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Episode 13: In Case if Emergency!
Natural disasters can strike at any time, so don’t just cross your fingers and bury your head in the sand. Of course, we should all hope for the best, but we also need to prepare for the worst—I’m talking about fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes—even Lil-O’s dreaded H.F.O.Z.s (a.k.a. House Full of Zombies)!
If the point of Paleo is to optimize health, we’re not doing ourselves any favors if we’re caught in an emergency without food, water, and basic tools for survival. To be perfectly blunt, you can’t thrive if you’re not alive. So listen to our latest episode as we teach you how to put together a Paleo-friendly emergency preparedness kit. Plus, you won’t want to miss our rundown of our recent trip up to Portland for Chef Gregory Gourdet’s super-insane 40th birthday party!
What We Ate
Henry and I recently flew up to Portland to celebrate our pal Gregory’s 40th birthday party. (If you haven’t already, go listen to Episode 3 of our podcast, Top Chef’s Gregory Gourdet, to get to know him!) For us, it was a rare kids-free weekend, and as a result, on this episode, the Double-Os grill us about what we ate in Portland and how “adult” birthday parties differ from the ones they attend. (Hint: fewer bounce-houses and more adult beverages.)
In this episode, we cover all the highlights from our weekend in PDX, including:
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Finding a delicious spread of PDX favorites awaiting us in our hotel room from Gregory and our hosts at The Nines Hotel!
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Sharing a family-style meal with Josh Mayer and Justin Boreta of The Glitch Mob, Ana Sia, and Gregory’s sister and brother-in-law at Imperial Restaurant on our first night in town! (I think I convinced everyone at the table to invest in an Instant Pot.)
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Meeting Top Chef’s Mei Lin and Doug (a.k.a. Douggie) Adams at the Departure after-party on Saturday night!
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Eating a slice (or two) of Trixie, Gregory’s big, pink, dairy-free, gluten-free birthday cake! Departure’s super talented pastry chef, Erin Koroll, posted the recipe on Instagram—but then it was flagged as abusive(!) and she was locked out of her account. I’ll try to get the recipe from her soon! (The photo below is from Erin’s Instagram—go check her out!)
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Fueling up before Gregory’s beach rave on Sauvie Island, #GG40Fab, with a sublime lunch at Paadee—casual and authentic Thai food that totally hit the spot.
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Realizing we should’ve arrived hungry at #GG40Fab because the food at Gregory’s beach rave party showcased the best local food and chefs, including Bamboo Sushi, Smokehouse 21, Wallow & Root Pasture Farm, Flying Fish Co. PDX, Ava Gene’s, Langbaan, Podnah’s Pit, and Salt & Straw.
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Shooting my first Periscope video to show folks the food and folks at #GG40Fab party. Follow me (@nomnompaleo) on Periscope to watch more of my live streaming videos!
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Cramming in two more gluten-free meals on our last day in Portland: breakfast at Broder and lunch at Bollywood Theater.
The Main Course
Natural disasters are on my mind ’cause when we recorded this episode, there was a massive wildfire burning just north of Napa, with something like 40 homes destroyed. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Heck, our current house is perched right on top of the San Andreas Fault.
On top of all that, as we talk about in this episode, I’m REALLY not kidding when I say I want to move to Portland. And last month, there was a splashy article in the New Yorker that a humongous earthquake is going to decimate a huge portion of the coastal Pacific Northwest. The article freaked out lots of folks, myself included, but the point of the article, was to wake people up. Because the Pacific Northwest hasn’t seen a major earthquake produced by the Cascadian fault in 300 years, people aren’t prepared for a massive quake at all. The writer of the article wrote a follow-up last week with some clarifications and tips on how to be prepared for “The Big One.”
Ready to get ready?
Here’s what we’re packing in a giant Rubbermaid Tote for our family emergency survival kit:
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Flashlight and batteries (but I really want a Luminaid)
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Battery-powered or hand-crank radio (or simply get a solar hand-crank flashlight-radio-cell phone charger all-in-one)!
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Prescription drugs
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First aid kit
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Whistle
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Duct tape & tarp (Henry insists on packing extra duct tape after reading Andy Weir’s The Martian.)
