Us vs. Natural Disasters: The Deathmatch

I hardly expected my first post here to be about natural disasters, but there you are. I have spent the last week camped out on a sofa at my partner Fey's grandmother's house thanks to what has been dubbed "Ice Storm 2009" by the local media. Yup, in the course of a day or so, 500,000 homes and businesses in Kentucky were frozen dark, roads made slick with black ice, trees bent into gnarled, frozen arches over power lines.

Yeah, it was fun. And I still (seven days later) do not have power.

What does this have to do with food, you ask? Lots. You see, I grew up in Louisiana, Where Hurricanes Come to Party. And when you grow up in a hurricane strike zone, you learn a little bit about survival. And the first key to survival (after weatherproofing your house and stocking up on C and AA batteries) is acquiring Disaster Food.

Disaster Food is a cuisine specific to those areas of the world where weather turns nasty. It is designed to be edible regardless of how long the lights are out, and laughs in the face of stoves gathering dust and refrigerators that are warmer on the inside than outside.

Traditional Disaster Food includes such wonderful, non-perishable foodstuffs as dry cereal (sweet, of course, so you don't need milk), junk food, chips, canned meats, dried foods like jerky, bagged popcorn, and that sort of thing. Pop-Tarts and Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch were always my Disaster Food of Choice.

But this recent disaster, Ice Storm 2009 (sounds like it should have theme music, doesn't it?) has thrown me for a loop. Why? Well, first, I no longer eat meat (except for fish, which means I forfeit the luxury of using the convenient term "vegetarian"). Second, I got the fool idea in my head round about October 2008 that I would start eating healthier.

The good news is that I've lost 25 pounds, feel better, and my doctor is once again speaking to me civilly. The bad news is that, when disaster strikes, I'm hard up for food.

On about Day Two of Ice Storm 2009 (I'm thinking something John Williamsy for the theme music—lots of strings and winds…), Fey and I went to the local store to find supplies as our two weeks worth of groceries languished in a refrigerator we no longer dared enter. The first challenge lay in finding a store that was open. Our regular haunts were closed—no power, no DSL to transmit credit card payments, etc. Finally, we found ourselves at one of the smaller, local grocers.

When shopping for Disaster Food, you need to have your wits about you. It's a difficult task, fraught with pitfalls and foolish temptations. The first thing you have to do is shake yourself out of panic mode. It's easy to think, when a hurricane the size of Texas is heading for your back door or seventeen inches of snow is expected to blanket your little hamlet overnight, "Oh, lordy, I'm never gonna get out of here alive." That's when you go into panic mode. You start grabbing—Spam, Cheeze Whiz, store brand toaster pastries—this is the stuff God put in this store to help you survive. These are the things that will keep you from becoming part of the marauding band of post-apocalyptic zombies smashing their way through the countryside, devouring all that is Good and Righteous.

Panic mode lasts anywhere from five minutes to two hours, depending on your temperament. Then you look at your overflowing cart and, if you're lucky, come to your senses. It's then that you start examining each item for its usefulness and, perhaps, lightening the load.

Fey and I managed to get most of the Little Debbie snack cakes out of the cart before we checked out, and I sacrificed the dollar-shelf tin of sesame snack mix (in favor of a larger tin of roasted peanuts). We nixed the counter grill because (a) we had nowhere to use it in our townhouse and (b) neither of us know the first thing about charcoal grilling. I didn't budge, however, on the Lance's Cream Cheese and Chive Crackers, and Fey didn't give me a choice on the Peanut M&Ms.

Still, there are ways of eating at least a little bit healthy when you're in the throes of Nature's Wrath. Fruit (fresh if you can get it, dried if you can stand it) and nuts are always good items. I've been living off a bag of red apples from the local discount store all week—they're good for me and keep my hands off the Little Debbie Swiss Rolls. Fey made good use of a summer sausage and a box of low-fat Triscuits.

We did not, however, get the PopTarts or Cap'N Crunch.

We are grown-ups, you know.

So, one week later, I'm four pounds heavier (my salad mixings went bad on Day Three, and it's hard to exercise on ice unless you're Nancy Kerrigan). I've eaten more food than I normally do, and I'm ready for the ice to melt and the power to come back on.

Disasters were much more fun when I was a kid.