The 5: When You’re Out of Electricity…

This Week on the 5:  Small Luxuries to Make Life Easier in a Power Outage

There are certain things you need when the power goes out.  And a long list of news reporters (plus a very sweet boy broadcasting from his own tv station in Canada) can’t wait to tell you all of them.  Batteries.  Candles.  Flashlights.  Generators.  Battery powered radios.  Car chargers.  Water.  Even boxed milk.  You know the drill.  But then there are a few other things– they may not be necessities– but man, they will make your life so much more comfortable during those dark days.  Here are 5 things that are keeping us sane.  If you don’t have a gas stove, some of these won’t work for you.  What keeps you from losing your mind?

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• A Camping Lantern.  All the flashlights in the world won’t keep you as happy as one camping lantern will.  Some of you will find this suggestion incredibly obvious but how many never thought of it? Hands free light that fills a room.  You can cook.  Read. Feed the baby.  Thank you Ray O Vac!
• Battery Powered Candles.  Yeah, these are made for romance.  Yeah they don’t throw that much light.  But they will also burn 24/7 without melting, and will mark a path from room to room, or keep your bathroom partially lit.  You don’t have to be worried about starting a fire.  Fall asleep with it on,  pick it up, carry it under your arm.  They seem worthless but they’re amazing.
• Old School Wall Phone.  Not a cordless phone.  Not a phone with an answering machine.  We mean the old school princess phones that didn’t plug into an electrical outlet.  All you need is a phone jack, and when the power goes out, you won’t have to waste your precious cell phone power to contact loved ones.  This is more a necessity than a luxury in our book.  We can’t believe everyone doesn’t have one.
• Bialetti or French Press Coffee Maker.  Listen to the news this week.  The only thing you’ll hear people wanting more than gas– is coffee.  It’s a little embarrassing really, but if you need your coffee that bad, you don’t have to give it up.  As long as you have a gas powered stove and some coffee grounds you are in business.  The Bialetti makes fresh amazing coffee on your stovetop, and the french press works by pouring hot water in it.  And this isn’t instant coffee– it’s some of the best coffee you’ll have. You may give up your drip machine completely after using either of these.
• Shake and Pour Pancake Mix.  When you get tired of eating peanut butter sandwiches, and you’ve stretched your no-longer-refrigerated food as far as you can, what’s left?  Pancakes.  If you have a grill, if you have a gas stove, or if you have an open fire, you can safely and happily eat pancakes till the cows come home with this little invention.  (If you don’t have any of those things, scrap the rest of this list and get one). Yes we know, normally we’d call this disgusting.  It’s the exact opposite of the fresh food we believe in.  But it’s Armageddon time, and you don’t want to be eating spam, do you?  Shake and Pour is your savior.  Add water.  Shake.  Pour onto a hot pan.  Boom. Pancakes.  Enjoy.

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What do you have to keep you sane in a power crisis?