Lessons Learned

I retrieved CPM from JFK airport on Friday afternoon, just in time for us to jointly experience the wonder of Hurricane Irene's attack on the Midatlantic. I learned some valuable survival lessons. In no particular order, they follow below.

Bananas are now on the pre apocalyptic food shopping list, meaning you won't find any on your last minute supermarket trip, along with eggs, milk and bread. Apparently, survival french toast has been upgraded to banana french toast.

When you make that preparatory food shopping trip, avoid purchasing perishable items. Two weeks without a spouse in the house meant that my cupboard was totally bare upon his return, since I didn't actually do any food shopping in his absence. Since I was at the store shopping for the storm anyway, I grabbed the normal collection of food stuffs, yogurts, cheeses and such. In our previous home in the city, this would have been a non issue, as we NEVER lost power. In the new suburban home, we were without power for 12 hours, and I mentally cursed myself at every opportunity for having so much food that might spoil on hand. Next time, I'll stick to simply buying peanut butter and fruit until AFTER all threat of a power loss is past, and then go back to get the dairy and frozen foods.

Your nifty tank-less hot water heater, which saves you soooooo much money every month on your utility bills, needs power to heat the water. I took an ice cold shower with a flashlight shining on me. It felt a lot like what I imagine prison to be like. (Normally, I would have just skipped the shower, but I actually had to leave the house to socialize with people at a baby shower, so it was sort of necessary.) We need to get a back up battery for this. (Or, we need to just bite the bullet and put in a generator.)

This soup is really good, especially when it is rainy. I made it rather spicy (accidentally bought a can of hot hatch chiles), used whole milk instead of heavy cream, and tempeh bacon instead of regular bacon. We're eating it for dinner again tonight. If the power hadn't come back, and the leftovers had spoiled, I would have been severely put out.

Your garage door opener won't open without power. Duh. We should have gotten the one with the battery back up. We also should not have lost the key to the manual garage door. Double duh.

When you wake up to find the power is out, there isn't much you can do except go out for breakfast. I had this delectable stuffed french toast from Green Eggs Cafe.



Yes, I had the materials on hand to make my own, thanks to the shopping, but I didn't want to open the fridge and compromise the temperature. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And just for fun, here is a lovely shot of the normally sedate Pennypack Creek, engorged to the size of a raging torrent.



Like lemmings, on the way home from breakfast, we followed all of the other cars on the road and parked to gawk at the spectacle.

When the power returns, your neighbors will actually cheer.

True Blood has been really mediocre this season (not really a hurricane lesson, just wanted to get this out there), except for the lovely amount of Eric and Alcide naked butt shots.