How We Prepare For A Storm & What Helped Us Through Sandy

As I mentioned in my previous post about aging, my area has weathered two large storms the last two Autumns.  The first was a freak megastorm that dumped 19" of snow on us in late October of 2011 (Yo, Mother Nature!  Too friggin' early!).  Then last year, Hurricane Sandy visited.  My kids can tell you about the exact moment "Mommy lost it" and hurried everyone (in truth, screamed at everyone to run) down to the basement.  I huddled with my children in that cold, dark room as the beast that was Sandy roared overhead; it's a sound I will NEVER forget...

Now that Fall is here, it's time to prepare once again and here's how I do it and what has worked for my family.   Obviously your needs will be different.

  The Red Cross Preparedness Checklist  (http://chapters.redcross.org/ca/mtyco/ds/emgcheck.html) lists what you should have in your Emergency Kit .  I check ours every season to make sure the food hasn't expired.  I also tweak it; diapers and baby food aren't needed by us anymore, so that leaves room for other things that we didn't need but do now like cat supplies for the feline we now have. 

Some of the foods I stock are:

Make sure you pack a can opener!

-  protein bars (We LOVE Zone Perfect bars which are chock FULL of vitamins.  My growing teen eats them by the dozens!)
-  boxed milk
-  chocolate (For energy?  Maybe, but it was comfort food for us all.)
-  instant oatmeal
-  canned soups (I make sure a can opener is packed as well)
-  enriched pastas (I like the Barilla pasta made with chick pea flour.  It's loaded with vitamins.)
-  sauce
-  tuna
-  turkey jerky
-  snacks
-  tea (Camomille tea calmed my kids during the stress of the storm.  The gas was working, so I'd make them a cup before bed every night.)

I also make sure my freezer contains at least one frozen chicken or turkey; here's why.  Last year, upon learning that the storm was coming and realizing that we would almost certainly lose power, I cooked anything in my freezer that could feed the family for a few days without being cooked.  We just happened to have one of those free turkeys the supermarkets give out during Easter or Thanksgiving.  I defrosted it a few days ahead of time and cooked that sucker up; it gave us protein for most of the power outage! 

More of the kitchen preparations I did included: 

- Cooking brownies.  Sounds stupid, but those sweet treats were comforting!
- Freezing GoGurt yogurt sticks, containers of egg whites, and milk. We put those in the cooler and not only were they nutritous, but they served as cooling agents as well, in addition to the ice we had.

Since Halloween had been cancelled, my stress-reliever proved to be the Milk Duds I had planned on giving out to the trick-or-treaters.  I now have a secret Fall-stash of those candies just for me.   :)

As for equipment...

I mentioned in my other post that we do have a portable generator; we've named it Justin as in "just-in case."  My husband has already tested it to make sure it's working and we have a bit of starter gas to power it.  Last year while everyone around us used their generators to power almost everything in their houses, we used it sparingly in the evening to charge our electronics and power one lamp for maybe two hours at a time.  That was an important strategy because while our neighbors were searching for gas on a daily basis, we only needed to make one gas run the whole week!   Each evening, we'd watch a movie on my son's computer.  It kept a semblance of normalcy going.  This year I think we'll be plugging the refrigerator in so we don't lose all the food we lost last year (and which was NOT covered by our insurance).

Let's talk about the cooler.  Before the storm we'd only had the mini ones you take to the beach, but a few days before Sandy hit, I'd snagged the last large one at Home Depot; I'm SO glad I did!  We were able to keep quite a few perishables in there without constantly open the fridge.  Ours has a little spigot at the bottom so I could periodically drain the water and wheels so I could easily take it to the back steps.  

Besides the cooler, another essential for us is battery-operated candles.  The kids can easily and safely carry them around a dark house.  We also used ours as a nightlight when my little one went to bed.  The larger one we have (see below) is on a timer, so it goes off after I think 9 hours.  I'd set it when it got dark, and by the time we woke up, it was off.

I bought the larger one in a 3-pack at Costco.

Let me mention the importance of a good-quality battery-operated lantern which was excellent for reading in the evening.  You can find them in the camping section of Walmart or Target.  I also recommend having battery-operated miner lights - the kind that strap onto your forehead leaving your hands free.   Those were useful when my husband had to go out in the dark to tend to the generator. 

One thing I have this year that I didn't before is this little gadget.  It's a solar phone charger that goes on my

Leave it on your dashboard to charge all day

keychain;  I bought it at Target for about $20 and it gives me 25 extra minutes of phone power.  That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's saved me a few times when my battery gave out and could be helpful in another extended power outage.  I'll be buying a higher capacity one from Amazon soon. 

Something I didn't have enough of but will this year is firewood.  We have a fireplace that doesn't do much of anything except provide light and a little heat.  Gathering around the fireplace in the evening, all snuggled up under blankets was comforting.  Last year we ran out and I wound up foraging in the little patch of woods behind my house for kindling.  That proved important last year and I'll be stocking up on some - just in case. 

This morning my husband informed me that we're expecting a Nor'easter today.  Now that I've outlined what I need to do, it's time to go do it!

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I mentioned above Zone Perfect Protein Bars.  They're always on my Costco shopping list because my son eats them by the dozens.  They're full of vitamins and keep you feeling full for hours.  And the best part is they taste like a candy bar!  I keep them in the car for snacking and in case of unexpected delays.  They take the edge off your hunger and, combined with a glass of non-fat milk, even make a great little meal.  They are the "official protein bars" of our family!

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Thanks for reading! 

Product Reviews For Today: Kirkland Vs. Name-Brand. Do You Agree?

