We had strong storms during the night. The lightening, thunder and torrential
rains didn’t awaken me, but my HB walking through the house with a flashlight at 3:30 a.m. did. Go figure.
The storms knocked out our electric power and it was still out when I woke up at
6 a.m.
For such emergencies, we have a little propane gadget that
comes in quite handy for boiling water for coffee. I can get by in an emergency
without many things, but my morning coffee isn’t one of them.
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| Image via Pinterest |
While the water was boiling I realized that there was no
ground coffee – only beans – and the grinder is, of course, electric.
I remembered that on the pantry shelf there was these coffee bags,
obviously purchased some time ago. The last time I cleaned out the shelves I
almost pitched them. But upon second thought, put them back in their place.
Better than nothing in a pinch, I thought.
The coffee tasted quite awful, so I decided I’d borrow some from mother,
as I needed to check on her anyway after the stormy night. The
ground being drenched from all the rain, I thought it best that I drive down. Then it dawned on
me that garage door openers don’t open without electricity. (There’s a way to
manually open them, of course, but I’d never done it and I decided not to awaken
HB since he’d been up half of the night watching the storms.
So off I went by foot; she was fine, I got coffee, returned
home, boiled more water, stored it in a thermal carafe and walked back to take her a small thermos of the brew. Then I returned home to enjoy mine.
Just as I was settling in to enjoy mine with a granola bar
(no yogurt; can’t open refrigerator door and let the cold out!) the electricity
came back.
The remainder of the day was quite nice. I need to be more
grateful each day for all the conveniences we have.
Later, after things were back to normal, HB pointed out we had these at the rear of the coffee filter basket:
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| Still not exactly fresh (2012!) but Starbucks beats Folgers 2010 any day! |
How do you cope during an electric outage, or is that
something you ever have to deal with?
We get occasional black-outs after storms, usually only a few hours. I am not well-organised and think I could really do with one of your water-heating gadgets, as I don't do well without my tea/coffee fixes either. We had a long blackout of several days last summer, and it was awful! Lost a lot of spoiled food.
ReplyDeleteThe little propane heater has come in handy on numerous occasions. I remember when you lost your freezer contents and what a mess that was! The longest we ever were without power was in 1995, when we had a major ice storm. No electricity for 11 days. What a nightmare that was. The usual ones last only a few hours.
DeleteWe have a remote power on the garage doors too, but like you I have never tried opening with the manual - perhaps I should learn.
ReplyDeleteNo problem with the coffee - I always buy it ground these days, and we have gas rings so they always lit up for heating water and food. Use candles or torch to go to bed, but doesn't happen often.
I'm going to buy a jar of instant coffee to keep on hand for such emergencies and keep rotating it to make sure it's fresh. Having gas for cooking is a real blessing during electric outages.
DeleteNo coffee? EEP! I'd be out in the back yard trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. We have gas cooking and heat by the Bay and I have an old fashioned hand grinder for the beans (regularly use electric one though). Everything at the house in the mts. is electric though and power outages there in the winter are quite common, due to all the trees and more extreme weather I suppose. DH is looking into getting a small generator. We do have a little propane camp stove but it is old and a big hassle to get it ready to use.
ReplyDeleteDarla
A generator is a great idea. We had a small one but I believe the son has borrowed it and it hasn't been returned! During our major ice storm in '95 we did a great deal of cooking on the barbeque grill, even tho it was freezing cold outside. We have gas logs in one of our fireplaces and kept warm, and a gas hot water heater allowed us to keep clean.
Deletei got such a kick out of this tale lol! we have no way to heat water if our electricity goes out. ah, the days of having a gas stove! i miss that.
ReplyDeletewe do have a manual coffee grinder, but without hot water....
I wish I had a gas range for more than one reason. Had I been able to get the car out of the garage, I'd have just driven to get a cup of coffee at one of the fast food restaurants.
DeleteWe have gas and electric rings + a stove heated with wood, so boiling water, making food is not the problem.
ReplyDeleteNo electric garage doors over here, but as usually the lights go off during a winter storm, it is not hard to guess what that means. Candeles and torches are definitely needed.
Our house is old, large and has natural " air-conditioning" ; ). The wind blowing from the north is very cold.
A few years ago, the lights were off c.23 hrs, in November, and even warming the house with all the many stoves kept it really cool.
We had to send our younger daughter to her sisters for the second night, and just when we were ready to go to bed - salam - the lights returned.
I have waken a few times in the morning and realized, that we have run out of coffee.
Luckily the first stores open at 7 am, but waiting for the two hours to pass, seem like forever.
It seems the electricity always comes back after you've gone through all the motions of making do. But always so glad to have it back. Ohhh, waiting for that first cup of coffee in the morning for two hours is sheer misery. Glad you have gas and wood stoves for heating/cooking in your cold climate.
Deletewe get occasional blackouts that last up to two hours tops. More than enought time for me to reconsider and be reminded just how comfortable our lives really are. I've never ever had to go to such great lenghts to get a cup of coffee! Your experience just made me realize I need to invest in a portable gas heater as well.
ReplyDeleteThe propane ones are better than the kerosene type; I don't like the smell of kerosene, although I would have done whatever was required to get my coffee yesterday morning! I'm going to grand coffee beans and place in the freezer for any future emergencies.
DeleteHi Sanda, Just catching up here! We have few major thunderstorms in the NE of England - though when it comes there is a lot of flooding in vulnerable areas. Strangely, being from Oklahoma, I miss the wild weather sometimes! I was thinking I'd just heat water on the gas stove, but then remembered we change to electric when we re-did the kitchen...so I might be hard pressed to come up with coffee if there was a power loss! Fingers crossed, it is a very rare event for us.
ReplyDeleteHope you don't get a power outage because mornings without coffee are rough!
ReplyDelete