What to Cook During a Blackout.......

Things got interesting in Southern California last night. About 3:30 in the afternoon the entire region lost all electricity. I was on the road trying to meet up with my boss, but even the cell phone towers were down so we could not make phone calls. Traffic became a nightmare with all the traffic signals down, it amazes me how many people don’t know what to do at an intersection when the lights are flashing!

Did I mention today is my husband’s birthday?

By the time I got home, it was clear that the power was not coming back on soon, and it was going to be a long night. Fortunately, I had time to gather an assortment of candles, flashlights, BATTERIES, water, and matches, before the sun went down.

The one thing I was not prepared for was what to eat. Mark was scheduled to work late, I had a simple grilled cheese sandwich in mind before all the chaos, when he got sent home early, we had to reevaluate the dinner situation.

Thank goodness we still had propane in the BBQ.

Since you shouldn't open the refrigerator unless totally necessary, we quickly grabbed the half frozen Italian sausage and the yellow mustard, oh, and the bottle of white wine that was luckily still a little cool!

We found just enough sliced wheat bread for each of us. Then Mark mixed up some of his famous mustard sauce, simply yellow mustard, honey and a little cayenne pepper. Yes, by candlelight.

The sausages were perfectly grilled, and of course nice and spicy! 

It was not a fancy meal, and it was certainly NOT a photo op evening, but it was kind of fun. Our "first Crisis" as a married couple! I think we both agree, we need to get better prepared for this type of thing, our fathers would both be disappointed....

The rest of the evening was super fun. With no phones, TV’s or computers to distract us, we sat outside, looked at the stars, visited with the neighbors, and of course we sort of felt compelled to eat as much perishable cheese as humanly possible, it was going to go bad, right?

We are all back to normal today, our power came back around 10PM last night. Now, I need to go through the fridge and figure out what can be salvaged and what has to be tossed out. According to this, I should throw out most everything in the fridge, but the freezer stuff should be OK. 

I better get to work....batteries, I NEED to put batteries on my shopping list.....

Stay tuned to find out what we make for Marks REAL birthday celebration meal!

PS. Please notice I highlighted a bunch of words in my post today.....these are all IMPORTANT things to think about in case of an emergency!