Last Saturday morning, a lady came speeding down the hill and took out the light pole that feeds power to my house. We had no way to get out because the work trucks were blocking the whole street. We couldn’t get out unless we wanted to drop it into four wheel low and try to drive over a couple of bucket trucks. So I pulled out my cast iron grill, charcoal, and a cast iron skillet and made breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, toast and coffee. Then later I made lunch as planned, homemade ravioli and homemade canned sauce. By the time we were looking at dinner, they’d finished and we had power again.
In this case, we just pulled out the charcoal, but we do have a couple of propane tanks in reserve for a turkey fryer set up that will hold one of my cast iron skillets. We also have a single burner stove that we have about 50 bottles of butane that are also in reserve used for camping usually. I have a dutch oven that we can put the charcoal around and on top of to make whatever as well as a solar oven but I live in a temperate rain forest so that only goes so far. If it gets down to brass tacks, I can build a fire in the fire place and cook over it. We plan to have a fire place arm installed this year for dutch oven cooking over the indoor fire as well. I also have a couple of the little backpack stoves and some fuel tabs.