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Camping supplies (tent, sleeping bags, etc.)
(More tips and checklists can be found here: The Red Cross Checklist & Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Supply List.)
In terms of food and water, here’s what I’m packing in our family’s kit:
At least 1 gallon of water per person per day for a minimum of 3 days (e.g. 12 gallons for our family of 4).
Make sure you’ve packed some household chlorine bleach and a medicine dropper. When diluted nine parts water to one part bleach, bleach can be used as a disinfectant. Or in an emergency, you can use it to treat water by using 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. (But do NOT use scented, color safe, or bleaches with added cleaners.)
Enough non-perishable food to last a minimum of 3 days, such as:
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Spam (It’s certainly not perfectly Paleo, but a can or two won’t kill you in an emergency—and it’s not nearly as terrible than you may think.)
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Beef jerky, protein bars, Primal Pacs, and Paleo Kits
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Dried Fruit
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Nuts
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Nut butters like Justin’s Nut Butters or Mee Nut Butter. (Psst! You can get 10% off your next Mee Nut Butter order with the coupon code: nomnom)
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Olives
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All the coconut (e.g. coconut flakes, coconut oil, coconut milk, and coconut water)
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Honey
If you don’t have a ton of space, pack what you can in the space you have. As with eating Paleo, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Don’t stock nothing just ’cause you can’t stock everything. Even a little bit of preparedness is better than being caught completely by surprise, with no emergency supplies available to you at all. Also, don’t forget to list the expiration dates of the stuff you’ve stocked on the top of lid of your emergency kit. That way you can rotate out the stuff that’s going to go bad.
Crush of the Week
Family game night has been kicked up to a whole ’nother level after we received our copy of Exploding Kittens, an incredibly addictive new card game co-created by Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal. The game made Kickstarter history as the site’s most-backed campaign.
When folks ask us how to describe the game, we just tell them that it’s a more strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette. (Bonus: No one actually gets shot.) Players draw cards until someone draws an “exploding kitten” card, at which point they explode, die, and are out of the game—unless that player has a “defuse” card, which can defuse the feline bomb using things like laser pointers, belly rubs, and catnip sandwiches. Exploding Kittens has provided hours of fun for our entire family. If you didn’t get in as one of the original Kickstarter backers, don’t be sad—you can preorder the game here.
Question of the Week
A reader asked:I’m a Paleo aficionado who’s trying to convince his wife to give it a try, too (sound familiar?). One of her sticking points is breakfast. She really likes the convenience of grabbing a CLIF bar on her way out the door, so I’d be interested to hear any ideas y’all have about similarly convenient, yet still Paleo-friendly breakfast options.
Frittata muffins! My prosciutto-wrapped frittata muffins are make-ahead, portable, and freezeable. Plus, they get a big thumbs-up from Jesse Tyler Ferguson of Modern Family!
Henry’s portable breakfasts of choice are Spicy Tuna Cakes and Lazy Devils, but when he’s feeling ambitious, he’ll assemble Asian breakfast hand rolls by wrapping toasted nori around scrambled eggs and sliced avocado, and seasoning it with sriracha and/or furikake.
Who says you have to eat “breakfast foods” at breakfast? To keep things simple, just think of breakfast as another meal. Personally, I’m forever in a hurry in the morning, rushing to get the kids ready for camp or school, so my typical breakfast is a cold drumstick from the fridge, a small pile of sauerkraut, and a handful of macadamia nuts. Easy peasy!
Portable Paleo Breakfast Recipes & Resources:
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Diana Rodgers’s fab cookbook, Paleo Lunches and Breakfasts On The Go, has tons of great ideas!
That’s
it for this week! We’ll have another episode up soon enough, but if you can’t wait, feel free to check out our first dozen episodes and access all the show notes by heading over to our podcast archive. If you have questions for future podcasts, please leave them
in the comments below. We’re always looking for great topics!
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Looking for more recipes? Head on over to my Recipe Index! You’ll also find exclusive recipes on my iPad® app, and in my New York Times– bestselling cookbook, Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans (Andrews McMeel 2013).
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