LED Candles-The holiday
season is a great time to stock up on these.
LED pillars and votives are found at Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond
this time of year. They aren’t terribly
bright, but they are safe. I had LED
votives on for seven straight days in my powder room. (I could slide in a crass joke about darkness
and missing the toilet, but I’ll let it go.)
I had votives on each stair going to the upstairs and on a little table
in the landing at the top.
Unscented
Pillar Candles & Bags of Tea Lights-The candle
wattage of a real candle is better than an LED candle, but scented candles are
the absolute worst in a power outage.
Nothing will get your eyes burning or turn your stomach faster than
Pumpkin Spice competing with Pear and Apple Cinnamon. Don’t even get me started on the Christmas tree
scented candles! Scented candles are
lovely in small doses, but if you are lighting candles night after night…it is
disgusting. My daughter walked in one
night when we had grilled Salmon and had the Pumpkin Spice candle going and her
quote, “Our house smells really odd…fish and pumpkin pie.”One Full Deck of Cards-We have a drawer full of cards…some with 50 cards, or 51 cards. The best CVS purchase I made was a full deck of cards on the day after the storm. We had a wholesome game of Poker with our young sons, which was a lesson in math and gambling that was fun for one night and maybe half of the second.
A Fireplace
or BBQ Lighter-If you are
lighting the fireplace or twenty candles every night, there is no need to be
all Little House on The Prairie with matches.
A Variety of
Duct & Painters Tape-Our duct tape
held together our neighbor’s generator and painter’s tape sealed the crack on
the window after threading the plug from his generator into our house.
Heavy Duty
Foil-I put
peppers and onions drizzled with a little olive oil, salt and pepper into a
heavy duty foil packet and threw it on top of the BBQ. Next night I did the same thing with potatoes
in one packet and green beans in another.
After a while, you just want a vegetable that isn’t from a take-out
container.
The
Flashlight App-It is REALLY
dark trying to get into your house with no lights on anywhere. The iPhone flashlight app is incredible.
Snack Packs
of Pudding-Ok, this
might need some explaining. My husband
and sons got stuck in the Florida hurricane that threatened in late
August. My husband bought pudding snack
packs as part of his food hurricane provisions. When I asked why, he said it was non-perishable
and gluten-free. He bought it again this
time around and we all had a good laugh…until pudding actually became comfort
food. It’s velvety, unctuous texture and
rich chocolate or vanilla flavor was quite simply, delicious, when sitting
around in the dark after dinner.
Other
non-perishables and a manual can opener-Trail Mix,
Peanut Butter, Thai Kitchen Noodle Soup, Annie’s Gluten-Free Mac n’ Cheese, Chex
Cereals, Schar Rolls, a variety of protein and nut bars. The manual can opener is kind of obvious.
Red Wine-The Wall
Street Journal used to have an “open that bottle” night which was a wonderful feature where people planned to open a special bottle of wine to share. From talking to my
friends and neighbors, every night after the storm was an “open that bottle”
night.
While some
of this is tongue in cheek, the one lesson I learned was that you must pay the
kindness forward. A long time gluten-free
friend had us all over for dinner and to watch the Giant football game because
they got power back first. Then when I
got power back, I opened up my home, my kitchen and my Wi-Fi key for my friends
without power. Now that I have actually seen the footage of the devastation, it’s about paying it forward even further with cleaning supplies, donations and food for the people who lost everything. We got the word yesterday that everyone in my community, except for approximately six homes with extensive damage, has power back up and running. Thanks to the local crews and to the crews I saw from Montreal, Iowa, Texas and Louisiana who were working in our neighborhood.
Gratitude
and paying it forward are actually the only two things I am going to think
about this holiday season! But if anyone
else has a “must have” item for surviving a week or longer without power, feel
free to add to the list.
Kendall Egan
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