When All Hell Breaks Loose Part 16

Crucially CREATIVE COOKING

"ed*i ble (ed' a_b_I) adj. fit to be eaten"

-Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary There are many ways to cook or heat up food when conventional methods are no longer an option. Whether you need to cook food at all depends on what's for dinner. Canned foods are precooked and can be eaten straight from the can. In summer months here in the Southwest, canned foods can be set in the sun for a few hours and then opened to enjoy a warm to hot meal depending on the sun's intensity and the length of the exposure.

Many foods, such as grains and legumes, require heat to make otherwise indigestible components digestible or at least palatable. Below are many suggestions and items to have on hand that will make your kitchen experience a little less challenging during rough times.

Handy Things to Have around the House

for Preparing Food after a Crisis

Major disasters will spell an end to a normal kitchen for days or weeks. Have the following goodies on hand to ease your food preparation until things get back on track.

Cooking Utensils If nothing else, a good quality metal two- to four-quart pot with lid will serve you well for many meals. Number 10 cans from stored food or coffee cans can be used as cook pots in a pinch. Many of these cans have plastic coatings inside which must first be burned away before they can be used. Build a fire in a safe location outdoors or in your woodstove or fireplace. Place the can, opening down, on top of the fuel and light your fire. It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes of decent flame to burn out the plastic coating. After the fire subsides and the can cools, take it out and wash it thoroughly with soap and water. In water-stingy desert locales, I've "washed" by aggressively scouring the can out with earth and sand before use. You can get fancy if you like and knock two small holes on opposite sides of the top rim with an ice pick, nail, and hammer, or a Swiss army knife attachment. Salvaged wire can be doubled up and anch.o.r.ed through each hole, providing a convenient bail or handle to suspend the pot over a heat source, to carry it when hot, or lash it down to a pack when hitting the road. Make sure your emergency cooking utensils are made from metal, as gla.s.s and ceramic cookware can easily be broken.

Eating Utensils Many foods can be eaten with the hands. Doing so, however, increases the risks of gastrointestinal problems when forced to use emergency sanitation techniques. Why take the chance? Although Martha Stewart would disapprove, there is no need for a fork, spoon, and knife unless you think there is. Campers have used the famous "spork"-a combination of fork and spoon-for decades. A simple eating spatula can be carved in seconds from a piece of wood. Chopsticks from a couple of twigs can be improvised even quicker, and like the spatula, can be added to the fire or thrown away after the fact, saving time and wash water. With individual bowls, spoons are not required as you can "slurp-drink" your soup from the bowl itself. Although not a good sanitary habit, I have slurp-drunk stew from the cook pot along with everyone else who was present. We simply pa.s.sed the pot around the circle of people, as no one had any containers or utensils.

Spoons are great for canned goods and most survival fare, which usually manifests itself at some point as soup or stew. Stew is a great excuse to throw into a pot anything that might be edible, along with a bouillon cube for flavoring. Knives might be necessary if your survival cuisine gets tough and stringy. Although plastic silverware is convenient at first, it's weak and constantly breaks. If you pack only one eating utensil, make it the mighty spoon. Larger camping stores sell extremely strong Lexan plastic spoons if you're fickle about weight.

Paper Plates, Cups, and Towels Paper utensils and napkins are great when was.h.i.+ng dishes is a drag due to knockedout services. Paper plates come in several qualities and prices, as do paper cups and towels. The dirty dishes can be burned in a safe location or buried in the pit latrine, saving precious water and eliminating the chance of dirty or poorly washed dishes attracting flies and other disease-spreading critters. Paper cups can be purchased with built-in handles that make holding hot beverages more pleasant. Paper cups are also more durable than Styrofoam cups, which can easily crack and break and produce noxious fumes when burned in the living room fireplace or woodstove. Paper towels provide both safety and convenience for wiping up nasty things without worrying about storing the towel for later was.h.i.+ng. Although paper products are perhaps not eco-friendly, their short-term use saves immediate resources far more precious to the survivor.

