Have you ever gone a day with out power? Ever just given it a dry run to see how it would go? Well that is exactly what my neighborhood did a few months ago. It was actually a lot of fun. I didn’t know when the day would be until I got THE EMAIL stating what the “disaster” would be (we have two more coming….time to make sure my water is good!) Lucky for me, I had just watched a Curious George about the power going out and solar cooking with my preschooler-so she was totally game for it!
Here were the rules: 1. No electricity 2. Turn the heater off 3. Only open the fridge 3 times 4. No cell phones (YIPES!) 5. still had access to water
To be honest, I thought about making it really fun and eating ice cream for breakfast…after all if you knew the power was going to be out for a couple of days wouldn’t you eat the ice cream before it melted? Also, I was pretty sure my preschooler would think I was the coolest mom EVER-but I did refrain. First thing on the agenda was to break out the Sun Oven (YEAH FOR GOOD WEATHER!) I knew I would have to cook lunch and dinner in it since I had used the last of my bread the day before feeding the masses. We warmed hot dogs for lunch and I tried a NEW Sun Oven recipe for dinner which was actually a great way to use some food storage and solar power. I spent a whole day with my kids unplugged, made some Halloween decorations to hang in the kitchen and had a wonderful day. The kids loved playing with the flashlights (you know the ones that go off when the power is out) but here were the things I learned
- I officially learned how to exit the garage with no power!
- I forgot that the fridge water wouldn’t work with out electricity (meaning no super nice filtered water)
- I need to learn how to apple box or dutch oven cook-because what would I have done if the sun weren’t out?
- Living life unplugged for a day was awesome!
You’ll notice we used the flashlights as our candles and had a wonderful dinner! If you want to try it in your Sun Oven here is the recipe.[tasty-recipe id=”18377″]
GET YOUR OWN NEW AND IMPROVED ALL AMERICAN SUN OVEN!
Kudos! But I wouldn’t have gone without the cellphone. DH has some kind of inverter that charges from AC or DC, so after Ike, he rotated car batteries so he could use the inverter to watch our mini-tv or portable DVD player (our radio was wind-up, so we didn’t need to hook it up to the inverter/charger thingee). But since one of our neighbors didn’t have a car-charger for his cellphone, we also charged the neighbor’s cell with the inverter/charger thingee, while we charged our cells directly from the vehicle. I don’t know how he was able to tell how much power we pulled from the car battery. But he exchanged the battery everyday after work.
Did you insulate your fridge/freezer with blankets? Not only did it keep my food cold longer, but it was such a pain to move the blankets, I found I planned better before opening it LOL
I like the idea about the blankets!
Were the beef stew cubes cooked before adding to this recipe?
No. They cooked like a stew in the sun oven.