How To Feed Your Family Dinner After A Disaster
Today I’m adding my how to feed your family dinner after a disaster series. Are you sometimes asked this question, what’s for dinner? Well, I have some dinner ideas for you that we can all use if an unforeseen disaster happens in our neighborhood. I will admit I could eat Mexican food every day. I could eat salsa on everything, except pancakes. I really love salsa on just about every meal. I have a friend, Sandee, that gives me her homemade salsa every year. Two pints of “gold” I call it, and I savor every bite of that yummy spicy salsa. Next year, NOW that I have a gas stove, we will be canning some at my house…I can’t wait! I will share the recipe when I get my hands on it! Please get a butane stove with fuel: Camp Chef Butane 1 Burner Stove with Camping Case
and 12 Butane Fuel GasOne Canisters for Portable Camping Stoves
Getting Started:
Let’s get started with a few ideas for some throw-together dinners in a pinch. Here again, we are assuming all the roads and highways are not available to drive on. Your local Emergency Broadcasting system has asked that you not leave your home for a day, week, or possibly weeks. Here’s the deal, not everyone can afford a huge pantry stocked to the ceiling with cases of #10 cans filled with dehydrated or freeze-dried foods. But, if we can at least have enough food in our home store in a pantry or under the bed we can sleep at night knowing we can feed our family. The first thing I suggest is to take your family to your local grocery store and let everyone choose some breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods that need only a can opener or you can rip the box open. Give them a budget and let them choose the foods they would eat after a disaster or unforeseen emergency.
Dinner Ideas-Number One:
This is one of my favorite dinner ideas because of the salsa, tacos, beans, black olives, and meat for my husband (can of chicken or roast beef) ready to spoon into a taco shell. Add some canned fruit like Mandarin oranges or canned peaches and dinner is ready if you had to you could eat this dinner cold. Hot would be better. A butane stove with some extra cans of butane stored would be an awesome Christmas gift. Just saying…
Dinner Ideas-Number Two:
These Augason Farm soup bases are great to have in your food storage stash. They are pretty inexpensive (approximately $15.00) at your local Walmart. All you do is add water and stir in some dehydrated vegetables and some canned chicken…dinner is ready in no time. These two soup bases are great with just about any freeze-dried, dehydrated, or canned, vegetables you have in the pantry. Heat it up on your gas stove if you still have gas available in your home. Or again, get a butane stove. They work great indoors. If you have a Dutch Oven and some charcoal cook your soup outside.
Dinner Ideas-Number Three:
Here again, the OXO plastic containers have the freeze-dried onions, carrots, and celery I use all the time. I like the smaller packages they sell online. I can make bean soup with these veggies added and some canned chicken. Gather up some canned fruit to make a fruit medley in a bowl. Woohoo, another dinner!
Dinner Ideas-Number Four:
This is a really easy dinner as you boil some spaghetti and add some freeze-dried meat (or for me no meat) and smother it with spaghetti sauce. I keep a few jars on hand as well as tomato flakes and tomato paste to make my own sauce. If I need to cook dinner for a crowd after a disaster I can guarantee you I can cook a mean spaghetti for dozens. I have frozen meatballs in the freezer too! My husband would want meatballs…yep, I can visualize the spaghetti meatballs rolling around in the sauce right now.
Please remember, the government can’t take care of all of us. We need to take care of ourselves. Please be prepared for the unexpected today, not tomorrow. May God bless you for your efforts.
P.S. Don’t forget all the spices you can add to spice up your dinners!
My favorite things:
Prepare Your Family for Survival: How to Be Ready for Any Emergency or Disaster Situation
Lodge A5-7 Camp Dutch Oven Cooking Table
Lodge A5-3 Camp Dutch Oven Lid Stand
Camp Chef Camping Outdoor Oven with 2 Burner Camping Stove
Augason Farms Vegetable Stew Blend Emergency Food Storage 32 oz 10 Can
Great ideas! Also, per your suggestion I pick up
10 WaterBricks! (still need more)
Hi Dave, ten WaterBricks, you rock!!! I love hearing this, keep prepping! Linda
We have a GasOne single burner 9,000 BTU butane stove (with US & Canada safety listed/approved), that is commonly used as a tabletop stove, and 9-18 cans of butane. It is used with cross ventilation, and 2 battery carbon monoxide detectors in our all electric house. We use it for simple under 15 min cooking, but with our new ‘Wonder Bag’ we can just boil a meal, tuck it inside and let it continue cooking.
Our ‘very rustic’ outdoor kitchen has a grill and my wok stove, both propane, 2 rocket stoves, a 48″ cinder block & pavers table for charcoal and the Dutch Oven(s), skillets on a spider, and/or to hold the Lodge Sportsman Grill or our backpacking stoves. We are building an Adobe bread oven for pizza, stews, roasting, baking, and breads, and may build a brick charcoal grill. We have a big plastic sink and spray faucet, $5 at a garage sale, almost $100 in store.
For water, we upgraded to a 55 gal hot water heater for the 2 of us, with a very easy shut off so contaminated water can not enter it. With the 25′ potable water hose, we can attach it & fill jugs sitting on the back stairs instead of trying to get water from a 4-5″ high space. We also have a shelf unit that holds 16 gal jugs and the smaller one holds 12. Do not use the frosted jugs – they are VERY biodegradeable. We had a couple disintegrate within 3-4 DAYS of purchase. The perfectly clear plastic water jugs like Absopure last. We rotate the water jugs for drinking and cooking water (refills are cheap), and some of our jugs are 5 years old & still fine. We also run all our bottled drinking and cooking water through the AquaRain filter. Having gotten sick once from tap water, the AquaRain is a good precaution. We also just found a concrete, in ground, 1,500 gal cistern in the side yard & had it inspected, it’s in great shape. It needs to be emptied (about 100 gal), cleaned, and the special paint so the cement is not a problem may need re-applied. Then we hook up the gutters on the metal roof with a switch to send water down the yard or after it’s rained a bit to switch the water into the cistern. Plus we’re digging out the bog to make a fish pond for food & water.
With our setup cooking and living during a power outage or anything that doesn’t destroy the house is not a problem. I make Freezer Bag Meals (TM) to keep on a shelf to grab for lunch, picnics… Some can be made with cool water, most need just off boiling water. Power outages are great for cooking and relaxing. The last several outages included Fondue making; Beer can chicken in the grill with Weber’s Mesquite Seasoning & Guinness beer on & in the chicken which sat in a roasting pan with potatoes, carrots, parsnips & a turnip sharing the beer, seasoning & drippings; Mongolian BBQ, Okonomiyaki Japanese pancakes on the Sizzle-Q griddle that fits in our propane grill; Stir Fries with the propane Big Kahuna Wok Stove & 18″ wok; Flat breads, Bannock, Irish soda bread, 1800’s recipe Basque Sheepherders bread 5 qt loaf made in 5 qt DO; Son of a Gun stew, made with whatever isn’t moving too fast to put in the pot (from Cookie Baker, our ranch cook); Hot Pots, Shabu Shabu, Meat & broth fondue… I cook a LOT of Chinese & Japanese foods, we love them and most are very fast cooking. Stir frying with thinly sliced ingredients cooks in 3-6 min, and you can make more than just Asian. My husband now likes outages, and is having fun building the outdoor kitchen and learning to use it. I also get the chance to try new recipes as I love trying foods from the 1700’s and 1800’s as well as ancient foods, without smelling up the house if the “recipe” needs work.
Hope this gives y’all some ideas
Hi Dusty, oh man how I love this comment! It’s awesome to see how organized and prepared you are! I love these tips!!!!! Thank you, Linda