Heavy-Duty Aluminum Foil Heavy-duty aluminum foil can be used to protect food that can then be thrown directly onto a hot bed of coals to cook in the fireplace. You can also fold aluminum foil into improvised containers that can hold food for cooking or water for boiling and disinfecting. Foil can also be used to reflect the light from a candle flame when mirrors are absent to achieve brighter lighting. I have aluminum foil covering the ends of my energy-conserving fluorescent lightbulbs. The larger bulbs stick out from many conventional lighting fixtures and their exposed glare can be annoying. The foil bends nicely to whatever shape is required and is worry-free against the hot bulb. Several sheets of heavy-duty foil can be used to make an improvised fire pit outdoors for heating and cooking. The foil can be used repeatedly or rolled up and discarded when cold to the touch. Foil can be used to line homemade solar ovens or scrunched up and stuffed into holes or cracks to prevent mice and other rodents from chewing and entering the opening. Layers of foil can be made into an insulating mat to act as an improvised lid for cooking pots or formed into energy-efficient skirts to put around burners and cook pots to maximize heat and conserve fuel. And of course, aluminum foil can be used to wrap and protect food for use at another time.

Several Ways to Light a Fire Fire is king, and the art of how it's made, used, and extinguished can be incredibly complex so I'll save it for another book. For our urban adventure, have several conventional ways to make fire on hand at all times. While you can make fire with certain chemicals, sticks, parabolas, fresnel lenses, optics, mish metals, batteries and steel wool, "flint and steel," and even sunlight and the two-liter plastic pop bottle used for disinfecting water with the SODIS method, having and using matches and lighters is a lot easier under survival stresses. Both produce the instantaneous flame much sought after by more unconventional methods. Have two or three ways to make fire and, if you need to evacuate, carry them with you in three different places. Don't put all of your survival eggs in one basket. All responsible family members should be equipped with the necessary means to create fire.

Regardless of the small amount of s.p.a.ce I dedicate to fire in this book, your family's ability to create it and control it is of paramount importance to their comfort and survival. Practice now how to light a fire in all weather conditions and with all types of fuel. Seek hands-on training from a reputable instructor about how fire is made, used, and extinguished. Know well the three elements of the fire triangle-fuel, ignition or heat, and oxygen-as in these lie the keys to success for not just creating flame, but in controlling and putting it out completely for the safety of your home, neighborhood, and town. Ignorance can kill, especially when dealing with fire. Unfortunately, due to the majority of Americans being ignorant about how fire is created and used, you can count on many buildings (and towns) burning after a prolonged crisis due to carelessness and a lack of emergency response personnel and equipment.

A Manual Can and Bottle Opener Years ago, Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon featured a couple inside a bomb shelter after nukes had gone off in the distance. The husband and wife were surrounded by canned food, without a can opener, as the wife yelled her discontent at her husband's memory lapse in proper preparation. Many homes have electric can openers, which will, of course, be useless during a power outage. If the lion's share of your emergency food is canned, a quality can opener or two is a must. Swing-A-Way makes a good brand of manual can opener that's easy to use, lasts for a long time, is readily available, and relatively inexpensive. Cheap can openers are a b.u.mmer to use; they result in mangled cans, spilled contents, and children learning bad words uttered by the p.i.s.sed-off user. Military P-38 can openers are great. I have one on my keychain and use it often. They are cheap, lightweight, compact, and very fast with practice. Not all are created equal; discount stores carry brands made from cheap metal that bend and break. Try military surplus stores for the real deal. I've seen bottles opened with plastic combs, the sides of tables, and teeth (not recommended). The Swing-A-Way can opener also has a handy hook for opening bottles, as do most Swiss army knives.

Camping or Backpacking Stove with Fuel Portable two-burner camping stoves are great for cooking grub when standard options are on the fritz. They're convenient, relatively safe when used properly, readily available, and easy to service and buy parts for. Larger two-burner stoves fold down into their own briefcase-sized container and include everything you need except fuel and a pot. I've used various models for years as a regular part of my kitchen experience. Basic two-burner camping stoves are available at many discount stores and are perfect for most families. I especially like the "matchless" models that use a self-generated spark to light the burners, thereby eliminating the need for matches or lighters.

NO CAN OPENER,.

NO PROBLEM!.

With practice, canned food can be easily opened with a little elbow grease and an abrasive surface. The raised lip on the top of a can is actually folded metal. By wearing through this "fold," the top will pop right off. To impress your family and friends (after practicing), start by firmly holding the bottom of the can, the raised lip pointed toward your abrasive surface. I like slabs of concrete, block walls, brick, sandstone common in the Southwest, or some other relatively flat, hard surface that has the grit required to wear through the metal lip. Firmly grip the can of food, put the lip in contact with the abrasive surface, and make a series of small, forceful circles like you're sanding a piece of wood with the top of the can. In a matter of a minute or less if you're really going at it, you'll see liquid from the inside of the can start to stain the "sanding surface." Fiddle with the lid to see if the metal is connected at any point; if it is, sand some more emphasizing the area that's not worn through. Other than a little grit in your grub, you should be good to go. Although more tedious, the can of food can also be held and a smaller abrasive surface worked around the lip of the can.

