Very cool, the Canadian Red Cross had two chefs show shoppers how to prepare good meals using disaster prep food and items.
Attention Walmart shoppers: Disaster cooking demo in Aisle 3.

-Blast

That is a great idea, disaster cooking. I would like to find a book or those types of recipes. Maybe ETS could compile one from all of us, and there could be a group who tries them out to ensure they meet the proper standards for an emergency situation. They could sell them on the web sight. I think the entire Gulf Coast would be a good market for them.

Pity. The demo could have been put to better use and wider viewing than that. Good idea, poorly executed.

Sue

Does this actually mean no microwave oven. I'm a little confused here, doesn't disaster cooking just mean its time for a barbecue. Are there really folks out there who have no idea about cooking without using a microwave oven (which is really just reheating)? I can't really believe that preparing food outside an electricity powered kitchen environment is too difficult, or is it really a survival skill for disaster victims (Sorry FEMA I mean survivors) or are there folks out there who really don't know how long it takes to boil and egg and are clueless as to how a box of matches work.

Saying that though, it is quite hard to find folks who know today how to prepare a rabbit of fillet a Cod.

To get the ball rolling on survival recipes, here is a recipe for Cullen Skink.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cullenskink_86087

It goes beyond "no microwave". I've lived through enough hurricanes to know that the power outage comes when they shut down the grid upon winds hitting 75mph. That's early in the storm. The power stays off for a week at least (at least where I lived) and the roads are all flooded and covered with downed trees so no one is going anywhere for a long time. After the storm, the bugs are thick and so is the humidity. Definitely not the best time to be barbecuing.

Everything in your freezer will thaw over that one week so you have to cook it or throw it out. My mother and sisters would begin cooking everything in the freezer the day before the hurricane arrived, while all the men and boys were outside with hammers and saws.

Since we had a big family and a couple of huge chest freezers, it turned into a feast. Whole turkeys, hams, steaks, seafood - all the perishables got cooked and laid out on the big table. Then we'd spend the next few days huddled in the dark, eating some great food, and then working our way into the canned goods by the end of the first week.

For people who are new to this dynamic, I think that disaster cooking classes would probably be a really good thing.

Dude, this disaster cooking is already more than what I do on a daily basis. (I'm sick, so sometimes every day resembles disaster day. I have you guys to keep me company, though!)

Stuff I've eaten today:

1. a can of soup
2. a croissant
3. a muffin
4. soda

Send those Red Cross chefs over!

-bingley

An aside -

Tabasco sells a cookbook for MREs. I had the older one for C rats at one point, given to me by a former 1SG.

Some of the meals are fairly decent.

They ate Cheez Whiz? Voluntarily? That really was a cooking disaster.

HJ

According to my DW, most of my cooking IS disastrous.

That's not "sick" that's "bachelor."

Like in Futurama, someone needs to invent "bachelor chow." Sell it in 50lbs bags next to the dog food.