surviving a power outage in style

The northeast had a surprise snowstorm in late October which left a lot of people without power. Our good friend Pamela Hovland sent us pictures of her family’s improvised living arrangements: mattresses arranged around the fire place with an array of colorful quilts and pillows made for cozy, impressively stylish indoor camping. But best of all was Pamela’s makeshift refrigerator, tucked into the snow in her yard.

makeshift refrigerator during a power outage — photo: p.r. hovland

Nice to see that Nature can help us replace the comforts of the modern home after it robs us of them! Of course, as Pamela noted, her natural fridge wasn’t entirely perfect:

“One downside to this refrigerator was that an animal — likely a raccoon we call ‘Rupert’ — was pleased to find some cheese and bacon for his breakfast one morning. I guess he has to improvise all the time just to survive…”

Animal intruders aside, the survivalist in us admires Pamela’s clever solutions…One of our favorite mind games is to imagine what we would do without this…or that…and we sometimes research possibilities. Lately, we’ve been imagining cooking in a d-i-y solar oven – magically fueled by sunlight – on the terrace.