Due to its weight and bulk, it would be suicide to pack the above-mentioned two-burner stove in case of a hasty evacuation. Miniature backpacking stoves are cool when weight and s.p.a.ce are at a premium, but their smallness and one-burner capacity make them a poor choice to use for a family of any size. Picture the size of the pot that it would take to feed your family, and then picture it sitting on the dainty, unstable single burner. Their scaled-down size makes them a pain in the a.s.s to use on a regular basis and the teetering pot perched atop the engineering marvel can easily be toppled by kids, pets, or inclement weather, increasing fire danger if used in your home. Rabid designers may be able to make a cell phone smaller, but who cares if your fingers are too fat to make a call. Backpacking stoves are also expensive in comparison to larger two-burner models and you may be forced to endure elitist sn.o.bbery from sales people at high-end outdoor stores when deciding which G.o.d's-gift-to-ultralight-stoves to choose.

The most common camping or backpacking stoves burn white gas or propane, although some burn alcohol (such as homemade stoves that can be created from an aluminum pop can) and even sticks and leaves. As described in the lighting chapter, white gas is more hazardous to store and not as neat as propane, as it can be easily spilled. Having a stove that runs on the same fuel as your alternative lighting options is a wise choice, be it white gas or propane canisters. Whatever fuel you choose, pack away extra for a rainy day in a safe location.

Even though newer camping and backpacking stoves have a warning on the package about using them indoors due to concerns about carbon monoxide poisoning, it's fine to have them in your kitchen to prepare food. If you live in a dollhouse covered with plastic wrap or your shelter or kitchen area is tight, crack a window when utilizing the stove to allow fresh air to enter the room and always use them on a stable, noncombustible surface. For G.o.d's sake, don't bring the stove into your home with the intention of using it to heat your house. Cooking, yes. Heating? Absolutely not!

Other Food Cooking Alternatives Charcoal and Barbeque Grills Kiss the cook! Dad will have a blast cooking up survival meals just like he does in the summertime with his famous hamburger cookouts. Most barbeque grills run on propane tanks and will last a surprising amount of time depending on what you cook. Many grills have a side burner perfect for heating up items in pots. I love my outdoor propane barbeque grill and use it mainly when I entertain company or for quickly cooking up rodents and rabbits without having to ha.s.sle with a fire pit.

Due to their shape and volume, spherical-shaped charcoal grills allow you to easily use almost anything that will burn as a fuel source long after the briquettes run out. They're basically a fire pit with wheels, ending the need for you to bend over your fire pit to cook your food or disinfect your water. Caution! Carbon monoxide fumes from charcoal briquettes have killed people who brought the grill inside for warmth during power outages, so use caution and common sense. AT NO TIME should a charcoal briquette- fueled barbeque grill be brought into or near the house. If necessary, reread about carbon monoxide poisoning on Chapter 12.

Mini-stoves with Fuel Tablets Some cooking stoves are nothing more than a collapsible metal grate in which hexamine tablets are placed underneath to heat whatever. They're neat and will simmer water in your Sierra cup, but they could cause vexed family members to bludgeon you to death as they painfully wait for their tepid dinner, one cup at a time. They would be useful if you are forced to hit the road due to an evacuation.

Candles Although slow and tedious, with patience, a simple candle flame can heat up many foods. Canned foods can be opened, the paper label peeled off if necessary, and the can set directly upon an improvised fireproof grate over a candle flame.

Woodstoves Many woodstoves feature a flat area on top of the stove that's perfect as a cooking surface. The main drawback with using a woodstove to cook or heat food is that it's in your house. If your emergency happens in the middle of July, it's doubtful you'll fancy firing up the stove to heat the survival beans when it's 95 degrees F (35 degrees C) outside.

Fireplaces Any Hollywood movie depicting medieval times has a shot of the family fireplace in which all meals are prepared and cooked. With a metal pot and grate, matches, firewood, and ingenuity, you'll quickly learn what works best if you choose to incorporate your home's fireplace as part of your kitchen cookery. Fire safety from neglected chimneys is of prime importance so reread the alternative heating section on Chapter 12.

