Craig Giesecke
If your house is like ours, there are still a few items in your cupboard or maybe your fridge that appeared during our recent storm and now you’re looking at them and wondering, “Why?”
At one point, our Irish Channel house hosted seven adults and two little girls. Our friends arrived with bedding and toys, along with the usual we-might-need-extra items such as flashlights, ice, toilet paper, bottled water and batteries. Of course, there being seven adults, there was an adequate supply of alcoholic beverages. Or at least you think it’s adequate until the kids are asleep and everyone else is setting around with no power and nothing to do but drink.
Each of us with personal hurricane experience has our own quirks about what becomes more important during a storm. Having lived in coastal or near-coastal cities since 1978, I have spent a fair amount of time listening to the wind howl and watching the rain go horizontal in the dark. Additionally, I also have a decent background on a sailboat in dead summer, away from the air-conditioned comfort of a marina. The boat offers your choice of a hot, stuffy cabin where nothing ever dries completely or on deck in either blazing sunshine or warm rain.
Such experience has allowed me to refine what I consider The Essentials when it comes to adequate storm survival in a less-than-ideal environment. Herewith:
1) Ice
2) Decent quality wine and/or liquor (beer makes for too many trips to the bathroom in the dark).
3) Vitamin Water or a Gatorade-type drink for when you want a break from the booze. While I’m all about a slight hurricane buzz, one must also remain alert and functional if quick action is required.
4) Quality cheese
5) Quality salami or other sausage
6) An array of pitted, marinated olives
7) A supply of good baguettes.
You can keep your cases of bottled tap water, your extra milk and your loaves of what my dad used to call “light bread” — that uber-manufactured sandwich stuff known mostly as Bunny Bread here in Louisiana. I don’t want or need crackers, a box of cereal, canned goods or any of the so-called “survival“ supplies that so often appear when storms are imminent (though a can of Dinty Moore beef stew can be excellent with a fair cabernet or pinot noir). I especially don’t want Vienna sausages or tuna in any form.
As is obvious from my list, I prefer to Go Euro when the climate gets bad. This is, actually, the same list I use for the rare times an ice storm threatens. Another night in a powerless house, be it hot or cold, is easier to face when I can imagine myself as a Hemingway or a Jack London toasting Mother Nature’s extremes and making pithy comments in the dark.
Obviously, this all goes down the tubes when conditions become as they did in parts of LaPlace or down in Braithwaite, when water rises to the eaves and you’re forced onto your roof. In such cases, “storm survival” takes on a whole new and urgent meaning.
I’d be interested in hearing what others consider the essentials of hurricane provisioning, be it food/beverage essentials or whatever. Do you go traditional? Let me know.
…and here’s hoping we don’t have to deal with it again until next year.
Craig Giesecke has been a broadcaster and journalist for over 30 years, including nearly two decades at the AP and UPI covering news, sports, politics, food and travel. He has been the owner of J’anita’s for five years, serving well-reviewed upscale bar food and other dishes. Comments are encouraged and welcomed.
Essentials in my house:
1.) A big fat frozen chicken. Keeps the freezer cold longer until it begins to thaw, then it bakes into a day’s worth of food. Especially when stuffed with lemons and the olives you (and I) like. Pairs well with the cheap wine our neighbors bring over.
2.) Unripe fruit. Avos, papaya, citrus, apples. Comes in it’s own packaging, becomes available through the days, makes us feel like there’s actually something healthy in the house.
3.) Energy drinks. For when you can’t peel yourself out of the sweaty chair to tape over the broken window.
Although I normally don’t have “light” bread in the house, I bought a loaf of Bunny Bread and we ate several ham and tuna salad sandwiches during the hot days that followed the storm. I also boiled all of the eggs I had on hand prior to the storm and threw them in the ice chest. We could have cooked on the gas grill, but found we only wanted cold sandwiches, chips, cookies, and peanut butter and jelly-all the basics that we ate as kids when we didn’t have to worry about adult problems and waistlines.