I remember how I felt the first time I entered a membership warehouse club:  gleeful, giddy.  It was like Christmas morning.  There was SO much stuff in massive containers at such cheap prices!  Like most rookies, I bought multiple quantities of everything I usually bought (Barilla pasta, Life cereal, Horizon milk, etc.) before seeing how much cheaper the house equivalents were.  But is the quality really, truly, honestly the same?

Lots of websites say it is.  According to DailyFinance.com (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/13/10-products-to-always-buy-generic), the top ten things you "should" buy at warehouse clubs are:

1.  Over-the-counter medications
2.  Cereal
3.  Pantry staples.
4.  Soda
5.  Gasoline
6.  Electronic cables (?!)
7.  Make-up other beauty products
8.  Batteries
9.  Salad mix and produce.
10.  Baby formula

No, no, no, no, no!  Fresh stuff goes bad when you have a small family like I do.  Are we REALLY going to eat four pounds of oranges before they rot?  Mine won't even when they swear on a stack of Bibles or video games that they will.  I recently threw out a bunch of oranges with so much Penicillin growth it could saved half the population of Africa.  And baby formula?  My babies were done with formula while I still had boxes of that c*ap left.  Sometimes parenthood gets trumped by economic common sense.

Costco's house brand is called Kirkland Signature.  According to the website Brand Culture, Kirkland "demands superiority" over name-brand goods (http://www.brandculture.com/the-one-brand-breaks-all-rules-costco-kirkland-signature ).  And I do, in fact, buy some of the Kirkland products, so here's what I think of them, especially as they compare to name-brand items:

1.  Kirkland Facial Tissue - I don't busy fancy schmancy tissues with aloe, Vitamin E, or any other trendy stuff on them.  Tissues are where you put boogers when they piss you off (or, in the case of my kids, when Mom tells you to stop using your shirt).  The Kirkland stuff is just as good as your basic Kleenex and buying tissues in bulk is never stupid since they never expire.  Plus, you know you're going to need them at least several times a year.  If you've got the room to store them, I'd recommend you buy Kirkland tissue.

2.  Kirkland Cheese Pizza - If I'm making frozen pizza it's because I don't feel like cooking or because the teen has his mega-hungry posse over.  My kids and most I know are not fussy about what kind of pizza they eat.  Label it Pizza, make sure it has sauce and cheese on it, and you could probably cut down on what you put the curb on recycling day by using up your leftover cardboard.   Kirkland is decent, it's cheap and easy, and I don't taste much of a difference from some of the name brand frozen pizza like Tombstone or DiGiorno.  It's not everyday food; it's "just in case we have a lot of kids I need to feed cheaply" food.

3.  Kirkland Organic Diced Tomatoes - We eat a LOT of crock pot chili in the winter and I get tired of lugging individual cans home from the supermarket.  That's why I buy a case of this stuff from Costco.  The quality is the same as Eden Organic or Hunt's but not much cheaper.  If you can store it, go for it.

4.  Kirkland Bottled Water - I bought this during the summer for the kids to take to camp.  They came home and they told me they'd rather be dehydrated than drink this drek.  Compared to other brands, Kirkland has a slightly soapy taste.  Sure, it's better than drinking my town's tap water which is chemically, but here's where I'd rather spend a few extra pennies on stuff the kids will actually drink. 

5.  Kirkland Bath Tissue - Just as with tissues, bath tissue is a "keep this c** off your hands" receptacle for human waste.  I don't need it to have any bells and whistles so I buy it as cheaply as possible.  Hubby doesn't like Kirkland because it's not as gentle on his manly posterior as other brands, but the cost more than makes up for that.  I mean it's not sandpaper.  We use it, I have the space to store it in, and he deals with it. 

6.  Kirkland Canola Cooking Spray - Supposedly this stuff "compliments the natural flavor of food."  I don't care.  All I need it to do is keep meals from sticking to the pan.  It tastes like Pam, works like Pam, but was $2 cheaper this week than the name-brand stuff.  I bought it. 

7.  Kirkland Salted Almonds - BUY THEM if you like almonds!  They're crunchy, salty, and, for me,

We can't get enough of this healthy snack!

irresistible.  They're just almonds and salt and taste much better than their Blue Diamond counterparts.  Highly recommended! 

8.  Kirkland Ground Saigon Cinnamon - A "what the h**l was I thinking" purchase, according to my cinnamon connoisseur spouse, this brand is not as flavorful as McCormick's.  I wish it was because he's not using it as much as he was the name-brand (he puts it on cereal, oatmeal, cookies, in yogurt) and I may be passing this very container down to my grand kids. 

9.  Kirkland Walnuts - Same stuff as the more expensive brands, MUCH bigger package, and we consume them with gusto.  They can go bad so keep them in the fridge for up to 6 months or freeze them for up to a year. 

10.  Kirkland Baby Wipes - My kids are LONG out of diapers, but we still buy these for cleaning faces, washing hands in the car, taking off make-up, etc.  They're not as soft as some of the name-brand wipes and are a bit thinner than Johnson's.  When my kids were babies, I spent extra on the name brand wipes because these just weren't as good.  Now that we're not using them on babies, they're perfectly fine for general cleanup.

Again, some of the things to consider when you're buying these, or any products from a warehouse is whether you have enough room to store the stuff and whether you're really going to go back to the warehouse just to return one item that doesn't perform the way you wanted it to.  If you have the room and you don't need top-quality stuff, Kirkland is fine for a monthly trip.  Is the quality better?  Sometimes, but there's no guarantee.  It's up to you, as the buyer, to beware.

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Thanks for reading.  Please recommend this blog to your friends, relatives, acquaintances,  manicurist, pizza delivery person, etc.  I hope to see you again in a day or so.