Campfires There are many, many variations of campfire lays in regard to how things are set up to cook food with fire. Radiant flame contains the most heat but the smoldering coals provide a more even heat without scorching. Until you get a cooking system down, your metal pot will drive you mad as it will either be too far from the heat source and will take forever to warm up or suffocate the fire of oxygen by being too close. Every year I watch my students from urban backgrounds attempt to cook their food over an open fire in the wilderness. It's comical and somewhat pathetic at first, but by dinner on the third night they're almost pros at getting the fire and pot to bend to their will for great results. If you're subjected to using an open campfire to cook your food, go slow, use common sense, and have patience with yourself and others. Things will only get better with practice. When building a fire outside, do it away from buildings and don't build it under a carport, as heat and sparks can easily start a house fire. Learn how to start a fire safely-don't use gasoline to get a wood or charcoal fire started.

Some camp cooking fires are built on the ground and others are raised up to eliminate bending over. Outdoor cooking options can be quite elaborate and include earth or rock ovens, pit baking, flat stone griddles, green stick grills, clay baking, and more. In each instance, their commonality is how to most effectively and efficiently get the heat to the food. The problem with an open fire, especially in the wind, is that only a small percentage of its heat reaches the container to cook the food. The rest is lost to the environment.

You can suspend a metal pot with a handle over fire or coals using sticks, dig a narrow trench that allows a fire underneath, or have the pot sit on rocks, among many other variations. Open fires have a way of tras.h.i.+ng cook pots by turning them permanently black, so be warned. If you lack a noncombustible container or heavy-duty tinfoil, which is hard to imagine in an urban setting, food can be stone boiled in a variety of otherwise combustible containers. I routinely "stone boil" food such as clams, crayfish, beans, or corn in gourd pots using rocks that were heated in a fire. Indigenous peoples used tightly woven baskets, wooden containers, and animal parts to achieve the same means. Rocks gathered from low-lying areas, whether the stones were in water or not, should be heated up carefully, as the trapped water within the rock can rapidly expand and cause the rock to explode when heated.

Canned foods can be opened and put directly into a bed of coals or near the fire; occasionally stir the contents with a spoon or stick so it doesn't scorch. Food products such as ashcakes, described on Chapter 12, can be put directly onto the hot coals or skewered and suspended on sticks like you did with marshmallows and weenies when you were a kid. Whatever method you choose, there is no escaping the fact that the more you know about how fire works, the easier (and safer) it will be to cook your food using its power.

Be Fire Safe!

Make sure any fire is well contained. Strong winds can blow embers into dry gra.s.s or other fuels and have your neighborhood go up in smoke quickly. Many idiot campers put ma.s.sive fuel on a tiny heat base and then fight over the sitting area that's not smoking like crazy. You don't need a huge white-man fire to cook your lentils. It wastes fuel, attracts attention, creates a terrible fire danger, and burns food and people, as it's too d.a.m.n hot to get near to stir the beans.

IN THE KITCHEN, SIZE DOES MATTER.

Whole grains and legumes should be left whole until days or hours before cooking, as this ensures the least amount of oxidation to damage the food's nutritional value. To save time, water, and fuel, these food types should be broken up before cooking to allow the greater surface area to speed up the cooking process. The perfect tool for this is the manual food grinder or grain mill. There are many varieties to choose from in all different qualities. Buy the best, most simple hand-crank mill you can afford and it will give you a lifetime of service.

A low-tech alternative is to create a mano and metate from rocks in your backyard. A veritable prehistoric grain mill used for thousands of years, the mano is the grinding stone you hold in your hand(s) and the metate is the larger stone surface that you grind upon. Many authentic metates have deep depressions worn into them by years of faithful service. I have made quickie mano and metate sets on the fly during wilderness courses to pulverize or grind up corn or mesquite pods for easier cooking and digestion.

I usually dig a rectangular trench about six inches deep to put my fires in and use the earth to build up a small embankment around the fire. This trench is dug in mineral earth, free from roots and other combustibles underground. Fire pits encircled with rocks turn into trash cans in the woods, but if you have to use rocks to contain your fire, do so. In an urban setting, bricks or concrete blocks work great. Some people use metal drums or charcoal grills to build their fires.

Be sure to properly extinguish any fire when you are through with it. All parts of the fire, including the black carbon, should be cool to the touch. Remember the fire triangle: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Remove any one of them and the fire goes out. The easiest way to put out your fire in low- or no-water situations is to burn very small fuelwood and let it burn out. In other words, think ahead about when you want the fire out and STOP ADDING FUEL!

