This was what Hurricane Ike looked like in our area on Saturday morning. I suppose you can't see much from the photo, but that's Dave braving the wind in an effort to shore up a section of our fence. Our fence ended up staying together. The neighbor wasn't so lucky. A solid downpour and heavy winds marked the entire day (through 5PM, anyway), and although electricity was lost in many areas, ours remained intact. Considering the destruction and death that accompanied the storm, we are extremely fortunate. Needless to say, the local farmers market was cancelled. Go figure. Who wouldn't want to bike downtown in such lovely weather? Thankfully, we are well stocked with plenty of local canned items on the shelves and a few veggies leftover from last week's market.
Local supplies for the week:
- Veggies - potatoes, onions, yellow squash, italian squash, mushrooms
- Dairy - 2 gallons of local raw milk (some of which will become homemade yogurt this week)
- Meat/Eggs - half dozen eggs, polish sausage (frozen), summer sausage
- Beans/Nuts - navy beans, black beans, almonds
- Canned foods - three different recipes of homemade vegetable soup, tomatoes, pasta sauce
- Fruit - canned peaches, frozen peaches, strawberries, dewberries, blackberries and blueberries
- Herbs - mint and sage for tea; basil for cooking
- Grains - cornmeal, brown rice
I'm not exactly feeling deprived with all those goodies in the fridge and pantry. In fact, we're feeling pretty thankful for what we do have at this point (nothing like a humongous storm to put things in perspective).
Stay tuned to Thursday's "Market to Table" post to find out how all this good food comes together. Have a great week; stay dry and safe; and as always...
Happy (and mindful) eating!
10 comments:
Yeah. My daughter did go to work Saturday, about three hours late because the power was out for a few hours at her job.
I was a bit scared in the morning, driving around delivering bread with my husband. The rain had enough wind behind it that it felt like pins and needles on my face. I made my husband turn his truck and trailer around at one point to go against the wind so the rain and wind weren't blowing into the trailer and the trailer did offer some shelter at the Target in Bryan, but he was careful to make sure to do the same at the next few stops we made. While we were out, we saw trees down here and there...mostly just branches and leaves. There were some signs down or turned and debris well, all over the place. Power was out in a few places around town, but if a light was out, we just treated it as a four way stop. I explained this to my daughter, but she said she already knows...she'll be driving soon.
Towns and parts of towns around us may have power outages for days or weeks--Hearne and Caldwell I know didn't have power as of yesterday. My husband's superviser lives in Caldwell.
They put up a sign on the highway very near my house that says Brazos Valley shelters are full. One estimate of evacuees was 100,000. The population of Bryan, Tx is 67,266. Apparantly, we are putting up far more people than live in the city of Bryan, crazy.
When I could access the damage on Sunday around my house, there were tree limbs down here and there. Things had blown around a bit. Our drainage system worked very well, there was quite a bit more water in our pond in back. My shade cover over one of my gardens was torn up pretty good, I gathered the pieces and many of the downed limbs. My husband blew/gathered the leaves that covered the huge slab patio.
I've lived in B-CS for about twenty seven years, I have never seen as much damage from a hurricane here, but we were very blessed that we didn't get the tornados, power outages and flooding that some of our neighbor communities did. It really could have been much worse. I think the power companies and emergency workers did a great job, including the police who helped keep order with traffic when lights went out, etc.
Heather, I'm so glad to hear that you are safe and well. Between you and ttammylynn, it sounds like it was one crazy day.
It's wonderful to hear that all of your preparations have given you a sense of security and peace of mind. I think that's a very important message to get out there.
Glad to hear you didn't have too much damage! Hurricanes definitely give a different perspective to preserving your own food.
I'm glad to hear you guys made it through alright!
ttammylynn - I agree we were very lucky. It still cracks me up that after that men's store on Univeristy boarded up its windows and the new bank across the street (the one under construction) had debris flying off it, that Starbucks was open for business. Puleeeese! :)
wendy - preparation really is the key. There is so much in life that we have no control over. We do what we can with what we can and then try to roll with whatever comes our way. This time, we were super lucky, that's for sure!
ib mommy - Absolutely. We had lots of good food on hand. The nice thing was that most of it was in the pantry vs. the freezer (since I got my canner a few months ago). That way if the power went out, we wouldn't have to worry about everything defrosting and having to eat it all at once. Yeah for canning!!!!
jennifer - thanks! Turns out Houston hasn't has a direct hit for 25 years. They really got blasted down there. Even in our surrounding counties, school has been cancelled indefinitely because of power outages. We are VERY fortunate!
Heather, we have a problem. Supplies aren't coming fast enough. B-CS is almost out of gas, I went to ten stations to fill my tank this morning. There are several refineries, bakeries, suppliers out or nearly out of product, down because they were hit by floods or hurricane, or overloaded because they are trying to make up for the closed ones, etc. People are filling 55 gal drums if they do find gas. If there is no gas, particularly diesel fuel, trucks won't be able to deliver... I don't know how wide-spread this is, but we are in serious trouble.
ttammylynn - I don't know how close you our, but the Kroger near my house still seems to have gas. How have your deliveries changed in light of all this?
They run out and then get more trucks...it should be okay. Too many people getting too much too quickly.
Glad that you're okay (I think?). Eating well is always a priority on my end. I didn't realize how bad the hurricane was until we turned on the TV recently. Hope the recovery efforts are turning out better this time around.
beany - it actually has gotten more interesting. Where I live, there were outages, but not a lot of damage. This is where many of the evacuees came. BUT... now our university is having a football game and some of the evacuees were forced out of hotels so that the football game people could have their reserved rooms. The hotels felt like they were between a legal rock and a moral hardplace. The university moved the time of the game up so that less people would need a room and a request was issued that if you didn't HAVE to stay overnight - don't. But geez. Like these people needed anything else to worry about...
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