, which is surely much muddier now than it was yesterday afternoon.]
So the plan now is to hop on the elliptical and watch a movie.
When one doesn't have water, one doesn't cook. Because one can't clean up the mess. Well, one can, but it's certainly more of an operation than just moistening a sponge, swiping a surface and rinsing the sponge out. I ended up using an entire roll of paper towels during the four days we were H20-less. We ran out of clean dishes and had to switch to disposables. We ate up all the easy-to-nuke leftovers and then just caved to convenience.
I woke up this morning feeling achy and stiff, just like the old days, and blame it on toast with marmalade. Among other indiscretions.
If anything, this experience has reinforced the theory that convenience foods contribute to poor health in ways Big Food couldn't have imagined when they thought they were making life easier by providing grab-and-go meals and snacks.
And I absolutely MUST remember that it matters more what you eat throughout the year than what you eat during the holidays. Or during a short-lived, inconvenient crisis.
3 comments:
My suggestion, since you cycle thru environmental challenges regularly, is to make and freeze individual servings of soup and other things that can be heated on stove (hopefully it is gas) or microwave. Cooked protein packaged individually is always a good idea for freezer. Also make yourself a list of things you can eat with no power of any kind (water packed, canned tuna for example).
I should have been more clear. I have tuna and frozen things that could have been warmed in the microwave (but still would have needed cleaning up, which just isn't possible without running water). I needed comfort, not fuel. I knew exactly what I was doing. No regrets.
So glad you got your power/ and water back!
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