The Dutch Oven In the hands of experienced people, Dutch ovens are capable of cooking nearly anything, from stews to chocolate cakes. All they require is food, fuel, and someone who knows what they're doing. Many Dutch oven artists like the model with three or four metal legs and a lid with a rim around its circ.u.mference. These design features allow for the easy distribution of hot coals under and on top of the oven for heat to evenly penetrate and cook the meal inside.

Pressure Cookers Pressure cookers make short work of hard-to-cook survival fare foods such as rice or beans, saving fuel, time, and water. When foods are stored for long periods of time, they will become slightly tougher and harder to cook, hence the virtues of the pressure cooker. There are many cheap ones on the market (some of which have exploded under the pressure!), and some of the best to be found are lingering on a back shelf at the thrift store. My grandmother could work magic with her pressure cooker and I fondly remember its "rattle and hiss" that inevitably meant something tasty would be on the table soon. Purchase a quality pressure cooker as you'll have it for life.

Solar Ovens According to one source, the first formal solar cooker was developed in 1767 by Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist. Since the sun has been drying people's food for thousands of years, my guess is that the sun was being used to cook food much earlier than this; we have yet to find the proof.

I absolutely adore my solar oven. I can cook almost anything and during the summer months my oven can get to temperatures of 375 degrees F (191 degrees C) in less than half an hour-all with the free power of the sun. How hot a solar cooker gets is primarily determined by the number and size of the reflectors used and, of course, the sun's intensity and its duration. High temperatures are not required for cooking and food will cook just fine as long as the oven reaches about 200 degrees F (90 degrees C). Foods containing water can't go above 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) at sea level anyway, unless a pressure cooker is used. High temperatures in cookbooks are for the sake of convenience and to achieve effects on food such as browning. Lower temperatures allow foods to cook slower, like in a crockpot, so people can do other things and come back to a hot meal. Higher oven temperatures cook food faster, in larger quant.i.ties, and give your oven a boost during partly cloudy or hazy days.

There are three basic types of solar cookers: box cookers, panel cookers, and parabolic cookers. Box cookers are probably the most common variety and can evenly cook large amounts of food. Some communities use homemade box-cooker ovens that hold and roast an entire turkey. Reflectors can be added, like the petals of a flower, to further focus the sun's rays into and around the solar cooker "belly" where the food rests. Panel cookers consist of various flat panels that focus the sun's rays onto a container inside a gla.s.s bowl or clear plastic bag. These can be made very cheaply with few materials. Parabolic cookers are reflective concave discs that focus the sun's rays onto the bottom of a pot. They are more complicated to make but follow the same principle as my Radio Shack solar cigarette lighter that I use for fire demonstrations. Parabolas you may have around the house that can be used to make a fire are the inside reflective bowl of a good-sized flashlight or the reflective bowl from the inside of a car headlight. Parabolas focus the sun's rays into a concentrated area and can cause wicked eye damage to people who insist on using their lighter to see how much gas they have left in their fuel tank.

As a general rule, solar ovens take about twice the cooking time as a conventional oven. One of the beauties about box cooker ovens is you really have to work to burn something in them. Point it toward the sun, put the food in, adjust it once or twice as needed, and walk away-the perfect free crockpot. A friend of mine sets up his solar oven and points it south before he goes to work each day. Upon returning from work, his food is cooked and he sits down to a hot meal each evening.

They also work well to simmer or at least pasteurize nonpotable water. Commercial solar ovens and many homemade ones are so efficient that even hazy days or the reduced insolation of the winter sun simply adds a bit more cooking time to yet another amazing meal. The taste of food cooked with the sun is "pure," and hard to describe as there is no taste hint of any fuel that you get with other methods.

The Perfect Pot *

HERE COMES THE SUN.

In many countries, poor residents (mostly women and girls) are forced to walk for hours each day to find firewood (a scarce commodity for two billion people in developing countries). When wood is scarce, people have to burn dung and crop residues which would otherwise have been composted to enrich poor soils for growing food. The time involved gathering fuel to cook food takes away from their educational opportunities, such as school or from learning various trades for greater independence, and sets them up for violent a.s.saults common in locales such as Darfur in Africa.

Sitting around a poorly burning camp fire each day is not healthy, as the chemicals in smoke cause long-term health effects. If solar ovens, which don't produce toxic smoke and can also pasteurize unsanitary water, were used in these countries, countless children would not be killed by waterborne and smoke-related diseases, which are the primary killers of children in developing countries. Poor urban families spend a good part of their meager paycheck on cooking fuels. The European Commission as well as solar cooker experts estimate that 165 to 200 million households could benefit from solar cookers.

