Book Review: Chowing & Surviving

Two of my library books are heading back to the stacks today when I go to the library to check out the PBS video on Frontier House. Here are my thoughts on these two books.

Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out by Jon and Robin Robertson (2005) is a good resource for folks that live in disaster-prone areas. If you live in an area occasionally hit by tornados, hurricanes, or ice storms that can knock out power for days, you should read this book. It's not a bad idea for the rest of us to read it, too, because you never know when the power might be down. In our area, microbursts during thunderstorms often knock out the power in small areas. Idiots that don't know how to top a tree properly can drop a huge limb on your neighbor's shed and pull down the power lines for your street as well. (I do hope they got fined for that stunt!)

The book discusses basic emergency supplies every household should have on hand, such as hand-cranked radio, first aid kit, water supply, etc., whether you can stay in your home during the power outage or if you have to leave. I was disappointed that in their list of ways to cook without power (grill, camp stove, fireplace), there was no mention of solar cookers. While it may not always be an option, it would be nice to be at least included in the list. I've got the useful manual kitchen tools covered. There is a good section on what to do about your refrigerator and freezer contents, including appropriate warnings about food safety.

The recipes in the book are based on foods that can be cooked in 10 minutes or less, so many of the ingredients are instant foods or canned. In some ways, this is contrary to how I am beginning to stock my pantry. Less processed foods will not cook as quickly, so it gives me something to think about. Rather than going out to buy a lot of canned beans, though, I can cook and can my own local beans using my new pressure canner. I'm still pondering the implications for starchy foods, although we can certainly grind grains and corn manually and make quick-cooking breads in a skillet. Soaking cracked grains overnight also significantly reduces their cooking time.

Another concept that was glossed over pretty quickly was eating from your own garden. Of course, this assumes that your garden survived the disaster or that it isn't shut down for the winter. The more food you are growing yourself, though, throughout the year, the greater your possibilities for fresh food during a power outage. This made me think about keeping an indoor herb garden and maybe some other small plants as well. A greenhouse would be ideal, again assuming it survives a natural disaster. Lots of good food for thought from this book which makes me glad I found my own copy at the used bookstore last week.

The Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change – or Live Through It by David De Rothschild (2007) is the book to give your family and friends if they are just starting to be open to the idea that global warming is real and they might want to do something about it. It's filled with many of the suggestions you'll find surfing the Internet for ways to green up your life, such as changing to CFLs, turning down your heat and donning a sweater, eating more veggies and less meat, and hopping on a bike instead of taking the car. Each suggestion also includes a web address to visit for more information, which means the book is chockful of resources. Edit: The publishers should have considered a spiral binding, though, to make it easier to lay the book flat while trying to type in the long web addresses.

I don't think I learned much new, but I would recommend the book for newbies. Actually, I did learn something new from the final section of the book. It is prefaced with:

WARNING: IF ALL ELSE FAILS
Refer to the following pages only in the event of
TOTAL CLIMATE MELTDOWN.

Based on his advice, I need to add a camel to our shopping list of survival needs.