Today hundreds of thousands of solar cookers are being used on a regular basis, mostly in parts of India, China, and Africa. Slowly but surely, thanks to organizations such as Solar Cookers International (SCI) and many others, solar cooking can and will liberate hundreds of thousands from dependence on dwindling wood supplies, saving countries from continued environmental degradation and pollution caused from processing and burning human-made fuels, as well as saving families money and increasing their health. Far more than just a cool survival option, solar cookers can literally revolutionize the world and empower people with the free and limitless energy of the sun.

There are many opinions about what type of pot to use in a solar cooker. Here in the desert, it doesn't seem to matter much. Dark-colored metal pots won't reflect as much long-wave radiation as s.h.i.+ny pots, but I've used both and they both work. Clear or colored gla.s.s works, too, as well as Corningware. If all you have are s.h.i.+ny pots, and you feel strongly about using a black pot, using it to cook over an open fire a few times will solve the problem, maybe forever. As a general rule, use dark-colored, shallow, lightweight metal pots.

Making Your Own Solar Box Oven There are several designs in books, magazines, and on the Internet for making your own solar oven. For our purposes, we'll make one out of cardboard although you can use much more expensive materials if you wish. Paper burns at 451 degrees F (233 degrees C) and your oven won't get that hot. Cardboard works great unless it gets rained on, but hey, this is a solar oven so what's it doing in the rain? If you expect frequent moisture or want greater durability from your cardboard oven, paint the outside with house paint.

The Robbie Rubbish Radically Right-on Radiant Range Robbie dug deep into the landfill of opportunity to come up with this solar oven design. He knew from looking at other designs that the cover or top of the solar oven was the biggest challenge to create. To avoid this pitfall, he used a box with a lid. Robbie said he found a bunch of heavyweight cardboard boxes with lids at printing shops and copy centers, as that's what their paper comes delivered in.

The inner walls of Robbie's oven are covered with an old reflective s.p.a.ce blanket, although heavy-duty aluminum foil works great too. (Robbie knows that the smoother and s.h.i.+nier the surface, the better it will reflect radiation, so he chose the salvaged s.p.a.ce blanket.) The s.p.a.ce blanket or aluminum foil reflects the impending long-wave radiation after the shortwave radiation from the sun enters the box. As the heat from long-wave radiation has a hard time getting back out through a barrier such as gla.s.s or plastic, it continues to bounce around the interior of the box. He feels this works better than painting the inside walls black. Although the color black may get "hotter" on the oven walls, he's not interested in eating the oven and the subsequent reflected long-wave radiation is a better use of heat.

For the window, instead of using gla.s.s, Robbie uses a clear plastic oven bag that can withstand temperatures of 400 degrees F (204 degrees C). He likes to cut the oven bag in half, thus using only one layer of plastic for slightly greater solar gain. You can also leave the bag in one piece so the two sides form an insulating air pocket, but be sure to tape or glue the bag shut or it may collect water vapor between the layers of plastic and block sunlight. Oven bags don't have ultraviolet protection so they will eventually become fragile and need to be replaced, but they are common and cheap enough to do so with a minimum of ha.s.sle. Plastic is also lighter and safer than gla.s.s, especially around kids.

Robbie's not going to insulate the oven walls, as he knows cardboard is already a decent insulator due to its corrugations. He also knows that heat rises, and will mostly be lost through the oven's top plastic panel which is necessary to let in the sun. He won't insulate the bottom either, although he'll pay attention to where he sets the oven to be mindful of potential colder conduction from the ground. After all, he's dealing with a solar oven, meaning the sun will be striking all around the ground where he sets the oven, warming the surface.

With all the materials at hand, I watched Robbie make an oven in less than forty-five minutes. Follow Robbie's solar-oven instructions or create your own!

Materials Cardboard box with lid. (The one Robbie found was eighteen inches long by ten inches high by fourteen inches wide) s.p.a.ce blanket or roll of heavy-duty aluminum foil Sharp knife and scissors Glue Duct tape Clear plastic, turkey-size oven bag Sc.r.a.p piece of wire Like anything new, solar-oven operation takes a little getting used to. Sometimes it's necessary to move them a couple of times to make the most of the s.h.i.+fting sun, and during very windy days, the one featured in the photo section will blow over unless it's anch.o.r.ed down. Where you live will depend on how often you can use your oven throughout the year.

Cooking Tips and Techniques for Getting the Most Fuel Bang for Your Buck All fuel sources after an emergency will be like gold. Whether it's gasoline or firewood, its presence is like money in the bank for the savvy survivor. Knowing how to make these precious resources stretch is all-important.

The efficiency of a heat source used for cooking can be thought of as having three parts. The first part is the efficiency of combustion of the fuel and the second is the efficiency of heat transfer to the cooking container. The third variable is the competence and skill of the person doing the cooking. Over all, maximizing the second variable will result in the greatest fuel savings. Use the techniques listed below now to save energy and get yourself accustomed to doing more with less.

Many of the following tips can be incorporated into cooking over a campfire as well. Outdoor campfires will be under the influence of weather variations and require much greater attention to variable number one when compared to a premixed propane-fueled stove that's used indoors.

Choose a good pot! Broad-bottomed pots are better than narrow ones. Thick metal takes more time to heat up but also holds and radiates more heat when the heat source is removed. Pots with short handles on either side, as opposed to one long handle, will be easier to incorporate into a hay box (featured next). Your pot must have a lid.

Keep a lid on it! Hot air rises. Food cooks much slower in a pot without a lid, thus it uses the same amount of fuel but for a much longer duration. The same amount of heat enters the pot but less of it is used for the cooking process, hence an uncovered pot is a less successful heat exchanger. Lids should be tight fitting to keep the steam inside the pot. Lids can be insulated by putting several layers of aluminum foil in or on the lid. When the lid becomes hot, turn down the burner but keep the lid on.

Wear a skirt! Use a noncombustible, reflective skirt of double or tripled layers of heavy-duty aluminum foil or unpainted, ungalvanized aluminum roof flas.h.i.+ng to encircle the cooking flame and pot, reradiating otherwise lost heat toward the sides of the pot. This increases the heat transfer value for the same amount of fuel. The skirt can be as tall as the pot on the stove with about half an inch to a quarter of an inch of clearance away from the sides of the pot. Double up the material encircling the pot a few inches and anchor it with a large metal paper clip. Some folks simply put a large metal mixing bowl upside down over the entire cooking pot.

Shorten the distance! Keep the cooking container as close as possible to the heat source without suffocating the flame from receiving oxygen.

Keep the heat focused! Flame blasting up around the edges of a pot is wasted. Turn the burner down until the flame is focused upon the middle of the pot, yet covering as much surface area as possible. Smaller flames may take longer to cook but will yield greater cooking results for the fuel consumed. Doing so will also eliminate much burnt food stuck to the bottom of the pot, thereby saving food and was.h.i.+ng time.

Center the pot directly over the cooking flame! This sounds like common sense but check out where the pot is located tonight at dinner. Ninety percent of the time it's off to one side of the flame.

The Hay Box: The Power of Heat-Retained Cooking Precious fuel creates the heat that is then used to cook your food. But what if you could harness the heat from the food in your pot to do some of its own cooking? Doing so would allow you to turn off the stove that much sooner, thereby maximizing limited fuel resources. This heat-retention cooking concept is exploited to its fullest by using something which is commonly referred to as a hay box. A hay box is nothing more than a superinsulated box in which food that has been heated to cooking temperature is placed to continue cooking. Its fuel savings, depending on the type of food and how much cook time it requires, can be from 20 to 80 percent! The longer a food item takes to cook on the stove, the greater the savings when using an insulated cooker. Insulated cookers can be used anytime, not just after emergencies, to save a tremendous amount of cooking fuel and energy.

The concept behind insulated cookers is simple. When food in a container is put near a heat source, the food climbs to the boiling temperature and then stabilizes. The food within the stabilized temperature then "cooks" for a given period of time. Any heat beyond the boiling temperature is merely replacing heat lost to the surrounding environment by the pot. When the container reaches its top temperature and then is removed from the heat source and placed in a superinsulated box, the food inside continues to cook. In heat-retained cooking, food is brought to a boil, simmered for a few minutes depending on the particle size of the food, and then put into the hay box to continue cooking. (Simmer smaller grains such as rice for five or six minutes. Simmer larger food such as dried beans or whole potatoes for fifteen to eighteen minutes. Presoaking and draining beans always makes them easier to cook, as well as to digest. Red meats such as a roast can be simmered for twenty to thirty minutes. Note: As a safety precaution, meats should be recooked before serving.) The insulation prevents most of the heat in the food from escaping, thereby eliminating the need for a continued heat source for cooking.

As a general rule, hay-box cooking times are usually one or two times the regular cooking time on a stove. It's like having a free crockpot, cooking the food and keeping it warm, without burning the contents, until you're ready to eat. Like many techniques in this book, experimentation will prove what works best.

Making a Hay Box Quickie hay boxes can be made by wrapping up a cook pot with extra blankets, pillows, or sleeping bags. However, as the pot will be very hot, there are a few rules to follow when making or improving your heat-retaining cooker. Essentially, a hay box is any heat-safe insulating material that can be safely wrapped around a pot. Four to six inches of insulation is best, although it depends on the type of insulation, as not all are created equal. Several kinds of insulation have been used such as straw, hay, wool, feathers, cotton, rice hulls, cardboard, Styrofoam peanuts, newspaper, fibergla.s.s, fur, papercrete, rigid foam, and others. Whatever insulation is used should fit as closely as possible to the pot for maximum efficiency. Using aluminum foil or a reflective s.p.a.ce blanket against the pot will not only protect the insulation from some of the pot's heat but will reflect the long-wave radiation (heat) back to the pot. Heat-safe insulation can be placed directly around the pot after putting the pot in a cardboard box or it can be stuffed between two boxes and the pot placed inside the smaller box, among numerous other variations. Some people create an insulated kitchen drawer as a hay-box cooker. After simmering on the stove, they simply pop the pot into the drawer, fold the insulation down around the top, and shut the drawer while dinner cooks.

Rules for Optimal Insulation You can get away with a lot and still have a heat-retaining cooker work well but, by adhering to the following points, your hay-box cooker will be superefficient at maximizing trapped heat. The insulation for your hay-box cooker should have the following characteristics: It must be heat resistant and withstand cooking temperatures of up to 212 degrees F (100 degrees C), the boiling temperature for water at sea level.

It should maintain an adequate loft. Even the best insulation can be compromised by squis.h.i.+ng it up tightly or spreading it out too thin.

It must be pliable or custom-fit to the cooking pot itself in order for it to fit around the pot as closely as possible to minimize heat loss.

It should not release any toxic fumes when heated. Some foams will need to be protected and should not be used directly against the pot.

It must be kept dry. Rising steam from the pot will dampen insulation, thus causing it to lose some of its insulating properties. Mylar s.p.a.ce blankets or aluminum foil can pull double duty as a reflective and moisture-proof barrier.

All cooking containers should have tight-fitting lids to prevent the escape of heat and moisture. The larger the cook pot, the more thermal ma.s.s it will have, thus it will store a greater amount of heat to cook food after being removed from the heat source.

Other Hay-Box Advantages Conserving fuel is not the only gift a hay box can give. Preparing multiple meals can be a ha.s.sle with a single or even a two-burner camping stove. Hay boxes allow you to simmer items for a few minutes and then stash them away to cook further, thus freeing up the burner to heat other dishes for the meal. Since water won't be simmering away, you'll require less stored water to cook grains and legumes. Because of this, reduce added water to foods by one quarter. If dried beans require two cups of water for cooking, try using one and a half cups instead. Hay boxes cook food using reduced temperatures, thereby preserving more of the food's original nutrition and flavor.

The Survival Kitchen Survival kitchen: anyplace you happen to be that is used to prepare food after a catastrophe.

The following tidbits can make life a lot easier when needing to feed the herd. No doubt trial and error will go a long way in your learning curve toward doing more with less under very great stress.

Kitchen Control In the outdoors, there is nothing worse than a student haphazardly walking over prepared food, especially in sandy conditions. The "sand sandwich" leaves much to be desired. After emergencies, when kitchens must be created in unconventional areas, it may be necessary to set up boundaries to keep things sanitary and prevent kids and pets from knocking things over or creating major first-aid episodes.

Kitchen boundaries can be objects on the ground, such as coolers and tables, or consist of string or surveyor's tape stretched out around the kitchen perimeter, similar to a crime scene. String or rope can also be used for hanging towels or other implements to dry and sanitize in the sun.

The Deluxe Dishwas.h.i.+ng Station After the paper plates run out, was.h.i.+ng the dishes for a large family without modern conveniences can be interesting. You will want to stay on top of dishes or they will attract unwanted critters. Dirty dishes lying around are a morale killer in general. I have seen the following method used to service hundreds of people at a time in the outdoors. The more people, the more the water, soap, and chlorine will need to be changed.